SIGN THE PETITION
Jews have already read Noahide Law into Hindu dhamra (here), now the United Nations Institute for Noahide Code, INC (www. noahide .org) has posted an article stating that the "Brahmins" of India were the children of aBRAHAM who went east and started the Hindu religion based on Noahide Law, even though they say they later became enmeshed with "non-monotheistic" religion. This is the further subversion of other religions for the Noahide agenda. The INC are the same organization which got the United Nations to sign on to the Noahide Laws as a "requirement" for all humanity.
DIRECT QUOTE
After the passing of the matriarch Sarah, the mother of Isaac, Abraham had further sons from Ketura (or Hagar[10]), the mother of Yishmael. These sons, the Bible, relates, were sent off to the East by Abraham. Rabbi Menashe ben Israel in his work Nishmas Chayim[11], states that these sons went to India and disseminated the teachings of Abraham concerning the eternity and reincarnation of the soul. He associates the term “Brahman”, (presumably referring to the priestly Hindu caste) with what were originally “Abrahamin”, the sons of Abraham. Buddhism is in turn a derivative of Hinduism. Hence, traces of “Abrahamic” Noahide theology, are to be found in both these Eastern religions, even though they came to be embedded in religions which were otherwise non-monotheistic[12]. The adherents of Hindusim and Buddhism constitute another 21% of the world’s population, so that in total 76% of the world’s population is associated with religions influenced by the children of Abraham. It is interesting to note that another 14%, officially classed as “non-believing” are largely to be accounted for as the result of Chinese, former Soviet Russian and Eastern bloc political training in atheism – in historical terms, a relatively recent overlay over a much deeper collective memory.
FULL ARTICLE
http://noahide.org/prospectives-on-noahide-laws/?print=print
Prospectives on Noahide Laws
Prospectives on Noahide Laws
from Rabbi Dr Shimon Cowen, Perspectives on the Noahide laws – Universal Ethics (C) S.D. Cowen 2003. www.ijc.com.au
There are seven laws, which are biblically binding on all humanity. They are prohibitions on idolatry, blasphemy (or the reviling of G-d), forbidden sexual relationships, theft, murder, lawlessness (the failure to establish courts and processes of justice) and the consumption of the limb of a living animal, associated with cruelty to animals. They are known as the seven Noahide laws. The reason for this name, is ostensibly because, although[1] six of the laws were commanded to the first person, Adam, the seven laws were completed with Noah, to whom the seventh commandment was given. Only after the flood, was it permitted to humanity to slaughter meat for consumption, and with this came the law prohibiting one to eat the limb of a living animal.[2]
These laws are an intrinsic “possession” of humanity. For the human being is, to use the biblical phrase, “created in the image of G-d”, that is to say, fitted to “imitate G-d”, and this imitation can take place only through the performance of the Divinely given Noahide commandments. The “image of G-d” in humanity is a potentiality: it could and did come to the fore in exemplary human beings; it was submerged, and even so-to-speak “removed” from those who made a travesty of the Noahide laws.
There were ten generations from Adam to Noah[3]. This long epoch of humanity was a history of degeneration and removal of the Divine image from humanity. Noah was unable to redeem the cumulative history of forgoing generations: his luminous ark was the refuge of the ideal of a redeemed humanity and nature[4]. Another ten generations passed from Noah to Abraham. Whilst both intervals of ten generations are part of what the Sages called the two thousand years of void (Tohu) or spiritual darkness[5], Abraham’s relationship to the epoch which preceded him was different. He was able to redeem the historical epoch (the ten generations) which preceded him.
This was because the service of Abraham marked the beginning of a new era in humanity, called the “two thousand years of Torah [Divine teaching]”. Torah is associated with “light”, symbolizing clear and manifest G-dly truth. Just as the Torah (through its commandments) formed the instrument of the refinement of the world, so Abraham worked on the human environment around him. In the process, he himself practiced and spread the observance of the Noahide laws (starting with the recognition of G-d), as well as keeping a further commandment, circumcision, which was given to him and forms the bridge to the further group of commandments incumbent on the Jewish people, to be given later at Sinai[6]. Abraham was a Noahide, but he was also the father of the Jewish people with their own distinct spiritual character and task. In his offspring, the dual subject of humanity, Jew and gentile, with their complementary tasks, are broadly prefigured.
Thus, Abraham’s son Isaac, who was circumcised, according to the Jewish law, at eight days, projects the Jewish people. From him was born Jacob, who descended into Egypt with his family and there the Hebrew nation grew. Abraham, however, had another son, Yishmael (Ismael) and so did Isaac – Esav (Esau), Abraham’s grandson. According to tradition, Yishmael and Esav, are the fathers[7] of two vast world religions and cultures, Islam and Christianity. In the present world the adherents of Christianity and Islam constitute 55% of the world’s inhabitants[8]; and there are traces and elements of the (Abrahamic) Noahide root teachings in these world religions[9].
After the passing of the matriarch Sarah, the mother of Isaac, Abraham had further sons from Ketura (or Hagar[10]), the mother of Yishmael. These sons, the Bible, relates, were sent off to the East by Abraham. Rabbi Menashe ben Israel in his work Nishmas Chayim[11], states that these sons went to India and disseminated the teachings of Abraham concerning the eternity and reincarnation of the soul. He associates the term “Brahman”, (presumably referring to the priestly Hindu caste) with what were originally “Abrahamin”, the sons of Abraham. Buddhism is in turn a derivative of Hinduism. Hence, traces of “Abrahamic” Noahide theology, are to be found in both these Eastern religions, even though they came to be embedded in religions which were otherwise non-monotheistic[12]. The adherents of Hindusim and Buddhism constitute another 21% of the world’s population, so that in total 76% of the world’s population is associated with religions influenced by the children of Abraham. It is interesting to note that another 14%, officially classed as “non-believing” are largely to be accounted for as the result of Chinese, former Soviet Russian and Eastern bloc political training in atheism – in historical terms, a relatively recent overlay over a much deeper collective memory.
The pure tradition of the Noahide laws and theology as well as the further commandments which were acquired by the Jewish people before Sinai, was kept by Isaac and Jacob and the sons of Jacob. The Jewish people comes fully into its own at Sinai, with the giving of the Torah. At Sinai both the written Torah (the Pentateuch) and the Oral Torah (the elaboration of that which is only cryptically contained in the Written Torah) were given. The Rabbinic tradition which carries and elaborates the oral law is a unique hermeneutic path, which by virtue of the self-nullification of each generation of students to the forgoing generation of teachers, ensures a continuous and unified alignment with the original revelation of the Oral law to Moses at Sinai.
The Noahide laws, originally revealed to Adam and Noah, were reiterated at Sinai in the Torah, which made known that they had previously been given. Their statement at Sinai and the revelation of their details in the Oral law is now the source of their teaching, which is elaborated in the Talmud, and summarized pre-eminently in the Code of Maimonides. One of the tasks of the Jewish people is to guide the nations to the fulfillment of the Noahide laws. Perhaps, apart from more direct means, one of the ways in which it can achieve this is by being (in the words of the prophet) a spiritual “light to the nations”. Through this, the Noahide residues to be found both in the “image of G-d” latent in the spiritual makeup of humanity, as well as in its collective (un)conscious memory of Noahidism, can be crystallized and brought into transformative emergence in the world religions themselves.
This process of crystallization, sometimes achieved by self-redefinition, is profoundly assisted by a conscious orientation to the sources of the Noahide laws. Abraham, long before the complete formation of the Jewish people at Sinai, was known as a “Hebrew” and this Hebraic tradition is of course consolidated in the scriptures of the Jewish people from, and after, Sinai. In modern times, elements of Noahidism have become increasingly disseminated, especially in western cultures[13]. Yet those nations with traditions which consciously relate to the Hebraic monotheism projected by Abraham and the Jewish scriptures, such as the United States of America, and elements of British culture[14] (with their cultural “offshoots” such as Australia), have come furthest in the crystallization of the Noahide values. Perhaps the most explicit expression of this development is to be found in a joint resolution of both Houses of the United States Congress, in 1991, which begins with the following words:
Whereas Congress recognizes the historical tradition of ethical values and principles which are the basis of civilized society and upon which our great Nation was founded;
Whereas these ethical values and principles have been the bedrock of society from the dawn of civilization, when they were known as the Seven Noahide Laws;
Whereas without these ethical values and principles the edifice of civilization stands in serious peril of returning to chaos…[15]
Torah teaches that the Jewish and the gentile peoples are partners in the fulfilment of the Divine purpose in creation. This purpose, described as the fashioning of a “dwelling place for G-d in the lower realms”[16], involves the manifestation of transcendent, unlimited G-dliness, within a finite and limited world. To this end, the service of the gentile nations consists in the conduct of the seven Noahide laws in order to produce a world, which immanently manifests Divine values: peace, goodness and order. The task of the Jewish people through the performance of their 613 commandments is to draw a transcendent G-dliness into a world, stabilized and harmonized by the Noahide laws.
Just as Jews need gentiles to make the world manifest an immanent G-dliness, an order, in which it is possible and (beyond this) most effective for Jews to perform their transcendent commandments, so gentiles need Jews as a light and beacon in their fulfillment of the Noahide laws. G-d needs both for His purpose, to reveal Himself through the housing of transcendent G-dliness within the world. The greatness of a human being is the extent to which one performs one’s own allotted task in this redemptive purpose[17].
[1] According to Maimonides, Hilchos M’lochim, 9:1.
[2] The Maharal of Prague is of the view that the seven commandments were in fact all given to Adam, including the prohibition on eating the limb of a living animal, even though – since meat could not then be slaughtered for consumption – it was not yet relevant in that particular form. Its broader significance and application was that a person must show restraint, and the ability to delay the gratification of desire (which is epitomized in the requirement that a person wait until an animal has been killed before eating part of it). Adam, himself, however, according to the Maharal of Prague, transgressed this very commandment in another form. By not waiting the few hours required before the fruit of the tree of knowledge would become permissible, he also showed an inability to delay the gratification of desire. In this way the sin of the tree of knowledge was in transgression – in concept – of the prohibition on eating the limb of a living animal. See the Appendix to this volume, “The Maharal of Prague on the Noahide laws”.
[3] Pirkei Avos, 5:2., See here and in the following, Rabbi M.M. Schneerson, Biurim l’Pirkei Avos, 1-5 (N.Y.: Kehos), pp. 253ff.
[4] Cf Rabbi M.M. Schneerson, Likkutei Sichos (N.Y.: Kehos), Vol. 1, p. 10 et passim.
[5] The flood was followed by further moral decline – the generation of the dispersion (through the tower of Babel, which was fundamentally blasphemous in intent), the corruption of Sodom and Gemorah, the morally degenerate society of Egypt.
[6] Thus in the phrase “One [Echod] was Abraham” it is explained (by the previous Rebbe) that the middle letter of Echod – the ches – which has the numerical value of eight, stands for the seven Noahide laws plus the mitzvah of circumcision (Rabbi M.M. Schneerson, Toras Menachem, Vol. 1 [5711], Part 1, pp. 317-318).
[7] Not in the sense of concrete historical individuals who founded these religions, but rather as their cultural and spiritual roots.
[8] Refer to the website http://www.adherents.com
[9] Hilchos M’lochim, end of Ch. 11.
[10] According to Rashi on Genesis, 25:1.
[11] 4:21.
[12] See Zohar parshas Vayera, 99a, “Amar Rabi Aba…”, which speaks of elements in a work of the teachings of the sons of Abraham who went to India, which contained elements that were “close to the words of Torah”, but were then “drawn to various sides.”
[13] See the third section of the chapter on “Sovereignty, persons and the Noahide laws”, especially in regard to the view of the Me’iri, the Remo and the Nodeh B’Yehudah.
[14] See Matthew Arnold, Culture and Anarchy, (edited with an introduction by J. Dover Wilson, London: Cambridge University Press, 1960) in reference to the puritan tradition in English culture, termed English Hebraism.
[15] Public Law 102-14, 102d Congress, 1st Session, H.J. Res. 104.
[16] See Likkutei Sichos, Vol. 6, pp. 13-25, with reference to the Midrash Tanchuma, parshas Noso, 16.
[17] To the extent to which the Talmud Sanhedrin, 59a refers to a gentile occupied in the study and practice of his or her commandments, as being as great as the High Priest of the Jewish people.
This monograph collects a number of pieces written over several years on the Noahide laws, the fundamental ethical covenant established with humanity. “A statement of the Noahide laws” was first published in the Journal of Judaism and Civilization, Vol 3, 5761 (2001); “Foundations of the Noahide laws” first appeared in the Journal of Judaism and Civilization, Vol. 2, 5759 (1999); “Rationality and the Noahide laws” and the translation of the “Maharal of Prague on the Noahide laws (G’vuros HaShem, Chapter 66) are reprinted from the Journal of Judaism and Civilization, Vol. 4, 5762-3 (2002). “The Noahide laws and human personality” and “Sovereignty, persons and the Noahide laws” are printed in this monograph for the first time.
Acknowledgements of those who have kindly helped with comments and suggestions, have been made in the individual essays. I owe a general debt of gratitude to my wife, Miriam, for proof-reading and general criticism of the individual essays. Any remaining errors are my responsibility.
These essays do not claim to present or imply authoritative halachic rulings. For these, one must turn to a Rabbinic authority.
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