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The question of idolatry was a sensitive one, because idolatrous actions had brought destruction in the wilderness, according to the scriptures. [6] Maimonides argues that the Torah's rules for ritual sacrifices are intended to help wean the Jewish People away from idolatry.
Moses Indignant at the Golden Calf, painting by William Blake, 1799–1800. Idolatry is the worship of an idol as though it were a deity. [1] [2] [3] In Abrahamic religions (namely Judaism, Samaritanism, Christianity, Islam, and the BaháΚΌí Faith) idolatry connotes the worship of something or someone other than the Abrahamic God as if it were God.
Justus Knecht gives two important moral points from the episode of the golden calf: 1) The Mercy of God. "The people of Israel had sinned horribly against God by their idolatry, and yet, at Moses’ intercession, He forgave them." 2) Idolatry. "The weak people were most ungrateful and faithless to God. The Lord had done such great things for them!
According to Rabbi Avrohom Yeshaya Karelitz, the tractate does include Christianity as a form of idolatry: Even medieval Jews understood very well that Christianity is avodah zarah of a special type. The tosafists assert that although a Christian pronouncing the name of Jesus in an oath would be taking the name of "another god," it is ...
Rabbi Shneur Zalman of Liadi interprets the parallel between anger and idol worship stems from the feelings of the one who has become angry typically coincides with a disregard of Divine Providence – whatever had caused the anger was ultimately ordained from God – through coming to anger one thereby denies the hand of God in one's life. [13]
Repentance from sin (Hebrew: teshuvah, literally "return (to God)") has the power to wipe out one's sins, eliminating the punishment for sin and obtaining God's forgiveness. [4] When one repents with the correct intentions, one's sins are said to actually be transformed into merits.
Leipzig Mahzor, hand of God delivering Abraham from the fiery furnace, 1320. The 3rd century CE Dura-Europos synagogue in Syria has large areas of wall paintings with figures of the prophets and others, and narrative scenes. There are several representations of the Hand of God, suggesting that this motif reached Christian art from Judaism.
God, the Cause of all, is one. This does not mean one as in one of a pair, nor one like a species (which encompasses many individuals), nor one as in an object that is made up of many elements, nor as a single simple object that is infinitely divisible. Rather, God is a unity unlike any other possible unity.