Which religions are of approximate age as Judaism? Christianity became a religion approximately one thousand years after that and Islam even later.
How Eurocentric of you. You missed Hinduism, practiced by about a billion inhabitants. It’s been around for thousands of years. I don’t want to get into an advanced discussion on the Hindu religion (I don’t think this is the place for it) but they too have daily rituals and a highly complex religious system.
Can I ask you why, over one thousand years later than the Torah was given, couldn’t people come up with something, different new and exciting to appeal to the masses?
The only way we can be voluntarily controlled like that with hundreds of laws is because the Torah is divine.
That’s not proof. Hindus, as I mentioned, have a complex religious system. The Puritans lived pretty restricted lives. There are probably other examples that I can’t think of off the top of my head.
The bottom line is that all it proves is that people *believed them to be* incumbent or divine and had a good system for transmitting those values to their progeny. It does not actually prove that those laws and values actually are divine.
Also, the Jews are dispersed throughout the world today for hundreds of years already. Throughout all these years that Jews lived in different in different countries, their cultures and minhugim are different wouldn’t you think the versions of halacha would change? The way it is applied may be different for each mokom as well as each generation, but the core halachas are unchanging with time and place and religious Jews practice the same version of the Torah since har Sinai.
Even the Reform, Conservative, Reconstructionist, the Jews who do not even beleive the Torah is from a divine source always quote the Torah when they want to as their sources, lets say for ethical treatment of animals and such. It’s true they only refer to it when they want to, but one would think with their view of Judaism they would not quote the Torah to support their opinions.
It’s funny that you mention R, C and Recon, because they actually disprove your point. The fact that these groups define Jewish law in such a radically different way disproves the point you’re trying to make. Unless, of course, you’re defining “Jews” as those who keep halacha (however you choose to define it), at which point your argument becomes circular (because your defining those who keep Jewish law according to your definition of the same.)
The Wolf