یہودیت میں تصور جنگ کا علمی وتاریخی جائزہ

A scholarly and historical review of the concept of war in Judaism

Abstract

War in Judaism is a controversial idea. There are two main sources to study Judaism. The first is Bible (Old Testament). The second one is Talmud. But when we search about the idea of war in these two sources, we find contradiction. Bible is very confident in telling about wars and its types but on the other hand Talmud’s way to address about the war is pacifist. In other words the rabbis adopted quietism and made the Jewish nation quiet until the coming of Messiah. The reason is that the Jewish suppressed position didn’t enable them to pronounce their ideas. Now the Israeli state is very confident today to give its idea about war, the strategies today in Israel about war are based on Biblical depictions and Maimonides’s views, which is very astonishing for a new researcher. The scholars that want to solve the contradiction base their study on criminal law (laws of pursuer), they reduce the limits only to defensive wars.