|
Josef bugman posted:I know that a few people had arguments a few years back, though I again can't remember who exactly, that Jesus was essentially a reform minded Jewish teacher (I am not sure that Rabbi is the correct term since I think Rabbinical Judaism dates from after Jesus Christ the historical figure was around?) Rabbi would be an appropriate term, but it wouldn't mean the same thing as it does today. Rabbinic Judaism was the way Judaism adapted to the destruction of the second temple, which took place after Jesus the historical figure was arrested and killed. In Jesus's time, "rabbi" had the same meaning that "sage" or "guru" might have today - an informal, uncredentialed term for a Jewish spiritual leader or teacher. After the second temple, the Pharisees led the development of formal Rabbinical ordination (semicha), essentially to replace the priests who could no longer perform rituals at the temple. And then the title of Rabbi continued to evolve over the next ~2000 years. So it would be correct to say Jesus was a lowercase-r rabbi, a sage and spiritualist, but not an uppercase-R Rabbi, because that system didn't yet exist. I think it's more accurate to refer to Jesus as "apocalypse-minded" than "reform-minded." He had his own interpretations of Jewish law which sometimes varied from the consensus, but what really drove him, according to secular scholarship, was the belief that the world as we know it would end very soon, certainly within the lifetimes of his followers. Civilized Fishbot fucked around with this message at 15:20 on Jan 21, 2021 |
#
¿
Jan 21, 2021 15:16
|
|
|
|
| # ¿ May 21, 2024 22:21 |
|
|
Josef bugman posted:Got it, thank you. I don't want to get the terms wrong, but is interesting to find out more of the overarching nature of this stuff. Thanks! I think other posters have already covered the general eschatological focus of Jesus' ministry better than I could, but I want to add that "renter unto Caesar what is Caesar's" was, in fact, based on an immediate apocalyptic vision. Jesus was answering the question among Jews in his time and place, "what do we do about the Roman Empire occupying and abusing us?" For a lot of Jews, the answer was violent resistance or refusal to pay taxes. Jesus's answer was, "we can wait it out, because in our own lifetimes, G-d will address and resolve this problem by delivering His kingdom."
|
|
#
¿
Jan 21, 2021 20:05
|
|
|
Lutha Mahtin posted:welcome 2 lent, fellow westerners We just did "Ash Thursday" at the Catholic school where I teach. We weren't in-person on Wednesday because of the snow (but we've been in-person the rest of the year because we need tuition money). So we got permission from our resident priest to move the ceremony to Thursday. The principal went around to each of our classrooms and wrote the cross on each student's forehead with a q-tip (a new q-tip for each student, safety first!). What was weird is that the principal went up to draw the ashes on my forehead, even though she knows perfectly well that I'm Jewish (she got me matzo, everything bagel seasoning, and Israeli biscuits for Secret Santa, we've attended Mass together and I never receive communion, we have discussed the fact that I eat kosher...). I only had to shake my head to decline which was objectively chill but still a bit more of a scene than I'd prefer to make in front of my students. But I don't know what she was thinking - I think it's pretty obvious that Ash Wednesday is not something Jews do?
|
|
#
¿
Feb 18, 2021 16:38
|
|
|
Slimy Hog posted:I wonder in the principal was just on auto-pilot after doing a repetitive action so many times. Maybe, but I, you know, don't sit with the kids. I sit on the whole other end of the classroom at my big-boy desk. And this was right after she'd drawn a cross in the air at my camera, to help the virtual students feel like they were also taking part in the ceremony. So I think she was not on autopilot but I plan on finding some other way to give her the benefit of the doubt.
|
|
#
¿
Feb 18, 2021 16:43
|
|
|
Keromaru5 posted:1: Who created humanity? A, A, B*, A *"Madman" has a pejorative connotation but I respect Jesus within the general trend of Jewish leaders who were enormously charismatic and spiritually gifted, to the point of stirring messianic fervor in both themselves and their followers (Bar Kokba, Nachman of Breslov, the last two Lubavitch Rebbes, etc.) From a lowercase-o orthodox Jewish perspective, the fault is entirely on his early followers who should've given up on him as Moshiach after he died without accomplishing the things Moshiach must accomplish. Civilized Fishbot fucked around with this message at 00:17 on Mar 6, 2021 |
|
#
¿
Mar 6, 2021 00:13
|
|
|
White Coke posted:I read a Youtube comment where someone was arguing that Young Earth Creationism would be a violation of Free Will, since making it too obvious that the planet was hand crafted would mean there's no reasonable way to not believe the Bible. Nonsense. The Bible is full of points where G-d's intervention into the world unambiguously proves that his worshippers are right and everyone else is wrong. In fact, He frequently acts in ways to ensure that "there's no reasonable way to not believe the Bible." See 1 Kings 18, where Elijah has a whole contest with competing prophets to show that their god is bullshit and his G-d is legitimate beyond all doubt. This youtube guy's idea of "Free Will," which apparently means the right to not have anything proven to you, is totally at odds with basic Abrahamic beliefs. quote:At the time of sacrifice, the prophet Elijah stepped forward and prayed: “Lord, the God of Abraham, Isaac and Israel, let it be known today that you are God in Israel and that I am your servant and have done all these things at your command. Answer me, Lord, answer me, so these people will know that you, Lord, are God, and that you are turning their hearts back again.” Then the fire of the Lord fell and burned up the sacrifice, the wood, the stones and the soil, and also licked up the water in the trench. Civilized Fishbot fucked around with this message at 20:13 on Mar 6, 2021 |
|
#
¿
Mar 6, 2021 20:06
|
|
|
BattyKiara posted:Of course, her ideas abut who counted as a REAL Jew was extremely limited. This is a common form of antisemitism.
|
|
#
¿
Mar 6, 2021 22:07
|
|
|
shame on an IGA posted:I'm still confused, by her reasoning literally every man is by definition a "true jew" You're misunderstanding BattyKiara's post. Most literal-minded Christians believe that all living humans are descended from Adam and Eve, and you assume this woman believed that as well. But she didn't; she believed that most of humanity evolved naturally, and then 6000 years ago Adam and Eve were placed on the Earth to join the rest of humankind. But Adam and Eve were REAL JEWS and their patrilineal descendants are REAL JEWS while everyone else is just an ordinary dumb human. BattyKiara posted:What my ex-mother-in-law believed: The Earth is old. The universe is old. Then God chose Earth. Out of every planet out there He chose Earth. And created Adam, after He terraformed Earth to be perfect for His new creation. He placed Adam on Earth, 6000 years ago, and THAT is the start of True History, as told by the Bible, which is literal truth! Anyone male who is directly descendant from Adam are PERFECT in the eyes of God. REAL Jews (direct line, male descendants of Adam, not converts or broken lines) are incapable of sin. Because they are God's chosen people, so anything they do is sanctified by God himself! The rest of us are product of evolution, and mixed breeding with True descendants of Adam. We are NOT chosen by God, but we are allowed into Heaven through Jesus, if we submit ourselves unconditionally to the masters God has given us on Earth! Civilized Fishbot fucked around with this message at 23:06 on Mar 6, 2021 |
|
#
¿
Mar 6, 2021 23:04
|
|
|
BattyKiara posted:That's exactly what she believed! You summed it up better than I did. this is how she explained that the Bible is literal truth!! and science claiming the Earth is billions of years old are both equally true. Her cult has a lot of seriously bad theological takes, this being the second worst, in my opinion anyway. Also, correct me if I'm wrong, but doesn't Judaism but a lot a emphasis on being born of a Jewish woman? Yeah, according to halakha (Jewish law), you're a Jew if your mom is a Jew; otherwise, you have to convert. I've heard that this was implemented to help women who were raped by gentiles, and whose children resulting from the rape weren't being welcomed as Jews. I think that points toward the broader idea, probably true in ancient times, that men had more control over whom they impregnated than women had control over who impregnated them. So matrilineal descent discourages men from trying to impregnate gentiles, and gives some relief to women who were made to bear a gentile's kids. You won't find this anywhere in the Hebrew Bible, which is why certain communities like the Karaites and the Kaifeng still use patrilineal descent, because they split from the Jewish masses before matrilineality was established. And modern liberal Judaism (Reform, Renewal, Reconstructing) is gender-neutral, so their policy is that you're Jewish if one of your parents is Jewish and you're raised as Jewish. There's a lot of heated controversies here because, obviously, it's very important that we agree on who is and is not a Jew. But in practice, Conservative & Orthodox Jews don't get upset about patrilineal Jews calling themselves Jewish. The guy who just got elected Senator in Georgia was born to a gentile mother, so Orthodox Jews would not consider him Jewish, but they stayed quiet about it, and he'd be allowed to move to Israel if he wanted. My personal belief is that Jews born to gentile mothers should already be educated enough to "convert" by the time of their Bar/Bat/Bnei Mitzvah, so their congregations should heavily encourage them to do that. Converting to Judaism is said to be a big, intense engagement but that's only if you're starting from a place of ignorance; if the Rabbinical court is ready to accept you as Jewish, it's as easy as taking a ritual bath and, if you're a dude, getting circumcised or having a drop of blood taken from your dick if you're already circumcised. So there's no real reason that a patrilineal Jew shouldn't be willing to formally convert, it should really be a fun opportunity. Here's something really important to establish: your ex-mother-in-law's belief that converts were somehow inferior to Jews, or less Jewish, is totally contrary to Jewish law and tradition. Converts are not sought out, but they are welcomed and celebrated during the conversion process, and it's an enormous taboo to bring up that someone's a convert as if it makes them any less Jewish than Moses himself. TL;DR Yes, traditional Judaism places a lot of emphasis on being born of a Jewish woman, but not as much as your ex-MIL. Civilized Fishbot fucked around with this message at 01:37 on Mar 7, 2021 |
|
#
¿
Mar 7, 2021 01:30
|
|
|
Captain von Trapp posted:Even so, there's a mathematical phenomenon in ancestry where if you take any person in the remote enough past, it turns out that if they have any living descendants in the present day, all people in the present day are descended from them. This is not true. You are vastly underestimating how much "restricting it to patrilineal descent complicates things." And it's not really that it complicates things, but that it so much limits the chain of descent that one's descendants can't grow exponentially. Here's an animation showing how patrilineal descent moves down the family tree. As you can see, it's pretty restricted, because the line "dies out" with every daughter. So if everyone has only one son and one daughter, then a man's set of living patrilineal descendants will never get bigger than 10; obviously some people get a lot of sons, and then your patrilineal chain gets permanently bigger, but it's not nearly the exponential phenomenon that you're describing. "Women can't pass down the ancestry" is the limiting factor that prevents the inheritance from exploding. Captain von Trapp posted:In the real world, all men prior to about a quarter million years ago are either direct patrilinear ancestors of everyone on the planet, or have no living descendants. Also not true; among each generation, each row of the family tree, an individual has exactly one patrilineal ancestor and no more. So an individual only has as many patrilineal human ancestors as there are generations since their first non-human ancestor, and all those patrilineal human ancestors are themselves patrilineal ancestors or descendants of each other. It's likely that, as you describe, all men prior to about a quarter million years ago are direct ancestors of everony in the planet or have no living descendants. But patrilineality ruins it. BattyKiara posted:I get your point about this being another kind of antisemitism. I would have called it a form of outsider zionism, but I agree that her point of view was super racist and terrible. That's really interesting; why would you consider this woman's beliefs to constitute a form of zionism? CarpenterWalrus posted:But seriously, though, that would basically invalidate everything to do with faith. What was the whole point of Abraham and Isaac if not to illustrate the need to have faith despite evidence to the contrary? The point is that you need to do whatever G-d tells you even if it's the last thing you'd ever want to do. What's in question is not Abraham's belief in G-d's existence - he has literally spoken to G-d numerous times at this point, and witnessed G-d carry out incredible supernatural deeds. What's in question is, will Abraham do what G-d says even when it's contrary to every animal and moral instinct? (Fun fact: in the E-source version of the narrative, Abraham probably does, in fact, kill Isaac. Sometimes you hear this story, "oh Abraham knew G-d wouldn't really let the sacrifice happen, Abraham had faith in G-d's redeeming power" - this midrash comforts the reader by castrating the story's dangerous sugggestion that G-d might ask you to do something you don't want to do) The Bible is full of moments where G-d totally annihilates any doubt that He is real, that worshipping Him is correct, that other gods are fake but G-d is not fake. The Bible is unconcerned with "the need to have faith despite evidence to the contrary," at least when it comes to the existence of G-d. Because it does not accept there is any evidence to the contrary, and presents what is supposed to be a mountain of totally incontrovertible evidence that the G-d of the Jews is real. In addition to the famous example of Elijah asking G-d to start a fire with no purpose but to prove that G-d is real, and G-d doing it, there are the ten plagues, which basically function as a long polemic narrative in which G-d is affirmed as real and powerful and the Egyptian gods are revealed as fake and stupid. I don't know, maybe it all changes with the Christian books, but "faith" as we think of it today, as we've been discussing it in this thread (sincere belief in the existence of G-d when it has not been proven rationally), is radically contrary to the core propositions of the Hebrew Bible. Civilized Fishbot fucked around with this message at 16:38 on Mar 7, 2021 |
|
#
¿
Mar 7, 2021 15:48
|
|
|
CarpenterWalrus posted:I think I follow what you're saying, here, but my question then becomes what's the difference between fact and faith, if any? The word "faith" kind of loses meaning, because then it's simply "knowledge." An object of "faith" is a claim which you hold as true although it hasn't been rationally proven. Faith is the act of holding that claim as true. A "fact" is a claim which you hold as true because it has been rationally proven. In the Hebrew Bible, and normative Judaism, and in Islam and Christianity as I understand them, G-d's existence is not a matter of faith but a matter of fact. G-d has no interest in concealing His existence from you, and in fact He's made His existence enormously clear over and over-again so even the most stiff-necked and obstinant jackasses (the Jews) would have no choice but to acknowledge His reality. Islam is definitely the same way; the Quran repeatedly maintains that it itself is an unambiguous proof that G-d is real. I believe Christianity is the same way as well, based on its descent from Judaism, but I'm less sure. Civilized Fishbot fucked around with this message at 16:56 on Mar 7, 2021 |
|
#
¿
Mar 7, 2021 16:49
|
|
|
Bar Ran Dun posted:Nah that’s a harmful framing of faith, actively harmful to faith. Can you elaborate? I'm open to new ideas, but I think that when someone proposes an explanation for the Jewish/Christian/Muslim worldview which directly contradicts basic Jewish/Christian/Muslim doctrine, we need to acknowledge that contradiction. What I'm saying is: The Bible is very clear that G-d loves proving that G-d is real, it's basically His favorite thing to do, so it's silly to say "G-d would never create the Earth in such a way to prove that G-d is real" or "G-d encourages the proliferation of evidence that G-d is not real."
|
|
#
¿
Mar 7, 2021 16:59
|
|
|
BattyKiara posted:I guess I've always thought of antisemite = Jews are BAD!!! while outsider Zionism = Jews are BETTER than everyone!!! I think you have a misguided idea of what Zionism is. Zionism is the political idea that Jews should have their own country, and that the country should be located in the region of Palestine where Jewish civilization originated and which remains central to Jewish religion. Sometimes this is grounded in ideas of Jewish supremacy ("we're the best, we should have the land G-d promised us dammit"), sometimes it's grounded in ideas of Jewish inferiority ("we're pathetic, it's because we don't have a country, we have to fix that") sometimes it's grounded in ideas of Jewish normalcy ("we're just like everyone else, and they all get countries, so why don't we?"). And of course there are quite a few ultra-Orthodox or Chassidic Jews who are total Jewish supremacists and totally opposed to Zionism ("Jews are greater than everyone, any Jew's soul is worth more than every gentile soul put together, but so-called 'state of Israel' is an abomination and defiance of the will of G-d") Jewish supremacy - real and bad. Zionism - real and bad. But they're very different ideas, sometimes they go together and sometimes they couldn't be further apart. CarpenterWalrus posted:I see what you're saying here. If this is the case, then there's no such thing as Abrahamic faith, only the indisputable fact that the religion of Abraham is the correct one. I wonder how, then, the idea of faith even got introduced to Abrahamic religion, if it runs counter to the doctrine. Because many people do not consider themselves rationally convinced beyond a reasonable doubt that G-d is real, necessitating faith where facts fall short. At least in the case of Judaism and Islam, a point where the individual believer's experience does not align with religious doctrine - but of course it's hardly the only point. If you accept the Torah or Quran as real, G-d will accept your faith but really wants you to understand His existence as a fact. If you say "G-d respects our free will, and therefore would not want to prove His existence beyond a reasonable doubt," you're not talking about the Abrahamic G-d as Abrahamic sacred texts present him. Which is fine, but apologists should be clear about what they're apologizing for. Bar Ran Dun posted:Well first there is a foundational difference between you and I here. I don’t think God the Father is a being. I think God the father is Being-itself. Next how do I know what it is to be and what Being-itself is? Sure, if you don't take the Bible as a reliable historical record of G-d's intervention into the world and the purposes thereof, then you can accept that G-d would rather us have faith in His existence than know that existence for a fact. I think you have a good attitude. I also don't think G-d is a discrete being, but I acknowledge that that's an idea foreign to the Bible. Yesterday in Synagogue, we were talking about the Golden Calf incident because that's what happens in last week's Torah portion. My Rabbi asked, what's so bad about idolatry anyway? I said, the idolators could never produce Spinoza. The progression from idolatry to non-idolatrous monotheism to monotheism was real, actual progress because it helped us move toward a panentheistic understanding G-d as, as you say, "Being-itself." And of course, there's a class component; the earliest forms of idolatry and polytheism arose at the same time as the earliest forms of class society, because they enabled certain classes to claim monopoly over access to G-d and because they encouraged a static, corporatist vision of harmonious equilibrium between discrete forces. So monotheism, and then panentheism and process theology and all that, are real forces of progress in how we understand authority and social structure. Did this justify killing 3000 people because they built a cow statue and started cookouts and orgies around it? Eh, it was a different time. Civilized Fishbot fucked around with this message at 17:48 on Mar 7, 2021 |
|
#
¿
Mar 7, 2021 17:23
|
|
|
Captain von Trapp posted:Thanks for the correction, yes, I was mistaken. I was working off what I knew about most recent common ancestors and hadn't properly thought through the changes that result from restricting to the patrilineal (or matrilinear) line. Yeah, that sounds about right. As the patrilineal line goes on for long enough, eventually you should hit a bad roll of the dice and you only get daughters and then it's game over. Except for Y-chromosomal Adam, and all his patrilineal ancestors, whose patrilineal line will go on as long as there are human men at all, for the reasons you describe. Freudian posted:If I knew that I would absolutely already be on my book tour. To me I see three real options: 1. Dual-Covenant Theology. Jews don't have to embrace Jesus because G!d made a separate deal with us. This idea is excellent for Jew-Christian relations, but the problem for Christians is that this has been considered heresy for about 2000 years. This is basically the option Catholicism has taken: The Gifts and the Calling of God are Irrevocable posted:That the Jews are participants in God’s salvation is theologically unquestionable, but how that can be possible without confessing Christ explicitly, is and remains an unfathomable divine mystery. Extra-tolerant Christians extend this idea to the conclusion that basically every religion is a decent way to reach G!d as long as it teaches you to be a good person. 2. Hard Supersessionism: G!d's covenant with the Jews was either fulfilled or abrogated by Jesus' work, and now the Jews are just like everyone else, they need to embrace Jesus or accept the consequences for ignoring the gospel. This idea has motivated a lot of ugly mistreatment of the Jewish people, but it's the traditional Christian approach with a strong basis in the Christian Bible. 3. Soft Supersessionism: Like Hard Supersessionism, but Christians shouldn't really bother converting Jews, because the Jews will all convert at the time of the Second Coming. This approach allows Christians to retain their belief that there's no path to the Father except through the Son, while giving them an excuse to let the Jews stay Jewish for the foreseeable future. I take the terms Hard Supersessionism and Soft Superessionism from this article in First Things. quote:Soft supersession is also supported by a theocentric view of the end time. Only God has the right to bring a person into the covenant. In the case of the Jews, that probably will have to wait for the final redemption, which for Christians will be Christ’s Second Coming. (One could say that Karl Barth was this kind of soft supersessionist.) On this view, ultimately though not immediately, Judaism will be overcome by Christianity, because all Jews will finally become Christians. I call this the “eschatological horizon” of soft supersessionism. It enables Christians who advocate it to speak with Jews in good faith in the present, yet-to-be-redeemed interim or waiting-time. Yet that dialogue is still not an encounter of equals. Judaism is still taken to be proto-Christianity. Civilized Fishbot fucked around with this message at 23:02 on Mar 7, 2021 |
|
#
¿
Mar 7, 2021 22:43
|
|
|
Nessus posted:Wheat, rice? Not always allowed in Judaism; Ashkenazi Jews can't eat rice, and no Jew can eat wheat, during Passover.
|
|
#
¿
Mar 8, 2021 16:51
|
|
|
Zazz Razzamatazz posted:I thought unleavened bread was ok? Yeah I guess I don't really think of unleavened bread as a genuine wheat product. I grew up observing gebrochts which is that you can't even soak wheat in water so we didn't touch it outside matzo on passover proper. Lots of potato starch cooking
|
|
#
¿
Mar 8, 2021 17:00
|
|
|
Thirteen Orphans posted:The Something Awful Ecumenical Spaghetti Dinner will now be a Something Awful Ecumenical Fast. As long as it's not scheduled on a day where fasting is forbidden for any particular religion (Islam has at least one, Judaism has a few)
|
|
#
¿
Mar 9, 2021 13:18
|
|
|
Zazz Razzamatazz posted:
A Jesuit priest ran the exact numbers. If you attend daily Mass, you'll hear 13.5% of the "Old Testament" and 71.5% of the New Testament. Before Vatican II, those numbers were only 1.0% and 16.5% respectively! https://catholic-resources.org/Lectionary/Statistics.htm (He left the Psalms out of calculation because of their omnipresence in non-lectionary liturgy) Civilized Fishbot fucked around with this message at 17:35 on Apr 27, 2021 |
|
#
¿
Apr 27, 2021 17:15
|
|
|
Jaramin posted:You're right. I'm sure present day oppression of the weak is a topic of no interest to any religious person or organization, especially in a locale revered as the "Holy Land" by more than %50 of the Earth's population. Do Muslims regard Palestine as "holy land?" Obviously there are sacred sites (Al-Aqsa Mosque, David's tomb etc) but I don't think Muslims see that region the same way Jews see it, where every parcel of land is metaphysically loaded with spiritual energy and acts as the anchor of the covenant between Jew and G-d. This shouldn't be taken as any kind of Zionist apologia - people have the right to keep their houses regardless of who does or does not view that land as "holy" - but I would be very surprised to hear that Islam sees Palestine/Israel (or any other region of the world) in the way Jews see it. Basically, I think Hegel was right when he said: "In Mohammedanism the limited principle of the Jews is expanded into universality and thereby overcome. Here, God is no longer, as with the Asiatics, contemplated as existent in immediately sensuous mode but is apprehended as the one infinite sublime Power beyond all the multiplicity of the world. Mohammedanism is, therefore, in the strictest sense of the world, the religion of sublimity." So, although I'm not a Muslim and I'd like to know more, I react skeptically to the idea that Muslims replicate the Jewish obsession with the land where Jews happened to live when we first became Jews - that's the kind of "limited principle" Hegel's referencing, right? I also don't understand why exactly Christians see Israel as "Holy Land." Is it because Jesus lived and died there, or because G-d's covenant with the Jews is in some sense still active, or both or neither? Civilized Fishbot fucked around with this message at 13:59 on May 20, 2021 |
|
#
¿
May 20, 2021 13:53
|
|
|
Ohtori Akio posted:They're going to do communion. You don't have to take it if you feel like it's not appropriate. The hymns will be new to you. Coffee hour should be a good time. I just googled this because I was curious, and the official Episcopalian stance is that the unbaptized shouldn't receive communion. Of course it varies parish-to-parish.
|
|
#
¿
Nov 1, 2023 23:29
|
|
|
Killingyouguy! posted:So the old testament has a LOT about like, how many goats to sacrifice for what sins, etc. Does modern Judaism still do that and if not, why not No, because the Temple was destroyed (and then rebuilt and destroyed again). And sacrifices can only be brought at the Temple. Basically the entire task of Rabbinic Judaism is to sustain some form of Jewish spirituality in a context where the center of Jewish spirituality - the Temple - is gone indefinitely. The answer in the case of sacrifices is prayer. There are three daily prayers and a fourth on Shabbos/Saturday, this is in direct emulation of the sacrifice cycle at the Temple - the Talmud opens with a discussion of when the Shema prayer can be said, saying it's aligned with when priests in the Temple would eat ritual offerings. Worship is called "avodah," or "work," a term originally used to refer to the rituals done at the Temple. And the prayers themselves are loaded with direct and indirect references to the sacrifices - pleading for God will bring back the Temple so the sacrifices can resume, and pleading for God to accept prayer in lieu of sacrifices. Civilized Fishbot fucked around with this message at 16:06 on Nov 3, 2023 |
|
#
¿
Nov 3, 2023 16:00
|
|
|
What's the gender verse?
|
|
#
¿
Nov 12, 2023 16:50
|
|
|
Asterite34 posted:Things went downhill ever since Yahweh had that messy divorce from Asherah, gave Him a real misogynistic streak In the short term yes, but in the long term, the independence of solo living enabled a journey of gender experimentation, ending in a non-binary identity and any/all pronouns.
|
|
#
¿
Nov 28, 2023 18:59
|
|
|
Liquid Communism posted:I am, on an intellectual level, always amazed that Biblical literalists can read the Old Testament and think 'yes, getting involved with this God is a good idea'. I'm no Biblical literalist, but I think the authors of the Hebrew Bible generally did a pretty decent job - and sometimes an incredible job - describing the tendencies of the God that people actually have to live with, whether we like it or not. And the God we have to live with is the God we should be engaging and discussing or "getting involved with" (although we're involved either way, because God chooses every element of our experience). If you take seriously the idea that whatever happens is exactly what God decided should happen, then you can get at God's character by just observing what happens - which will lead you to the conclusion that God is frequently vicious, frequently merciful, and consistently unpredictable. Because that's how life really is! From this starting point, Hebrew mythology considers how people can and should live in that reality. John Updike lays it out really well in his review of Robert Salter's Torah translation: quote:The ferocity of this tribal God measures the ferocity of tribal existence. In Exodus 3:14, when Moses asks God his name, the answer in Hebrew, ’Ehyeh-’Asher-’Ehyeh, has been commonly rendered i am that i am but could be, Alter reports, simply i am, i am. An impression grew upon me, as I made my way through these obdurate old texts, that to the ancient Hebrews God was simply a word for what was: a universe often beautiful and gracious but also implacable and unfathomable. In this encompassing semi-darkness, the figures in the Bible pursue difficulties oddly similar (compared with those of Greek gods and aristocrats) to those in our own problematical, mostly domestic lives, and in this they are the patriarchs and matriarchs of modern fiction, which also offers to illuminate the human predicament. A book of stories ending "...and then God forgave Adam and Eve and they dwelt happily in the garden forever" or "...and the Jews had a short, comfortable journey from Mitzrayim to Eretz Israel and Moses established a robust society there which God engaged with only total compassion" might depict the reality that we wished we lived in, the God that we wished ran it. But it would be narratively and spiritually less valuable - for biblical literalists and for the rest of us - because it wouldn't reflect the reality that we do have to live in, where we suffer for our own screwups, for other peoples' screwups, and often for no observable reason at all. Civilized Fishbot fucked around with this message at 17:17 on Dec 19, 2023 |
|
#
¿
Dec 19, 2023 15:59
|
|
|
Liquid Communism posted:Yeah, that's specifically why I called out literalists, because a fair number of them seem to think those tribal social rules should still be applied today. The idea that the laws laid out in the Torah are beautiful and worth applying today is also core to Orthodox and Conservative Judaism. It's been frustrating to see the past 2 pages of discussion along the lines that my religion's holy scripture sucks compared to Christianity's. But I get it - they're older books from a culture more distant from that of the modern West. I suggest that the solution to culture shock is to more deeply immerse yourself in that culture and better understand its traditions and manners of expression - that is to say, yes read the Church Fathers they're very wise and interesting, but also read Jewish commentaries to understand how people can find joy and value not just in superseding these laws but even in following them. Sefaria.com is an amazing repository for Jewish texts - it's heavily interlinked so you can open any part of one text and find where that verse or paragraph is referenced in any other text. For example, if you go to the page for Deuteronomy 21:18 and open "related texts" you can see 134 commentaries and 12 links to the Talmud. You can explore all day! One of the Talmud links will take you to Sanhedrin 68b, which starts a multi-page argument ending in the conclusion that the law is 100% binding but also has no possible situation where it could arise because of other principles embedded in Jewish law, and the law exists in order to disturb you into studying Torah. ' Does this reflect the actual intent with which the Deuteronomist composed the verse, probably not, but it shows how these passages can be engaged in a way that's both spiritually valuable and sane in its real-world conclusions, without having to say "yeah this is savage but later religious revelations made it inert anyway."
|
|
#
¿
Dec 21, 2023 02:55
|
|
|
Prurient Squid posted:I have been posting about the five books of moses in a very blunt way without any attempt at tact. I see now that this is probably uncomfortable for Jewish readers and I'm teachable on this point. I'm willing to take accountability and acknowledge that I should treat the text with greater nuance. I wouldn't want you to change your posting at all - you're sharing your honest reaction as an honest reader. I just meant to sdd to the list of ways to process disturbing/tricky parts of the Hebrew Bible. Prurient Squid posted:I often wondered how Jews cope with having to follow the 613 Mitzvot. Then I actually read them. One of them is "don't eat worms". "Don't eat bugs" is challenging in the sense that you have to wash your produce to make sure there aren't any bugs. Each kosher certifier has developed its own list of standards for how to clean each fruit and vegetable. But then a lot of the laws (not that one) only apply in the context of a Temple to which one can bring sacrifices - no Temple, no mitzvah to being sacrifices applies. Msny agricultural laws only apply in the land of Israel. Civilized Fishbot fucked around with this message at 12:42 on Dec 21, 2023 |
|
#
¿
Dec 21, 2023 10:45
|
|
|
Nessus posted:Right, it's the distinction between someone being bad, potentially really loving bad, conceivably even so loving bad that something something minecraft and the state of being Evil as an intrinsic or assumed category. Can you explain the Minecraft and Swedish stuff? Is the Swedish guy the guy who made Minecraft?
|
|
#
¿
Jan 18, 2024 18:22
|
|
|
People shouldn't say insensitive things to children, and in general shouldn't tell people how to feel if they didn't ask. But I disagree with the implicit moral of (your synopsis of) that story, that whatever exists in the world must be perfect according to God's will, or at least when it comes to our bodies. The world is defined by imperfection according to God's will - the Messianic ideal isn't recognized anywhere. It's a world on fire! quote:This may be compared to one who was traveling from place to place, and he saw a burning mansion. He said: Is it possible that this mansion is without someone responsible? The owner of the mansion looked out at him and said: I am the owner of the mansion. To be human is to be obligated to put out the fire - to work on repairing and even saving the world. That includes everything from broad social and environmental justice to using our words carefully in daily conversation. It includes taking care of our own bodies and taking care of each others', by practicing or supporting medicine and medical research. This is part of what's symbolized by ritual circumcision - the human form (at least the male form, the one centered in Abrahamic religion) comes out of the womb imperfect, and needs the intervention of the community to fulfill God's plan. Just like everything else in the world is imperfect, and God has invited or demanded us to get to work on it. That work is the only real responsibility we have in our entire lives, and we shirk it by saying "we just have to tolerate Earth and wait until heaven" like the priest in the story or by saying "whatever the condition is right now, it must be what God wants forever" like the girl in the story. A lot of people born with serious medical conditions would not be born with those conditions if they lived in a society with sufficient medical services, mainly prenatal care, and it really rubs me the wrong way to say "well, God could've fixed it Himself and didn't, so I guess God wants it like this forever." Civilized Fishbot fucked around with this message at 19:54 on Jan 19, 2024 |
|
#
¿
Jan 19, 2024 18:31
|
|
|
Yeah I think there are two elements of it: 1. Translation is really hard, particularly poetic translation, and the Hebrew Bible is loaded with poems and wordplay and general sing-songiness that is extremely difficult to translate into English. The two translations that best deal with this are King James (because its translators were masters of English poetry and gave themselves much more poetic license than modern translators) and Robert Alter (because this was the whole goal of his translation and he did exceptionally well at it). I also like interlinear translations - when it's a a word-by-word translation they often preserve quirks of the Hebrew that other translators choose to drop. 2. If there's a language that you only hear in a religious context, and a language that you sometimes hear in a religious context but you more commonly use for mundane or profane purposes, then the first language is going to feel more mystical and poetically powerful. I think this is part of why the King James has such sticking power - it's at least a different dialect of English that today triggers associations of religiosity and historical prestige. Every Friday and Saturday I look forward to praying, singing, and reading in Hebrew for a few hours. I'm sympathetic to the politics around it but if I were Catholic I'd be really bummed about the crackdown on the Latin mass. Civilized Fishbot fucked around with this message at 15:45 on Jan 26, 2024 |
|
#
¿
Jan 26, 2024 15:40
|
|
|
Tias posted:Wait, what I don't think so, at least not necessarily. If they're saying "we distrust you because you used to be Jewish by religion/you're Jewish by ethnicity" then that's inappropriate because it's telling someone to their face that you think they're insincere, that they're like Sabbatai Zvi toward the end who was doing salat in front of the sultan and singing tehillim being his back. If you say "you're too Jewish, and by that we mean you're too [antisemitic stereotype]" then obviously that's bad. But Judaism involves a whole range of ideals and inclinations which necessarily diverge from those of whatever church OP is seeking to lead. They're different religions, and to see God and the world through a Jewish lens, or to approach God using Jewish patterns, means you're not using a Christian lens or Christian patterns. If I aspired to become an Imam, even if I totally accepted all Muslim religious orthodoxy and orthopraxy, I'd have to address Jewish tendencies which would at least make me a very unusual Imam (a fixation on Moses and the Hebrew Prophets at the expense of other Muslim Prophets, a preoccupation with events in the land of Israel, relative apathy toward the afterlife, a habit of thinking about God as a buddy who has obligations toward me...). I'm proud of that - if I could easily become a leader in a non-Jewish faith tradition, it would mean I haven't very deeply internalized Jewish ways of thinking about God and the world. It's taking Judaism and Christianity seriously, and taking OP's Jewish past and Christian ambitions seriously, to interrogate this, I don't think it's necessarily inappropriate or disrespectful. Civilized Fishbot fucked around with this message at 14:38 on Feb 8, 2024 |
|
#
¿
Feb 8, 2024 14:33
|
|
|
Killingyouguy! posted:What does this mean Ash Wednesday.
|
|
#
¿
Feb 14, 2024 21:15
|
|
|
nice obelisk idiot posted:The idea of Jesus implausibly being a fussy eater is pretty funny to me. Keeping kosher means being a very fussy eater.
|
|
#
¿
Mar 10, 2024 21:33
|
|
|
Prurient Squid posted:"Do not cook a young goat in its mother’s milk." Your translation might've obscured this but it's the precise re-iteration of a prohibition that appeared twice in Exodus. But in Exodus the context implies it's a rule for sacrifices only, while it's it to everyday life. So while the Deuteronomist doesn't know it, he's laying the foundation for a key way that Jewish religious practice and identity will survive in exile: it will soon become a general prohibition on mixing meat and milk in any form. Here's a good article about it: quote:The Deuteronomist transforms the cultic prohibition in Exodus into a general dietary law: From this perspective, a suckling animal is as forbidden for eating as an animal that was found dead. This generalization of the prohibition in Deuteronomy corresponds to Deuteronomy’s tendency towards “secularization,” i.e., the centralization of the sanctuary and the creation of a general and public profane sphere, which finds also expression in the expansion of profane legislation. Civilized Fishbot fucked around with this message at 14:39 on Mar 26, 2024 |
|
#
¿
Mar 26, 2024 14:01
|
|
|
From what I can perceive - and this sounds like criticism but isn't meant that way, and I only see others doing it this way because it's so easy to see myself doing it this way - a lot of what modern Christian readers seem to get out of the "Old Testament" is that they can smirk at the wacky and violent mythology, and generally alien storytelling conventions, of another culture. But they can do it without feeling the sort of cultural-imperialist guilt that a well-meaning person might get from mocking the Quran or Native American mythology, because really it's *their* culture, it's in the Christian Bible after all, and without feeling too sacrilegious about it, because this is actually just the ugly part of the Bible that got turned upside down by Jesus. I think people also do this with Greek and Nordic mythology which are seen as inherited by the whole of modern Western/White culture - but in those cases there are far far fewer Greek cultists or old-way Vikings who might be offended by a superficial and snarky engagement with their sacred stories. Civilized Fishbot fucked around with this message at 18:54 on Mar 28, 2024 |
|
#
¿
Mar 28, 2024 18:45
|
|
|
LITERALLY A BIRD posted:I would imagine for some people this participates in bias toward reading the Old Testament with some of the attitudes you have encountered, Fishbot. I took some time to think this over - thinking on Saturday, writing this very long post today. The ideas are still somewhat half-baked. I don't think the attitudes you describe are informed by antisemitism. I've been lightly posting/lurking this thread for a while and I've never seen anything I'd call remotely antisemitic. I think the phenomenon that's striking to me and, I think, some other Jewish posters, is just gentle Christian supersessionism, which I'd define as the idea that there is a limitation or incompleteness in Jewish thought and practice which is resolved by the Christian revelation. I think a really good example of it is this synopsis of a sitcom episode that a Christian user shared to explain their thinking toward the "Old Testament." I actually found the way this user describes and praises this story to be very frustrating, but also very helpful in working out why it's so frustrating. Bar Ran Dun posted:There’s a real excellent episode S4 E22 of northern exposure, Kaddish for Uncle Manny. It marks the turning point in the show where Joel transitions from outsider to community member. His uncle dies and the community attempts to gather the necessary Jews for him to sit shiva and say the Kaddish. As they near ten he rejects this and decides that the meaning is to be in community. The episode ends with him saying Kaddish with the collected community who are each remembering those they’ve lost in the manner of thier own traditions. The story here is, if I'm reading it right, a Jewish guy dropping his quest to pray in a legally-defined minyan (10+ Jewish men) because he's decided that the true meaning of praying in a minyan is about joining with the people who mean community to him. And for him that doesn't mean 9 other Jewish men he's never met before, it means the people who comfort and challenge him as he lives and works with them - the ensemble cast of the TV show. From a legalistically ritualistic perspective, that story is not a man learning a valuable lesson, it's a man making a sad mistake. In its setup it's pretty comparable to a Hasidic story which became very popular in the early days of covid, as observant Jews figured out that quarantine restrictions would prevent them from gathering together to fulfill beautiful commandments like praying in a minyan or conducting the Passover Seder. The story goes like this: Zusha and his brother Elimelech are in jail (early-generation Hasidic gurus were constantly locked up). Elimelech is inconsolable: they're stuck in this cell and they have to use a bucket in the corner as their toilet. This means they can't say their daily prayers! Jewish law is clear that the daily prayers aren't conducted in a room contaminated with human waste because of the holy names involved. And Zusha comforts him with an innovative, inspiring teaching: quote:“But you are connecting to G-d,” insisted R. Zusha. “The same G-d who commanded you to pray each morning, also commanded you to abstain from prayer under such circumstances. In a location such as this, you connect to G-d by the absence of prayer.” Soon everyone starts dancing which is normal in Hasidic stories: if we truly understood how blessed we are with opportunities to connect to God by doing mitzvahs, we'd almost always be dancing. The story ends on a punchline: the guards are furious at the prisoners experiencing spiritual joy, figure out it has something to do with the bucket, and punish the prisoners by removing it from the cell - enabling them to pray the scheduled prayers. I think in a Christian version of the story, they don't let the toilet-bucket stop them from saying the prayers they want to say - in fact I think the Christian ending to the story is basically the sequence in Northern Exposure, which, if I understand it right, is the protagonist having an epiphany along the lines of: quote:The reason we say kaddish with a minyan is that mourning is the work of an entire community, and maybe in ancient times the presence of the community was defined by 10 Jewish men, but for me today, it's defined by the diverse community of mostly-non-Jews that I've found here. The protagonist cracks open the ritual law to find its real value, the spiritual truth. And in light of the truth, continued adherence to the particular text of the ritual law is unnecessary - what matters is applying the truth. This is, correct me if I'm wrong, a normal Christian approach to Jewish law, and it runs roughly parallel to the idea that the Hebrew Bible can and should be read as foreshadowing the life and work of Jesus. To borrow a Buddhist analogy, in the Christian understanding, so much of Judaism is a finger pointing at the moon that is Jesus and his lifestyle of pious compassion. Once you can see the moon, there's really no need to keep looking at the finger - or to keep pointing. So the Christian version of the toilet-bucket story might end with a similar epiphany: quote:God gave us the law against praying with holy names in a contaminated environment to prepare us to learn from Jesus that when we pray, we are in every sense joined by him, by the presence of God. But that's exactly why we should pray now, using whatever names for God that describe the connection we crave. Jesus loves us and wants to join us, he will not be offended by the smell we are unable to control - he will suffer through it with us and it will bring the three of us closer. A ritualist-legalist response: of course there is a whole universe of spiritual truth in every commandment, it's one reason that we should leap at the chance to do pursue its fulfillment, to explore it and be faithful to it. Because we can never discover "the true spiritual meaning" of anything - there's always another dimension, another layer, of new questions and new lessons. But more importantly, there's more to mitzvahs than metaphor. As the toilet-bucket story alludes, every commandment God invites us to fulfill is, individually, a whole new type of relationship made possible by God's love of detail, by His eagerness to invest more and more holy meaning into every point and moment - and to give us the honor of helping make it happen! What if Zusha and Elimelech had conducted the daily prayers anyway, choosing to set aside the laws surrounding the use of holy names the same way the Northern Exposure protagonist chooses to set aside the legal definition of a minyan? When we break a commandment or turn down an invitation to complete one, even if it comforts us or gives a sensation of closeness to God, it has a negative effect on the relationship characterized by that mitzvah, it's creating distance there. So that's what's sad about this Northern Exposure episode. From this perspective, which has dominated Rabbinic Judaism since its inception, and which afaik is also the lens through which Muslims generally approach Sharia, OP's claim that their interpretation of the Northern Exposure story signifies "the core of an honest monotheism" is appears to be not only profoundly incorrect but actually very offensive. If rejecting the text of a law you believe to come from God is honesty, then refusing to reject it is what, dishonesty? Ignorance? Delusion? [these spoilered paragraphs are a sort of tangential derail about community belongingness, not necessary to the broader post] It's disconcerting to see this particular episode, where the protagonist learns to compromise on a ritual commitment, described as the point where the protagonist "transitions from outsider to community member." The plain reading is that at least one element of his Jewish-religious commitment was a problem that had to be overcome in the course of his assimilation into the community. That's grim, but it's also by design - a lot of Jewish law is designed to reinforce a feeling of community when the practicioner is among Jews and exile when the practicioner is among non-Jews. For traditionally ritualistic Jews who live alongside plenty of non-Jews, this is a source of profound tension - I want to celebrate my friend's birthday with him, but he scheduled the party on a Friday night! What do I do? Again it's not at all limited to Judaism - quite a few Muslims have expressed to me that when practicing Ramadan, they feel more aligned with other Muslims, but less aligned with their non-Muslim friends and colleagues. And when they don't practice Ramadan, it's the reverse! The quoted analysis of the Northern Exposure episode doesn't seem to see that tension. It seems to engage the protagonist's choice to forego a legal minyan as a beautiful epiphany without any dimension of loss or heartbreak. In the end it makes me wonder - when, and this should be many years from now, I'm mourning one of my parents, I'll say kaddish only if I have a legal minyan. Even if I were surrounded by my many non-Jewish-man friends like the Northern Exposure protagonist, and they were eager to say kaddish with me, I'd like to think I'd respect the laws of what does and doesn't constitute a minyan. Would this be misinterpreted, based on a superficial equation of the minyan to "community", to mean I'm not really engaging the non-Jewish-man people I love as my community? I've actually encountered a lot of people dealing with the same problem as the Northern Exposure protagonist. I was in a lot of Jewish mourning circles over Zoom during covid. Some are still going and I pop in sometimes - I should do it more. In all of them, we read liturgy and poetry, talk about the dead and how we miss them, discuss how to honor them. In some circles, participants say kaddish, considering Zoom to count as a minyan; in others, they don't. I prefer the ones that don't - like Zusha and Elimelech, and unlike the Northern Exposure protagonist, we choose to respect the ritual by choosing not to perform it when our context didn't allow us to do it true to the legal script. Returning to the discussion of supersessionism - Christianity is not at all unique in having a supersessionist tendency. David Novak has a thoughtful article in First Things about different varieties of supersessionism, and how Judaism has its own parallel supersessionism: quote:Jewish hard supersessionists ... identify Christianity with the pagan or idolatrous practices that Judaism overcame. At the Passover seder, when Jews celebrate our call to covenantal status, we assert, “Our ancestors were originally idolaters, Terah the father of Abraham, etc.” In other words, for Jewish hard supersessionists, Christianity is not progressive in relation to its Jewish origin. Instead, Christianity regresses to the pagan or idolatrous past that Judaism has superseded. Here the key difference between Judaism and Christianity is that Jews generally aren't encouraged to become better Jews by contemplating Christian texts or practices while Christians are often encouraged to become better Christians by contemplating Jewish texts and practices: quote:Christians cannot deny their origin in Judaism however much they might claim to have superseded Judaism. By contrast, Jews can ignore Christianity, treating it as a regrettable and theologically regressive offshoot of Judaism. Proof of this is how little Christianity was taken into consideration by Jews living under Islam in earlier centuries. The sum of all this is that, in the normal course of study and practice, a Christian will regularly take time to think and talk about the ways in which Judaism specifically is lacking or limiting, and a Jew will probably not take time to think or talk about the ways in which Christianity specifically is lacking or limiting. And the way this is practically realized in this thread is that you have Christians openly/implicitly describing what they find lacking/limiting in Judaism, or the "Old Testament", much more than you have Jews talking that way about Christianity or the Gospels, or Buddhists talking that way about Islam or the Quran etc. That's not a bug but a feature - the whole point of threads like this one is to connect people of different backgrounds, different traditions, different forms of faith. The connection is more intimate when we share more of what's internal to our hearts, to our religions. And intimate contact between people who see the world very differently means people encountering potentially offensive ideas about what's sacred to them - this can be a very educational form of contact. More importantly I hope the Christians in the thread are enjoying a beautiful Easter and that we are all enjoying a good weekend. Civilized Fishbot fucked around with this message at 03:16 on Apr 1, 2024 |
|
#
¿
Mar 31, 2024 22:07
|
|
|
Keromaru5 posted:The Bible talks frequently about the "desert" or the "wilderness" (they might even translate the same word--I forget), Yeah "midbar" is sometimes used to mean an arid desert and sometimes used to mean fertile wilderness - the point is that it's land unsettled/untamed by human beings. Here's an interesting blog post about the Hebrew word, which explains that the distinction between the English words "desert" and "wilderness" is relatively newfangled: quote:I wrote that midbar מדבר in English is "desert". But another common translation is "wilderness." Which is correct?
|
|
#
¿
Mar 31, 2024 22:41
|
|
|
Thank you for the thoughtful replies to my effortpost :-&) I'll keep thinking about it and your replies - I think Zizek's ideas about Christianity may be a big part of how I'm understanding it, which might be philosophically valuable but on a sociological level I don't think Zizek really reflects any Christian mainstream.Neon Noodle posted:For some reason Judaism has one million tree holidays Some of these strike as real stretches tbh. Tu Bshvat and Sukkos definitely, they're explicitly about agriculture and bountiful harvests. Tu Bshvat is the New Year for Trees, and during Sukkos we're waving around parts of trees. But Simchat Torah and Shabbos, I dunno - I'm sure there's a lot of wonderful teachings about how they're like trees, or Torah is like a tree, or people are like trees etc, but I would never think to talk about trees if I had to describe them in 10 sentences or even 10 pages. On the other hand, Tu B'Av (the 15th of Av) should be "YES" without a question mark. Today it's usually celebrated as a sort of hokey Valentine's Day ripoff but the Talmud gives if an extremely cool name and background: quote:It is Rabba and Rav Yosef who both say: The fifteenth of Av was the day on which they stopped chopping down trees for the arrangement of wood that burned on the altar, as it is taught in a baraita that Rabbi Eliezer the Great says: From the fifteenth of Av onward, the strength of the sun grows weaker, and from this date they would not cut additional wood for the arrangement, as they would not be properly dry, and they would therefore be unfit for use in the Temple. "The Day of the Breaking of the Scythe." How cool is that? The way the trees celebrate (or we celebrate on behalf of the trees) when woodcutting stops reminds me of more great Jewish tree lore: trees are only vulnerable to logging because of their hubris and because they can't stop contributing to the weapons that bring each other down. People are charged to do better than that. quote:The main creation of the third day was the realm of plants, the terrestrial plants as well as the plants of Paradise. First of all the cedars of Lebanon and the other great trees were made. In their pride at having been put first, they shot up high in the air. They considered themselves the favored among plants. Then God spake, "I hate arrogance and pride, for I alone am exalted, and none beside," and He created the iron on the same day, the substance with which trees are felled down. The trees began to weep, and when God asked the reason of their tears, they said: "We cry because Thou hast created the iron to uproot us therewith. All the while we had thought ourselves the highest of the earth, and now the iron, our destroyer, has been called into existence." God replied: "You yourselves will furnish the axe with a handle. Without your assistance the iron will not be able to do aught against you." Civilized Fishbot fucked around with this message at 17:31 on Apr 1, 2024 |
|
#
¿
Apr 1, 2024 17:24
|
|
|
Pellisworth posted:. afaik the Bible itself doesn't really have a land ethic as we think about it now (maybe this exists in Oral Torah or other Jewish teachings). For a sufficiently precise definition of "as we think of it now" that's true, but: Nessus posted:I don't think it's much of a stretch to interpret a fair number of commandments regarding agriculture in the Torah as being, in part, about not completely using up the land. This is absolutely true. There's an important principle called the Shmita ("release") year - every seven years, the land of Israel gets a break from sowing and plowing. In this way it spends 1/7th of its time resting in the Sabbath just like people and animal. And most debt is cancelled. The concept is first introduced in Exodus and repeated with new dimensions in each subsequent book of the Torah. Other agricultural laws speak less to the Torah's sense of mercy-justice and more to its strong sense of boundaries and propriety, like a picky-eater toddler who hates to see food touch, or like George Costanza who wants to keep his social worlds from colliding. Just like you shan't crossbreed animals or mix wool and linen in one garment, you also shan't mix seeds together to create a mixture of crops in the same soil (this law only applies to Israeli soil). And vegetable/grain crops must be placed a certain distance from vineyards or fruit trees (these laws apply to all soil). This precludes forms of intercropping/companion planting like the "three sisters" Native American practice where corn, beans, and squash are intermingled so they can nurture each other. But I'm not sure anyone in ancient Israel/Canaan was doing that stuff anyway; it'd be interesting to learn either way. Civilized Fishbot fucked around with this message at 20:34 on Apr 1, 2024 |
|
#
¿
Apr 1, 2024 20:10
|
|
|
|
| # ¿ May 21, 2024 22:21 |
|
|
Thirteen Orphans posted:A Jewish friend of mine was taking a theology class and they learned about Calvin. She asked me, almost in tears, “Why do people believe this?” I just sighed and looked her in the eyes and said, “I don’t know.” I remember reading about him in history classes and thinking he seemed basically correct about the logical implications of what he would've experienced as pan-Christian orthodoxy (omnipotent God, eternal hell). My understanding, if someone can correct me, is that his reasoning is something like this. 1. God damns people to hell for eternity because God feels it is what they deserve. 2. God already knows everything, so God does not learn information about people or change His opinions about what people deserve. 3. If God damns someone to hell then God must have wanted that person damned to hell since the dawn of the universe. 4. God made that person with total awareness, so God must have made that person to be damned to hell. 5. Each individual person is either heavenbound or hellbound, was always that way, will always be that way, and that's exactly how God wants it. Am I missing something or is that basically Calvin's thinking? Cross-posting an answer I have to someone asking about the role of matzah in Passover. Civilized Fishbot posted:Matzah is so integrated into Passover that it's unfortunately difficult to answer this question without mostly answering "how does Passover happen." Sorry the post is correspondingly really long for this thread. Civilized Fishbot fucked around with this message at 14:34 on Apr 25, 2024 |
|
#
¿
Apr 25, 2024 04:14
|
|