The Buddha & The Book of Exodus

… ok, Hebrew Bible, that is a new element, and i was not offering any quotes in Hebrew. I accurately presented what i presented, with some years academic background in faith-friendly and academic- friendly bible studies. I do not see why you choose to impune inaccuracy or lack of integrity into my response.

However, if you prefer to delve into Exodus with a Rabbi, it will probably be educational and pleasant; may it be to your and their benefit. Rabbis come in afaik all flavors of Judaism. You might want to do a casual survey of the scholarship to get the most out of your conversations.

I have not practiced Judaism in this life, but as religions go, it is as flexible as any, imo.

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None intended. I just believe the Jewish people have the right to interpret their own scriptures, especially those in authority. Anything I say related to comparative religion between Judaism and Buddhism would be out of respect and sincere curiosity for both religions.

Interesting. Yet your OP offers an interpretation, and you are asking this on an EBT Buddhist forum.

Absolutely. Everyone has a right to interpret what they want.

And so what if modern Judaism doesn’t look identical to what was practiced in the Near East 2200+ years ago. Modern Judaism is a perfectly fine religion as religions go. It has a history of development like any other religion. It gets rid of things it doesn’t want in it and innovates when it is desirable.

And people are free to believe that it has never innovated if they want, its just harder to prove.

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Obviously the Orthodox Jewish position is that Judaism has always been a monotheistic religion.

The above is academic inquiry, not religious exegesis.

I imagine many Rabbis would not like much of the above information.

Many are fine with it, too. It’s just history, after all. The present is the present.

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For the purpose of comparative religion between Buddhism and Judaism only, not for making definitive statements. Have you ever taken a comparative religion class?

After all, some Jews call themselves “Jewitches” and worship Asherah as a version of the Great Goddess of Wiccan spirituality, essentially.

In my understanding as a Buddhist, the Ultimate Truth is beyond even monotheism. The Ultimate Truth is beyond even the concept of a “god.”

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Oh, certainly.

We Buddhists are very good at neti neti. :sweat_smile:

Whatever “it” is, it’s not “that”.

Exactly. Given the limitations of human language, who am I to judge other religions for explaining the same Ultimate Truth in diverse ways?

I would say the same thing. Judging is bad.

And yet here we are at SuttaCentral instead of orthodoxchristianity.net/forum

As thinking adults, we can engage in healthy comparative religion.

More than a few.

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Good.

I am thrilled you approve.

:slight_smile: Friend, i think we rub each other the wrong way. I don’t think my participating in your thread is particularly beneficial to either of us. And i do hope it is of benefit to you and others. That right now you may (may) be seeing ressonance of Buddhism in everything, this if it is so, i do not see as inauthentic in any way. Metta, and an offered metta-fist-bump.

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Exactly.

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While there is no creator or judge in Buddhism, even the word “God” is a linguistic construct for the one ineffable Truth, which we as Buddhists would instead call Nirvana.

I would like to offer the suggestion that, according to the dominant strain of thought in the Pali tradition, nibbana is not ultimate reality, or The Absolute, or the ineffable ground of being. Nibbana is something that happens to people who practice well. It’s not a realm or sphere of reality or eternal, self-subsistent being. The fires of greed, hatred, confusion, and ego, self-aggrandizement or “self-view” go out.

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I offer you the following article by Bhikkhu Bodhi:

I offer you the following chapter of Rev. Rahula’s What The Buddha Taught:

I offer you the following words of the Buddha:

There is the unborn, uncreated, unformed, unoriginated, and therefore there is an escape from the born, created, formed, originated. If it were not for the unborn, uncreated, unformed, unoriginated, there would be no escape from the born, created, formed, originated, but because there is the unborn, uncreated, unformed, unoriginated, there is an escape, there is liberation from the born, created, formed, originated (Udana VIII.3).
Buddha Space: 'The Unborn,' by Ajahn Sumedho

Yes, there are some places in the suttas where nibbana is identified as the unconditioned or the deathless and seems to be reified as an eternal and self-subsistent ground of reality. In my opinion, these passages exist in some tension with the more dominant formulations which treat nibbana as an event which occurs in the lives of some people, and they probably represent the importation of vedantic ideas into the Buddhist tradition by followers who mistakenly understood the goal of the Buddhist path to be a unification of some kind, or contact, with Brahman.

Nibbana is extinguishing, or the condition of something having been extinguished or blown out. The lives of human beings are on fire with greed, hatred and confusion, and when that fire has been extinguished they have reached the goal. The goal is nothing other than that. Although nibbana is the same kind of event for the different people who have achieved it, there is not some one thing, “The Nibbana”, into which these people literally “enter” when they attain it.

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