The tendency of assimilated Jewry to attach titles of Doctor of this or that to bad basic scholarship. Finkelstein’s Akiba and The Pharisees. לא טוב

Inferior scholars prefer to talk about a given historical subject rather than talk through the writings produced by those historical figures. The distinction between the P’rushim/Pharisees and Rabbi Akiva … the P’rushim lead the Civil war opposition to the Hashmonaim kings and their Tzedukim/Sadducee lap dogs. The Rabbis, Rabbi Akiva in particular, lead the opposition against Rome which culminated in the Bar Kochba war.

Finkelstein’s forward dotes upon Muslim and Christian authorities and never once does he address the elephant in the china closet, Rabbi Akiva’s פרדס kabbala, wherein he defined how to learn and use the Torah sh’Baal Peh to interpret both the T’NaCH, Talmud, with the end game: to establish lateral courts of common law, as codified within the pages of the 6 Orders of Rabbi Yechuda Ha’Nasi’s Mishna!

Historical Conservative Judaism jumped on Finkelstein’s empty Torah scholarship, as if it surpassed the invention of sliced bread! Finkelstein’s “work” abounds in superlative accolauds: “The passionate call of Isaiah, the plaintive cry of Jeremiah, and the lofty exhortations of Deutero-Isaiah etc.” But that man had no more of an idea of how to correctly learn Nach than did the schools of Protestant Higher Criticism.

He compares the P’rushim to Jesus, that imaginary false messiah, wherein he declares that both the P’rushim and Jesus understood the opening p’suk\verse of the kre’a shma as the most important commandment of the revelation of the Torah at Sinai. What drivel narishkeit claptrap balderdash gibberish mumbo jumbo! The opening first 2 Commandments of the Sinai revelation followed by the revelation of the Oral Torah 13 tohor middot; these tohor middot both derive and define and interpret the k’vanna of all the תרי”ג commandments. Upon this יסוד rests all of the Torah, prophets, and Talmud. Finkelstein assumes that monotheism defines Yiddishkeit. He fails to grasp that monotheism violates the 2nd Commandment of the Sinai revelation of HaShem!

Finkelstein abounds in religious rhetoric noise: “Pharisaism was Prophecy in action; the difference is merely one between denunciation and renunciation.” Never does this tom[b]e define the revelation of the Books of NaCH as a collection of mussar which arouses within the generations an awareness of HaShem within our lives! He compares the P’rushim instructors of Oral Torah logic with the Puritans of England! Eww utterly gross. This quick denunciation of an ignorant scholar, who dolls himself up as a rabbinic authority must end here before I write something which i might later regret.