main || up a level || post article || search || archive   Ethical Monotheism Posted by Yitzhak on 2001/11/29 14:03:57 US/Eastern I am thinking about conversion to Judaism (Yitzhak would be my choice for my Hebrew name) and naturally a number of questions are arising. It would be good to hear the opinions of others hence, I am posting here in the hope that there will be a response. Or, better still, several. I was reading today that one of the tenets of Judaism is, "ethical monotheism". It is the word ethical that concerns me. Firstly, it would appear to put a limit on G-d's actions. Secondly, my knowledge of the Torah is still yet to be built up but I cannot bring to mind any actions of G-d that were described in terms of ethics (actions that are expressed in terms of fulfilment of contractual obligations certainly, but that is not the same as actions based on ethics). Thirdly, the concept of ethics seems to have developed with the rise of the prophets. In other words, with the exception of the Convenant with David, several hundred years after the Covenants defining the relationship between G-d and man. My questions are, when did the concept of ethical monotheism originate, does it not limit the actions of G-d and who decides what is ethical or not? Post Reply Name Email Title Please keep title brief and descriptive. (ex., "Looking for Relatives in Amsterdam") Comment Attachment (You can attach a file to your reply which can then be retrieved by other readers. Try to keep the file sizes below 500Kb in order to conserve network and server resources.) JHOM.com reserves the right to review posted comments and to remove those it finds offensive or inappropriate.   main || up a level || post article || search || archive Search Readers' Exchange