Growing Biblic Judaism

[fschmidt]

I can think of 3 ways of growing Biblic Judaism:

1.  Find more enlightened people.
2.  Start a school and raise Biblic Jews.
3.  Be a priesthood for Christian followers.

Option #1 is what I have been trying for years.  It doesn't work because humanity is stupid and getting more stupid every year.  There is no point debating this question, anyone who disagrees can simply try it themselves.

I have discussed option #2 before and this is what Hasidic rabbis did in America.  But Hasidic rabbis had several advantages over us.  First, they had a religion that they knew works for those raised in it.  We really don't know whether ours works for most people  Second, they had enough people to staff a school which is a non-trivial operation.  I simply don't think we have enough people to do this.  And third, Hasidic rabbis could easily get support from parents since Jews trust rabbis.  We may struggle to get students, and we would certainly struggle to get any kind of cooperation from parents.  So I think option #2 may be viable some day in the future, but not now.

That leaves option #3.  Christianity has the great merit that it doesn't require thought and in fact discourages thought.  This is perfectly appropriate for most people who are incapable of coherent thought, so if they attempt to think, the results will only be bad.  One must appeal to Christians strictly on an emotional level and avoid anything that requires thought.

Before getting into details, I want to discuss the proper role of an enlightened person.  Confucius portrayed the enlightened person as a high level beta serving an alpha (king, warlord, whatever).  There is logic to this because a successful alpha is much more intelligent than the moronic masses, and so is more likely to recognize the value of an enlightened person.  The alpha is also much more powerful than the moronic masses, so can do more for the enlightened person.  But the negative is that all alphas are untrustworthy, all are basically psychopaths, so one never knows when they will turn on you.  Serving an alpha can mean living in luxury for years and then having your throat slit.

The alternative for enlightened people is to form a co-alpha priesthood for average followers.  The followers are incapable of recognizing enlightenment, so it is the responsibility of the priesthood to simply manipulate the followers into respecting them.  And the followers don't have much power, but they still have infinitely more power than isolated individuals do because they can support each other.  The basis of this power is trust, which is missing from alphas.  Properly trained followers are quite trustworthy as seen in several religions like Hasidic Judaism and traditional Anabaptist groups.  So concluding, I believe that the proper role for an enlightened person is to be part of a co-alpha priesthood.

Returning to option #3, first note that the rules of Biblic Judaism don't require thought.  Members do not have to read the Old Testament, which most Christians are incapable of understanding anyway.  It is the job of the priesthood to study the Old Testament and then tell the followers how to apply it.

I imagine getting Christian followers as having basically two steps.  First is getting them to keep the sabbath.  And second is all the rest which should follow.  I believe the first step will be the hardest.

The first step to getting Christians to keep the sabbath with us is for us to change our sabbath to Sunday to be compatible with Christianity.  We need to make sure that our sabbath and Biblic Judaism itself is seen as something that complements Christianity, not conflicts with it.  So we need a strong ritual with emotional appeal that complements church service.  I propose a shabbat dinner on Saturday night to serve this purpose.  Free food has an obvious primitive appeal.  But the dinner should be full of (mindless) rituals that have an emotional impact and of course these rituals should emphasize the sabbath itself.  We can take rituals from Judaism like lightening shabbat candles.  We can read various prayers in Hebrew and English, for example the sabbath commandment.  And during dinner conversation, we can push our agenda.

To get people to come to this sabbath dinner, we could attend various church services and hand out flyers promoting the sabbath and inviting people to the sabbath dinner.  I only expect a small number to come, but this is basically a personal sales job that involves going to a church at least several times to gain people's trust and use that to push the invitation.

With this schedule, we could have our own Old Testament readings on Sunday afternoon.  We could let Christians know that we do this, but we should not invite them because their tiny brains would be overwhelmed.  Only if they ask to come on their own should they come at all.

So this gives us the following Sunday shabbat schedule:  Saturday night is shabbat dinner and Christians are invited.  Sunday morning is church, a sales job.  Sunday afternoon is our Old Testament reading.

At this point, all this is just an idea, not a plan.  But it is something that I would like to discuss.

[Hax Templar]

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[fschmidt]

This post of mine was mostly a result of my frustration of failing to find people who understand the Biblic Judaism idea.  We discussed this as a group and I think we will aim between #1 and #3 meaning trying to find people who we can at least explain the idea to, probably mostly personal contacts.  The internet looks like an infinite abyss of stupidity.

We will focus on the Old Testament, but we welcome Old Testament-oriented Christians.  I see no conflict between our beliefs and traditional (non-modern) Christianity.  You can join us for a Saturday Bible reading and judge for yourself.  (But we won't be online this Saturday since we will be looking for a place to settle.)

[fschmidt]

I think I made a mistake in my original post.  I confused stupidity with passivity.  Not all Christians are stupid, but all Christians seem to be passive.  This also applies to members of modern culture which comes from Christianity.  Examples of non-passive cultures where people take initiative include Jewish culture and Chinese culture.  Most of our likely market for growing Biblic Judaism are not going to come from these groups, so...

I would like to try to target intelligent passive Christians.  These people are smart enough to understand our Bible readings.  But they will never take action unless they pushed to do it.  So I would first push them to attend our online Bible readings and then push them to follow our 4 rules in order.  Doing this requires personal interaction.  So as in my original post, this requires attending church services.  The idea would be to attend various church services and look for intelligent Christians.  They are rare, but no more rare than intelligent people in the general population.  When I find an intelligent Christian, I would push him to attend our online readings.  When I exhaust one church, I would move on the next.

I had taken the approach of looking for intelligent Christians in the past, and I found 2 here in El Paso, but the mistake I made was to assume that they would take some initiative based on what I said.  This is wrong.  I need to tell them exactly what to do or they won't do anything.  I may follow up with these 2 and see what happens.