Hi all,
We're excited to announce the launch of the Logos 8 Messianic Jewish base packages, filled with resources to help your Bible study from a Messianic Jewish perspective.
I found the tone of the post on Martin Luther to be a bit beyond offensive. But Jeremiah is clearly knowledgeable with much to share. I look forward to seeing more of his posts in less divisive language.
I didn't find it offensive at all and found it quite helpful.
People will always get offended no matter what. I wouldn’t worry about! Let them be! As an old wise man said 👍😁👌
I'm sorry I offended you MJ.
I thought since we were in the forum relating to Jewish Base packages and someone asked how Jews felt about the reformers, that was the time to share some facts not taught about Luther at seminary. My thinking was we're here, not in the Lutheran base package forum and If someone knew of a Rabbi who was my hero who incited Jews to murder some other ethnicity, and then the murders actually happened per request using that Rav as justification, I'd want to know about it so I could demote him from hero status right away. (hope you understand my thinking on this, I'd never go over to a forum on about a Lutheran base package and present people with this information!)
Someone in the Messianic Jewish forum was asking how Jews felt about the reformers so I figured I'd lay it out in this specific forum. I didn't say anything untrue about Luther, I've read parts of his work "on the Jews and their Lies" in the original German. I know though it's hard to read things we don't like about people who have been propped up traditionally as heroes and I'm sure you weren't expecting to be slapped in the face with those data in this forum so I apologize for upsetting you. I hope after reading this you'll understand better why I brought up those things about him in the Messianic Jewish base package forum.
For hurting you MJ though, I'm truly sorry. I hope you will understand why I think it's important to leave the post up in this particular forum though.
peace
Thanks Mark!
Well I can probably spring for Silver next month. Regarding Gold and beyond I'll need to go payment plan so I'm not sure if I'll be able to do one at a time. Do you think Logos is OK about adjusting payment plans? Say I get Gold, then when I can swing the down payment for Plat. I ask a rep to consolidate a new payment plan? Is there a limit to how many times someone can "add items" to a payment plan?
I'm very grateful for your tips so far. I've saved close to $70 and that goes a long way here in the Philippines!
Thanks for the apology. I happen to not be a fan of Martin Luther myself - I just happen to think one needs to show understanding for the degree to which he, like all of us, is a product of his time. And one cannot hold him responsible for the abuse of his work centuries after his death. The product line forums are read by anyone interested in resources from that tradition - I read Orthodox for patristics, Anglican for liturgy, Lutheran for Bible study, Catholic for theology and Jewish for historical perspective. I am currently reading MJ so I'll have an understanding of what sort of user is represented by this theological stream.
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I hope this helps you understand my negative reaction.
yes, I understand broad brushed forum conduct rules; I didn't think (at first) my post about Luther's historical writings would be considered controversial.
I agree with you that there are limits to which we can judge a person who lived in another era. Dostoevsky, for example, is one of my favorite authors, and a big reason I eventually learned Russian (though ironically I was never able to get through Dostoevsky in Russian!). He was an antisemite, but since he didn't publish calls for murder, I still am able to see him as a Christian just misguided by his time. There are some actions which move a spiritual author beyond the pale and elicit calls for murder is I think you'll agree a fair differentiating factor. There's a line.
Thanks for making peace!
Here's a gentler response to the person who asked how Jews feel about having writings from the Reformers in a base package.
The biggest culprit is Martin Luther.
I don't want to offend brothers/sisters from other traditions so I'll be gentle.
Some of Luther's writings published later in life call for violence against Jews. Others in history took advantage of these writings to justify policy decisions. Luther also desired to delete the books of James and Hebrews from the Apostolic Writings. These books are very important to Messianic Jews; Hebrews is often translated in Messianic parlance as "the letter to the Messianic Jews" and James, aka Jacob, came across as very pro-Torah.
As a result, Messianic Jews do not appreciate Martin Luther nor find him very "spirit-filled" or spiritually discerning. Good job on the whole indulgences thing though!
Hope this helps in understanding our perspective on that guy.
Peace
The issue isn’t whether Luther’s writings are controversial.
The issue is that controversial posts (about Luther’s views) don’t belong on any of the FL forums, including Messianic Jewish.
Thanks for understanding why the rules ask us to avoid debates, and keep the topics centered on Logos itself.
As a result, Messianic Jews do not appreciate Martin Luther nor find him very "spirit-filled" or spiritually discerning. ... Hope this helps in understanding our perspective on that guy.
As a result, Messianic Jews do not appreciate Martin Luther nor find him very "spirit-filled" or spiritually discerning. ...
I don’t believe that any group, Messianic Jewish or otherwise, believes the exact same thing. People within any denomination have (slightly?) different opinions and beliefs.
I understand that it is your perspective, but perhaps it shouldn’t be described as “our” perspective on “that guy?”
It also seems ironic. He speaks poorly of Jews, you speak poorly of him. What happened to ”love your enemies?”
This is why debates don’t belong here, because it perpetuates arguments about who or what is acceptable (typically in our eyes, not from God’s perspective).
II understand that it is your perspective, but perhaps it shouldn’t be described as “our” perspective on “that guy?” It also seems ironic. He speaks poorly of Jews, you speak poorly of him. What happened to ”love your enemies?”
II understand that it is your perspective, but perhaps it shouldn’t be described as “our” perspective on “that guy?”
I've never met a Jew who did not consider "that guy" an enemy of the Jewish people. His written call to action in German actually came to pass. Regarding Yiddishkeit, I feel quite comfortable stating "our" when referring to the dislike of "that guy". I've got some Romani friends who claim their culture fairly universally views him in the same light.
Calls for murder are a bit beyond "speaking poorly" about us. He wrote that G-d would judge Christians for "not killing more Jews". No real way to get past that one brother. If it were just speaking poorly then as I said about Dostoevsky, I wouldn't care.
The Master said "Love your enemies", not "do not designate which dead spiritual leaders were enemies of the nation" I understand Yeshua's teaching to be for the living here and now and referring to personal interactions with individuals, not historical figures. Scripture and our tradition set examples of how we are to "remember" the dead Hamons of this world. Anyway, I think we need to be careful Petah or we will violate the "no debate" rule that MJ listed earlier. Too bad there is no way for Private Messages in the Logos Forums, I wouldn't mind discussing this further with you in a private venue but I will not be able to in the public forum without offending others. Much more can be said but for respect of other traditions I won't. Let's keep our future posts to Logos itself brother. If you want to continue to engage on this topic, please send me a message on faithlife.
I didn't find it offensive at all and found it quite helpful. It is a shame you took it down but I'm sure others might feel differently as it seems everyone gets offended about something in today's times. Glad I read it before you took it down. Thank you for explaining those 3 different groups.
I read it and found it useful...That said, there's certainly still room for a similar post from a more neutral perspective.
Hey glad to help! Maybe I'll repost with less Messianic bias next time). [:)]
I've never met a Jew who did not consider "that guy" an enemy of the Jewish people.
However, I have, including two who are very active in large NYC synagogues and two who fled Nazi Germany to the East spending several years in China before ending up in the West. Okay, one of the latter is a Jewish Buddhist or a Buddhist Jew depending on the context . . .
Jeremiah you can send people private messages via the Faithlife platform.
I've never met a Jew who did not consider "that guy" an enemy of the Jewish people. However, I have, including two who are very active in large NYC synagogues and two who fled Nazi Germany to the East spending several years in China before ending up in the West. Okay, one of the latter is a Jewish Buddhist or a Buddhist Jew depending on the context . . .
Having lived in Israel, and participated in Orthodox synagogues in 5 countries, I think we may have to chalk up your Buddhist friend to a logical "accident". In my experience Buddhists are often much better than other traditions at letting things go. Your friend who fled the Nazi Germany (who themselves quoted Luther profusely via the Dept. of Education), I'm going to bet he was a very amiable person considering you discussed Luther with him. I suspect I'd have received a different response had the 2 of us been discussing that person. though I probably would not have been so brave to bring Luther up with a holocaust survivor without inserting yimach sh'mo after mentioning him (I learned this mistake the hardway at a cafe in Haifa). Thank you for your intellectual honesty in admitting the one guy is a Buddhist. Further than that, I can not speak to your experience, I can only speak to my own experience in the Jewish community from Bar mitzvah till Baal Qoreh till now.
Since my hands are tied regarding what facts I can mention about Luther, and my previous post detailing those facts was censored, I perhaps you will agree that it's a bit unfair for you to continue arguing about this (I'm forced to have my hands tied behind my back) as I genuinely do not want to offend you again.
Feel free to Private Message me on FaithLife if you wish to discuss Luther further MJ. Thanks for interacting with me, and thank you for your help with Logos the past couple of years; you've helped me on more than a couple occasions. On another note, I have a fond memory of a knock down drag out you delivered to the Paleo-Hebrew guy pushing his nonsense. That is a warm memory for me on these forums!
Thanks Disciple_II! I tried this in the past when I wanted to give someone an Ugaritic font I'd modified but we were never able to get a private message sent to one another. I had a feeling it may be working by now (that was over a year ago).
-Jeremiah
*** edit ***
I tried to send a PM on faithlife and don't see how to make it work. I entered the username in the TO field for a person message but can't type anything. I also went to the person's contact page and was unable to find a way to send them a message. Online search produced a method from 6 years ago which I know didn't work a year ago. Can you send me a link to a page which explains how to initiate contact with another FaithLife member? Thanks!
Jeremiah,
in order to battle stalking and harassment, you can only send PMs in Faithlife.com to people with whom you are fellow members of a group (followers won't suffice).
When you mouse-over over another user's name a popup will appear like "you know XYZ from groupA, groupB and groupC". If there's no match in group membership, you can try to join a group the other user is active in (if you see such from their profile), or you can ask the user here in the forum to join a group you are a member of, or you may even set up a group for this purpose and ask the other user to join it.
Calls for murder are a bit beyond "speaking poorly" about us.
Jeremiah, I've thoroughly enjoyed your posts. Mainly because it's a world I know little about. When I grew up, I remember clearly at school, the thrill among most of the students when Kennedy was killed. He was a Catholic. History papers over the hatred, but hatred is never far away.
So, I hope you'll continue your thoughts (in this case germaine to a Logos product).
I've created a FL group where we can discuss Luther and Messianic Judaism.
We can either post there or Private Message, whatever would be more appropriate.
Sorry to FL for any controversy.
Calls for murder are a bit beyond "speaking poorly" about us. Jeremiah, I've thoroughly enjoyed your posts. Mainly because it's a world I know little about. When I grew up, I remember clearly at school, the thrill among most of the students when Kennedy was killed. He was a Catholic. History papers over the hatred, but hatred is never far away. So, I hope you'll continue your thoughts (in this case germaine to a Logos product).
I greatly appreciate the sentiment Denise. Your pithy example captures exactly what I've been unable to get across. We're rushing to prep for sabbath now so but I'll re-post my concerns some time after it's finished here.
I think we may have to chalk up your Buddhist friend to a logical "accident". In my experience Buddhists are often much better than other traditions at letting things go. Your friend who fled the Nazi Germany (who themselves quoted Luther profusely via the Dept. of Education), I'm going to bet he was a very amiable person considering you discussed Luther with him. I suspect I'd have received a different response had the 2 of us been discussing that person.
I would prefer that we chalk it up to different experiences. I mentioned only those Jewish friends with whom I had some reason to know their position on Luther. I actually know several Buddhist-Jews having been in Buddhist studies at university. But I must also admit my Jewish friends have a much higher percentage of Kabbalists than the general Jewish population. However, my Christian friends, which lean towards ACELO churches (Anglican-Catholic-Eastern Orthodox-Lutheran-Oriental Orthodox), are heavily contemplative by nature and as devoted to letting go as Buddhists.
Your suspicion that "I'd have received a different response had the 2 of us been discussing that person" is likely true but not in the sense you assume. The conversation that comes to mind took place in a bar after class and basically pointed out example after example of the actions similar to Luther's by other religious and secular leaders that were his contemporaries. And believe me, a group of religious studies and Buddhist studies graduate students (and professor) are very good at remembering the worst of the worst.
My point? The role of the guidelines is not for one to feel "my hands are tied regarding what facts I can mention about Luther" but rather to require us to be thoughtful about how we present relevant facts. We do not want to close our minds by assuming our experience is typical - Logos covers the world, economically, politically and theologically - nor discourage sharing by being offensive. We all benefit from sharing and listening.
[If I'm right, there's no easy way of knowing which calculation will be more accurate... If it's only slightly less, it will be money well-spent in satisfying your curiosity (and mine)! And if the price drop is more than you've spent, you've both saved money and answered your own question. What have you got to lose ;-)?
[If I'm right, there's no easy way of knowing which calculation will be more accurate...
If it's only slightly less, it will be money well-spent in satisfying your curiosity (and mine)! And if the price drop is more than you've spent, you've both saved money and answered your own question. What have you got to lose ;-)?
So I was only able to experiment partially before getting talked into Diamond haha.
So I followed your model for Starter->Bronze->Silver then I ran out of funds. Those transactions in that order you recommended saved me $69. I had purchased some items several weeks back on a 3 month payment and noticed they were included in the Gold Package. I was out of the standard return window though. Anyway, I chatted with a nice fellow in sales, and after much calling around he was able to return the items if I got at least Platinum though he was trying to sell me Diamond (which was is what I wanted anyway as an end result). They have a nice promo right now where you don't have to put any money down to get a base package on payment plan and the first payment starts Sept. 17.
At first their price was actually coming up higher than the website showed me. I mentioned that I didn't need to buy the features included in Logos Now (now some flavor of FL connect). In the end he was able to return the thing I bought a few months back for $150 and get me the Diamond package for another $142 in savings (in essence re-obtaining the volumes I returned for just $8). So, my total savings from doing things how you described and returning the volumes which were included in Gold was $212 (rounded) by jumping in to Diamond.
I think I probably could have really saved even a bit more by just going for Platinum then having them add on Diamond later but after helping me, but I felt the 45 minutes or so the fella worked on this had earned a bone. They were even able to add in a few other things I wanted to the "no downpayment" payment plan, one which was The Qumran sectarian manuscripts in Hebrew which I've been wanting for a long time + "Text critical use of the LXX in Biblical Research" by Emanuel Tov and a few other goodies. I'm very grateful for your help Mark, these savings will go a long way for me. Thanks also to PetahChristian for verifying the LHBOTS package is included in the MJ Diamond set.
I'm also thrilled to have the Messianic Diamond resources; I'll never be bored ever!
So, I will try to make this brief.
Martin Luther wrote a book late in his life (not in his youth when many of us are foolish), called "On the Jews and their Lies" (see Title page photo above, from the Wikipedia series on Antisemitism). Sometimes people are confused since earlier in life he was no so harsh on our people. In this later book he calls for:
Jews previously expelled by Louis XIV of France, had been invited to Saxony and thrived. After Luther's turn against us, the ruler of Saxony expelled us from his lands as well. I cannot even imagine the untold hardship and deaths which resulted as a direct result in those days of Luther's wicked teachings concerning Jews which he fed to his benefactor.
Luther effected death and pain against Jews in his life but the vicious hate against our people expressed in his writings far outlasted his death reaching into the horrors of the 20th century. These writings were a favorite of NAZIs to wave around in Nuremburg rallies and later were quoted oft by the NAZI Education ministry for indoctrination of children against "children of the devil".
There is much more to be said regarding the filthy language Luther uses in some of his works, including "arshloch" and accused his enemies of certain actions involving the "arshloch" and other disgusting terms. I read an article that claimed that among Luther's written letters, 39% had "some sort of scatological reference". I will not comment on his desire to have the consummation of his marriage witnessed by friends of his (this happened). Sir Tomas Moore summed up Luther's sewer mouth quite eloquently, but I will not include it here [google: Sir Thomas Moore Luther's potty mouth]. Any modern pastor would certainly be forced to resign if he used such bad language as often as Luther did this is also overtly against Jewish concepts of derekh 'erets and is a chillul Hashem.
Perhaps you know a few ethnic Jews who either are unaware of the serious impact of Luther's antisemitism or who can overlook it, but I hope you can see why it’s at least culturally insensitive to include someone who quite literally sewed the seeds of the holocaust in a base package (let alone pay for it) intended for Jews (I'm sure this was out of ignorance not malice). I bought the Diamond package on payment plan, but it irks me any time I see Luther come up in the library. Some of the other reformers also have blood on their hands, but I’d rather focus on the big one who’s hatred was most successfully acted out over the centuries.
I am grateful to the brave, large number of Lutheran congregations who have honestly acknowledged history by disavowing Luther's writings against Jewish people. Thank you guys. I've done the best I can to make this short and as uncontroversial as possible, but if we are to be honest, Luther the man embodied controversy if we do not white wash over his history. I'm a bit nervous how this will be received as my personality type is actually quite amiable and I hate conflict. In my life I have noticed, whenever I push back on Luther's hero status to Gentile friends I get BBQ'd so I am most often silent. This, however, is something in my denominational base package and it shouldn't be so I feel I have to speak out. (My original response which was censored was in response to a Christian brother who was surprised that there were various Reformation writings in an MJ package and he was wondering what weight these had for MJ's.
Hashem yirachem,
Thank you, Jeremiah. No BBQing, and I learned.
I recognize the gritty feeling when something comes into your library, and it just grinds. I don't hesitate: trash. Luckily, I think they now have a true delete. But agree, you shouldn't have to buy it.
For the Lutheran take on this issue https://www.christiancentury.org/article/critical-essay/on-luther-and-lies which confirms many of Jeremiah's complaints re: Martin Luther.
Perhaps you know a few ethnic Jews who either are unaware of the serious impact of Luther's antisemitism or who can overlook it,
And just for clarity, the Jews I have mentioned fall into neither the "unaware" or "overlook" category. Rather, it appears to be a difference in values.
If I remember correctly, John Calvin did some naughty things too but church history is definitely a subject I could use some more work in. I try to focus on the good they had to say and learn from it. Loving this thread so far!
Martin Luther wrote a book late in his life (not in his youth when many of us are foolish), called "On the Jews and their Lies"
Thank you for that summary. I was vaguely aware of this information. Thank you for increasing my knowledge.
