Resources For Learning About The Jewish People and Judaism

mmatt9876 said:
I believe the Roman Catholic faith is very popular in Europe and the Americas. Is the Roman Catholic faith very popular in Africa and Asia too? Is the Roman Catholic faith one of the oldest Christian faiths?
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The Roman Catholic version of Christianity WAS Christianity, for more than a thousand years. It wasn't until the Second Millennium A.D. that offshoots of Catholicism began to pop up.

I'm a little out of my own specialty here, but I'm pretty sure that the Greek Orthodox version of Christianity was the second one to take hold. But then, as the millennium proceeded, other branches of Christianity began to pop up. The Anglican church (more formerly known as "The Church of England") became the official religion of England (another Protestant version of Christianity like the Greek Orthodox, which was spreading all over the eastern edge of Europe and into Russia), while almost all of the other European countries maintained Catholicism.

The Church of England is still the "official" religion of the U.K., but the country no longer has a monolithic population, so there are lots of people living there who belong to other churches... not to mention the growing Muslim population and, of course, the Jewish people who have been there for several centuries, as the Europeans on the continent never really got along well with them and were happy to see them go. (Perhaps you remember a nasty little event that occurred during WWII, called "the Holocaust"?)

And, of course, Catholicism was not able to maintain its monopoly on the European Christians. Today there are several major countries where Catholicism prevails (notably Spain, Portugal, France and Italy). Vatican City, of course, which is the headquarters of the Catholic Church, is in Italy.

As to your question about Asia and Africa, the answer is, essentially "yes." Asia has never become a major Christian civilization, because there were already quite a few other religions there... both ancient ones like those in India, China, and Japan, and of course Islam, which is centered in southwestern Asia. There is also a huge Muslim population in Africa, although many of the African countries also have large Christian populations.

Judaism arose in Israel long before Christ's birth, and the modern State of Israel, which is on the shore of Asia, is still the religion's homeland.
 
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birch said:
exactly. otherwise, it's not genuine and it's not your own effort. the thing is you don't grow internally and honestly if you rely upon (even if it's imagined) another to do good. i can see where a person may take some comfort in the idea that there may be something good out there who cares for them but as far as that being the only motive to do/be good yourself is actually disingenuous. you should like/love to do/be good for it's own sake. it should be your own values because you agree with those values, otherwise it is a form of an ulterior motive. what if god doesn't exist, would you then not? that question posed to yourself would answer, if honestly answered, what you are about. would you not want to make a better world if you were able, even if god didn't exist? these are the questions a person should ask themselves.
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How do you learn to be good. You preach a lot but you piss on everybody from your early posts . You have gone through hard times , did it teach you to love others , based on your post, you are in my opinion a miserable being .
So how do you acquire the good quality in this world, where most of people are for themself.
I can see the relationship of mother to its child ( while young ). The child becomes a selfish brath as he grows , and he will not get what he wants he becomes miserable to himself and to others.
So you need some instruction ,or education in order to fit within the pool of humanity . One of the instruction is God's commandments , which go beyond the instruction of the family . Law provided by man does not help us to love each other ( outside of our family ) but be on the alert , alert sets us to mistrust and insecurity. So, how do you think we learn to love each other ?
 
spidergoat said:
Are you so fragile that you need to believe a falsehood to feel good? Why not just be a good person and feel motivated from that?
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That is true. I guess I do not need theism or spirituality to fell good and do good. Thank you. Theism and spirituality do seem like more of a falsehood than a truth to me because they are not supported in fact and I do not need them to be a good person. I know I am a good person and I am motivated to do good on my own because it is the right thing to do.
 
You seem easily malleable. Maybe just take some time and think about it, you don't have to decide anything, there's no rush.
 
mmatt9876 said:
I have decided I am still Roman Catholic. I just am bothered I can not find the answers to support it.
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Do you believe God created the nature ? Have science made any cell without using pre existing DNA or RNA I am not saying science is studying the process of nature, Atheism is based of no God created life.
Don't base yourself of what modern philosophy and scientific Theory are pushed on the society were many are based on assumptions.
 
spidergoat said:
Are you so fragile that you need to believe a falsehood to feel good? Why not just be a good person and feel motivated from that?
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My parents both came from families who had extremely bad encounters with Christianity. Ma's parents lived in Bohemia (it's the Czech Republic now), where the priests had considerable control over life. This was in the days when truly devout Catholics did not eat red meat on Friday. The local church had its own lake, and the priests had a monopoly on the sale of fish. My grandparents emigrated to Australia, but for reasons I never knew, they moved back to Bohemia. A few years later they emigrated to the USA and were quite happy here--even though neither of them ever learned English. (This was not remarkable in Chicago in those days.)

My father's grandparents were Jewish. They moved around in various European countries, but in the 19th century there were no places for Jews to live in peace and comfort there. They emigrated to the USA. When they got off the boat at the Statue of Liberty, they stopped speaking German and Hungarian, and spoke English for the rest of their lives. Despite their bad experience with Europe's Catholic population, they found the Protestants in America considerably easier to get along with. They joined a Christian church a few days after landing, and spent the rest of their lives as Christians.
 
mmatt9876 said:
I believe the Roman Catholic faith is very popular in Europe and the Americas. Is the Roman Catholic faith very popular in Africa and Asia too? Is the Roman Catholic faith one of the oldest Christian faiths?
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Catholicism isn't as popular in Africa and Asia as it is in, say Latin America, where almost everyone is Catholic.

And as I explained before, what we call the "Roman Catholic religion" is the original version of Christianity that arose in the era of Jesus and the apostles. Today, people generally just call themselves "Catholics," rather than using the full phrase "Roman Catholic."

And of course, the church has changed a lot since its founding. Jesus might not recognize it. ;)
 
birch said:
exactly. otherwise, it's not genuine and it's not your own effort. the thing is you don't grow internally and honestly if you rely upon (even if it's imagined) another to do good. i can see where a person may take some comfort in the idea that there may be something good out there who cares for them but as far as that being the only motive to do/be good yourself is actually disingenuous. you should like/love to do/be good for it's own sake. it should be your own values because you agree with those values, otherwise it is a form of an ulterior motive. what if god doesn't exist, would you then not? that question posed to yourself would answer, if honestly answered, what you are about. would you not want to make a better world if you were able, even if god didn't exist? these are the questions a person should ask themselves.
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I would still do good deeds and help others if I found out God did not exist. I do good for the sake of doing good and not for points with God.
 
timojin said:
Do you believe God created the nature ? Have science made any cell without using pre existing DNA or RNA I am not saying science is studying the process of nature, Atheism is based of no God created life.
Don't base yourself of what modern philosophy and scientific Theory are pushed on the society were many are based on assumptions.
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I believe in God and I believe he created the universe. Exactly how he did that I do not know but you can go by the book of Genesis in the Bible or you can go by the Big Bang Theory, which is widely accepted by the scientific community.
 
Fraggle Rocker said:
The Roman Catholic version of Christianity WAS Christianity, for more than a thousand years. It wasn't until the Second Millennium A.D. that offshoots of Catholicism began to pop up.
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Did the Coptic Orthodox Church come before the Roman Catholic Church? I believe the Coptic Orthodox Church split into the Roman Catholic Church and the Eastern Orthodox Church around 1051 AD.
 
Fraggle Rocker said:
My parents both came from families who had extremely bad encounters with Christianity. Ma's parents lived in Bohemia (it's the Czech Republic now), where the priests had considerable control over life. This was in the days when truly devout Catholics did not eat red meat on Friday. The local church had its own lake, and the priests had a monopoly on the sale of fish. My grandparents emigrated to Australia, but for reasons I never knew, they moved back to Bohemia. A few years later they emigrated to the USA and were quite happy here--even though neither of them ever learned English. (This was not remarkable in Chicago in those days.)

My father's grandparents were Jewish. They moved around in various European countries, but in the 19th century there were no places for Jews to live in peace and comfort there. They emigrated to the USA. When they got off the boat at the Statue of Liberty, they stopped speaking German and Hungarian, and spoke English for the rest of their lives. Despite their bad experience with Europe's Catholic population, they found the Protestants in America considerably easier to get along with. They joined a Christian church a few days after landing, and spent the rest of their lives as Christians.
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I am glad both stories had a happy ending!
 
Internet Archive has what it says is the entire text of the multivolume Encyclopedia Judaica in free downloadable open-source format (a single huge 270 mb pdf file). I haven't tried downloading it and don't know anything about this version. (It might be hard to navigate in this form and will take forever to download if you have a slow internet connection.) I have seen the physical version in libraries (15-20 volumes) and I'm guessing that it's perhaps the best one-stop resource for Jewish history, culture and doctrine of all periods.

https://archive.org/details/EncyclopediaJudaica
 
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I have discovered that I do good deeds and help others because it is the right thing to do, it makes me feel good, and I want God to reward me.
 
mmatt9876 said:
I have discovered that I do good deeds and help others because it is the right thing to do, it makes me feel good, and I want God to reward me.
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what is your price ?
If it is right to do and it feels good , that is enough. If you want to be rewarded that does not sound very nice.
 
timojin said:
what is your price ?
If it is right to do and it feels good , that is enough. If you want to be rewarded that does not sound very nice.
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Yea, I thought about it, being rewarded by God for doing good is not my main motivation for doing good, I do it because it is right.
 
I discovered I may have some Jewish ancestry when I did some research on my last name origin and I discovered my last name has English, German, Dutch, and Jewish origins.
 
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