Video Transcript: Judaism Lecture 4

Okay, I have something to go back on here. In my notes, I jumped from one  thing to another. And that led me to skip something very important that we don't  want to leave out of the story at all. And that is the Exodus Out of Egypt, I should have said a good bit more about that time. So I'm going to go back and pick it up now, this call of Moses to lead the people. If he does that, he gathers them and  he's they're acknowledged leader. And he leads them to the point where they, he defies the pharaoh of Egypt, and gets the people together, ready to leave. And,  of course, the famous stories, that God tells the people, here's what you should  do. On this particular night, you're to get dressed like you're going on a long trip, and eat standing up. And here's what your do your to eat. Your to eat bread that  doesn't have any yeast in it, because you don't have time for it arise. And you're  to eat lamb and bitter herbs, and you get ready for a trip because you're leaving. And that's just what happens. It's called the exodus of the Jews out of Egypt,  under Moses leadership, and that meal is called a Seder. That still celebrated  only once a year, in commemoration of their deliverance out of Egypt and out of  slavery. And, of course, the thing that pressures the Pharaoh to let them go are  the plagues that God sends on Egypt, and these aren't just random things,  made to annoy the Egyptians and let the Jews go. Each one of them attacks an  Egyptian god, every one of them is a plague of something the Egyptians  worshiped. And then finally, the last plague was that it struck down the eldest  son in every home, because the eldest son was supposed to be precious to all  the gods, the Egyptian gods, and so it undercut them all. And God had said to  Moses, by these plagues, I'm going to show the Egyptians who's really God. So  I did mention the other great holy day of the Jewish year as Yom Kippur. But I  hadn't mentioned the Seders, my apologies. I jumped from one spot in the notes to the other. But this is all part of the national consciousness of Israel and helps  form the nation and is still for Jews, part of the national consciousness that's  national but International. It's part of the Jewish consciousness, of being having  been chosen by God for a special task in the world. Where we left last left off,  we left off with Israel, having been conquered, and then Judah, having been  conquered, as well. So the Jerusalem and the temple fell into the Babylon,  Babylonian Empire. But when the Medo-Persian Empire took over from them,  Cyrus the Great allowed the Jews to go back and rebuild the temple. And then I  said, Israel was never again, an independent nation, because you have the  Medes and the Persians conquered by Alexander and you have the Greeks  conquered by the Romans. And I think you from there, you pretty much know  the history of that we have an independent nation today, yes. But from then, until the foundation of free Israel in 1948, there was no independent nation. And that  was a long time. So during this time, of conquest, however, the theology  develops and look, the prophets call the people back to covenant faithfulness,  that keep reminding them that it's only because of their unfaithfulness, their their punishment is to be held in captivity. And they look for the coming of a Messiah 

who will be able to restore the nation and bring peace and and bring the  accomplishment of Israel's call to the world to fruition. So, but the Jews have  been under some kind of captivity for a long time. Now, by the time the Roman  Empire arises, they've already been captured for quite a while, and they have  been dispersed throughout into north Africa, in the Middle East, up into Europe.  And so, a great many of them do not continue to, to know Hebrew. And that  means that's a disaster because it means they can't read the scriptures. And so  in the third century, before Christ 70 rabbis make a translation of the Old  Testament. It's known as the Septuagint. Let the i out. And it' often just written  this way, the Roman numeral for 70 and is translated into Greek because Greek  was the international language of the ancient world, even though the Romans  may have been in charge of it, and they spoke Latin, that was not the  international language, the international language of in which you did business  was Greek. This is English is today. And so this, this enabled the dispersed  Jews, to be able to read this scriptures, even if they couldn't read Hebrew. And  through this time, we have the development of commentaries on the Old  Testament, on the Scriptures, And chief among which is the Talmud, there are  two great central to traditions of Talmud, and the the study of, of the Talmud, in  the writing of the Talmud, occupy Jewish scholars and theologians and thinkers  in this period, and this takes us up into the time. Past Christ, we skip this  because we'll cover this under Christianity. But in there were several rebellions  in Israel against the Roman Empire. And, and the one that was the most  disastrous was under the Maccabees, that resulted in the destruction of  Jerusalem again, in the year 70 AD. And that was the rebuilt temple. And in that  year, it was destroyed, and it's not ever been rebuilt. This is a disaster of major  proportion. Because it was the center of Jewish life and thought it was the  symbol of Jewish life and thought it was the place where God lived on the mercy seat and the holy place of the temple. And it was destroyed by the Romans, who wanted to teach the world lesson that nobody rebels against Rome and gets  away with it. So they took it down stone by stone. And the only thing that  remains is a wall that was near the temple wasn't part of it, but the the famous  wailing wall which is still exist, that's the nearest thing to it. That survived. So  this has made many Jewish thinkers rely all the more strongly on the Messianic  prophecies, the hope for the restoration of Israel, this also fragmented Jewish  thought into any many different sects, different interpretations. And I will want to  cover those in some detail. In our next meeting.