Wow, another thing I missed. Thanks for pointing that out.

Is the wold spherical or flat? Doesn’t really matter, though, does it? Regardless of what you believe, the world is still the world, right? Does it really matter what shape it is? It’s not like it has any effect on anything, so what’s the big deal? You believe the world is flat, I believe it’s spherical. We’re exactly the same. Why can’t you see that?

Don’t you get bored looking at structural and historical similarities and ignoring content?

Oh, really? Man, I must have missed that part. Thanks, Sherlock.

If you start with the same “key idea” and then go about it differently in practice and have different priorities, I submit that it matters not a whit what the original idea may or may not have been. In practice, which is all that really matters, it is, effectively, a different idea.

Beef is inherently kosher. However, if the animal is not shechted and bled properly, etc., and is then served ground up on a bun with bacon and cheese, it is not kosher. But it’s the same beef, isn’t it? I hear you say. No, not anymore it isn’t.

Same with ideas. What Christianity shares with Judaism (or, should I say what Christianity took from Judaism) is the idea that there is a G-d. There is also sin, which G-d doesn’t like. So, what to do? The answers the two religions came up with are radically different and bespeak a radically different understanding of man, G-d, and their relationship. The fact that there are surface similarities is irrelevant.

Seriously, your analysis seems shallow and overly concerned with surface appearances. But, I suppose reading Wellhausen will do that to you.

Again, I am not denying that there is a family relationship. But sometimes the kids grow up in a way unrecognizable to the parents.

What happened during Jesus’ lifetime pretty much resonates with the Judaism of his time. Judaism has changed a lot as well as Christianity has. A theology professor I know once stated that Christianity has grown to focus too much on Sin; I can see why. Christianity and Judaism slightly differ in what exactly the effects of original sin will constitute as Christians believe something already happened which Jews still anticipate (unless you consider all Jewish scriptures not valid that have been greatly received in Christianity). Judaism is a more immanent religion than Christianity with less of a focus on the afterlife. We’ve got the same key ideas, but the way people go about them in religious practice differ; you could say there’s a differnce in priorities. And much of Jewish eschatology only manifested itself in response to predominantly Christian environments in the diaspora.

I know the difference between halacha and minhag, but the Charedim in Israel also interpret halacha in ways convenient to them and impose their interpretations on non-Charedim.

I’m not denying that Christianity is made up almost of whole cloth from Judaism (albeit with its own particular take on things). Nor am I denying that Judaism and Christianity have influenced each other over the centuries of a (not always healthy) symbiotic relationship.

However, surface similarities are not the same as similarities of substance. I do not agree that the concept of sin in Judaism is in any way similar to the Christian concept of Original Sin (sin vs. Sin, so to speak). If it was, we would have required G-d to sacrifice His life to save us as the Christians decided was necessary. Such a radically different solution to what you claim to be the same problem must indicate that it isn’t the same problem at all.

And I thought this whole discussion was based on how much you know and how little I supposedly know. If you know so much, you must be, by definition, scholarly, so why should you be afraid to go to a shul and ask a rabbi a few questions?

My studies haven’t ruined me, but you should actually read up on Christian theology before commenting on it. You’d see how much it shares with Judaism, even the notion of original sin as the only way of explaining man-made evil. The concept of salvation through God also is a Jewish one – a large chunk of the psalms beg for just that – but people are supposed to obey the (mostly immanent) commandments in addition. The notion that obeying the laws aims at a transcendantal world already is heavily Christian-tinted; the original idea behind them were regulations for when the Israelites settled in the Promised Land (as was once confirmed to me by an expert on old languages including biblical Hebrew, the line that gets translated as “thou shallt not” was, just like the English “shall” can also be used in the first person today, meant to aim at the future in “when you reside in the Promised Land, you will…”-way).

If a shul means a place where non-scholarly people are afraid of asking questions and shy away from looking for answers, a mere negative travesty of what a shul used to be, then this is not a place I need to go to. I could as well be watching auditioning shows until my brain starts oozing out of my ears.

Minority opinions determine Jewish life all the time, otherwise people would not eat differently from how the sages did and Charedi rabbinical courts and their political bystanders could not affect all of Israel’s Jewry with their minority theology.

And, of course, you fail to note that the majority did not follow that opinion. Minority opinions don’t determine halacha. Even you should know that.

You know, you need to get your nose out of books and actually go to shul or something. All of your study has ruined you.

You remind me of a Catholic woman I know who believed that Mass and the Seder were the same because they both featured wine and wafers.

There also is a concept of original sin in Judaism, read here: jewishencyclop...; the existence of the concept of original sin in Christianity tells us that the concept was going strong in Judaism of Second Temple days, otherwise people could not have related to the concept and used the terminology they used. It might not be “en vogue” now anymore, but appears that 2,000 years ago it was commonly accepted. In (ultra-)Orthodox line of reasoning, we need to assume the older generations to be right as they were closer to Mt Sinai, Judaism’s most decisive “event” of divine revelation.