Saturday, January 2, 2010

Judaism and Islam: Incompatible? Pt 5-Mercy to the Worlds

Judaism teaches that seven laws were given to Adam and Noah, and that the sons of Noah must all keep.
Those who do not keep these laws must be put to death. The laws are:
1. Prohibition on Blasphemy
2. Prohibition on Idolatry
3. Prohibition on Murder
4. Prohibition on Theft
5. Prohibition on Forbidden Intercourse
6. Prohibition on Meat Taken from a Live Animal
7. Command to Establish Courts.
One of these laws, the command to establish courts, is critical to the survival of the universe. Rabban Shimon ben Gamliel says: "The world endures on three things - justice, truth, and peace, as it is said: 'Truth and the verdict of peace are you to adjudicate in your gates.'"
What is the law of these courts?
According to the Mishne Torah, Laws of Kings and Their Wars:
9:17 [14] What does it mean that they (non-Jews) are commanded concerning establishing law? They are obligated to set up judges and magistrates in every major city to establish laws on the other six commandments of the seven commandments of Noah, and to admonish the peoples to do them. A ben Noah that transgresses one of these seven commandments is liable to be killed by decapitation.
9:18 What does this imply? One who does [literally: serves] foreign worship (idolatry), or who curses the Name, or who spills blood, or who had intercourse with one of the six persons with whom sexual relations are forbidden, or who stole even less than the worth of the smallest form of currency, or who ate the least bit from a limb of a living animal, or meat from an active animal, or who saw someone transgress one of these seven laws and didn't have him judges and killed -- behold, such an individual as this is to be killed by decapitation.
If the courts mandated by this Divine Law are not in place, the world will be destroyed again as it was in the days of Noah. If the non-Jews do not set up these courts, the Jews must set them up. 10:11 "The Court of Israel is obligated to erect judges for these [non-Jews], to adjudicate for them according to these judgments, in order that the world shall not be destroyed." The Court of Israel ended in the fifth century with the end of the semikah (ordination) that gave authority to the members of the Sanhedrin (Hilkoth Sanhedrin 4:11). Yet when they came to an end, the world did not come to an end; this indicates, if one assumes the earlier prediction of apocalypse true, that such courts continued to exist. And indeed they did; as we have established earlier in the series, they continued through the Prophet of Mercy, Muhammad. Muhammad came in the same century that the line of semikah--the line of ordination for these courts, which had remained from Moses until that time--died.
Thus, the Prophet of Mercy, Muhammad, staved off the destruction of the world by renewing the covenant of Divine law.

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