Religions and the Meaning of Life

In general, Judaism is differentiated from Christianity on this issue in terms of where the emphasis is placed, as Abba Hillel Silver notes when he writes,

The Kingdom of God--which mankind with the help of God is to build--is in Judaism's view definitely of this world, and all of man's tasks are centered here. In Judaism, the Kingdom of God means the Good Society. In Christianity, it means the Future World--the Hereafter (Silver 268).

Jesus stated that His Kingdom "is not of this world" (John 18:36), and in doing so he correctly defined his gospel. For Judaism, though, the Kingdom of God refers to the reign of God on earth, "to the conversion of all peoples to faith in Him alone, and to the establishment of universal justice and peace" (Silver 268).

. . .
hetic Judaism as a spiritual lifeline to the Jews" (Dimont 183). He entitled his codification of the Talmud the Mishneh Torah, or the "Second Torah," and he used the title to remind the readers of his book "that its authority still rested on the Five Books of Moses" (Dimont 183). The Mishneh Torah was a threat to the Talmudic tradition in that it offered its own interpretation of what the Talmud was intended to explain. Talmudism began in fifth-century Persia and spread through other parts of the Jewish world. It had the function of "cementing the Jews into a unified religious body and a cohesive civic community" (Dimont 176). It had to be adapted to new conditions as the Jewish world expanded and to fit changing conditions of life, all with the purpose of assuring the survival of Jewish ideals. The work of Maimonides threatened aspects of Talmudic tradition not by challenging them but by explaining them, providing what was needed at the time, which was "a more complete but simplified, modernized, abridged, and indexed Talmud which any literature man could use as a reference book" (Dimont 182-183). Rabbi Moses ben Maimon, or Maimonides, provided the needed book. After this book, Maimonides and the Talmud became synonym
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Approximate Word count = 2076
Approximate Pages = 8 (250 words per page)

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