Raksha said:
When you read this post you'll probably be very surprised at just how traditional my beliefs actually are!
not especially. the thing is, the traditional beliefs on this matter are not systematised to any great extent and there is more than adequate room for your opinions in this case. as it happens, i largely share them.
And yet I accept the document hypothesis as you called it, or redaction theory or the theory of multiple authorship, as I've also heard it called.
again, in this case, the two opinions are not, to my way of thinking, incompatible.
Sorry, but I just don't think any other position is intellectually defensible. If you try to defend it on that level, you're just going to lose one argument after another.
i don't think i've lost anything so far. i don't think i've yet encountered an intellectually indefensible area within my beliefs - obviously i do accept that there are certain areas of belief which are axiomatic and based on privacy of experience, but seeing as the existence those areas are also accepted by secular philosophy, there should be no problem in defending them and the behaviours that therefore logically proceed from them. you are of course free to dispute those axioms and my private experience, but you would be as entitled to do so as you would to criticise my taste in music and, no doubt, enjoy equal success.
In fact, you'll probably end up looking like a dogmatic, pigheaded fool, which seems to have happened a couple of times already.
well, you think everyone who doesn't agree with you Because You Are So Obviously Right is therefore by definition a dogmatic, pigheaded fool, which is in itself a dogmatic and foolish position, in this case clearly brought about by an clear case of overweening, self-righteous, narrow-minded arrogance.
I'm glad you came to a position of mutual respect with Bob X, but it could have happened sooner and with much less friction if you hadn't gotten your back up.
as indeed i dare say we could have done ourselves if you hadn't insisted on getting so unwarrantedly personal.
I was shocked when you said Adin Steinsaltz accepts the Torah me'Sinai view, which I take it is the traditional view that Moses wrote all five books of the Torah.
it is - and i am surprised you would ever have thought anything else, but then again, if you find it incredible that anyone so apparently intelligent and learned should have come to different conclusions from yourself, then perhaps you should consider why that is - i would suggest, as i have continually done, that the answer lies in different axioms and different inner peak experiences.
I really thought he was just talking down to the readers in the introduction to The Essential Talmud. It felt like he was saying, "Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus." I have such a hard time taking that view seriously that I honestly believed he didn't take it seriously either.
le-havdil, i've heard richard dawkins say the same about some of stephen jay gould's positions, with the result that the philosophical world regards him as a poor philosopher, because he lets his biases influence him to the extent that he is unable to realise that more than one conclusion is possible based on the complexity of the systems involved, although as a scientist he ought to know better.
If you're seeing this as some kind of apparent dichotomy or inconsistency on my part
perhaps a logical quandary. philosophically speaking, you are unable to accept some of my axioms, because you have not shared my empirical experience - that's fine, i can say the same thing. but you go one further, to deny their validity because you dislike the logical results of including them as inputs into the system, whilst basing much of your firebrand militancy on (presumably) other peoples' unwillingness to respect your own empirical experience. i have no problem with that and do not see why you cannot accord me the same courtesy in return. my belief system is perfectly consistent with my rational faculties as far as i can see, because my philosophical underpinnings are not the result of religious indoctrination, but careful exploration.
You have to take a look at the PaRDeS anagram again to understand what's going on with me, which is this: I have a very strong preference for the Sod or archetypal level of interpretation, because very often that is the ONLY level of interpretation where a given story or commandment makes any sense to me at all.
hmm. you are aware, then, that by far the most black and white, starkly polarised worldview is held by those who are supposedly most knowledgeable on this level? i can understand and sympathise with this, of course, as it is one of the issues i grapple most frequently with in my own right.
In other words, I don't accept the assertion that the literal and the archetypal levels of the Torah can't contradict each other.
eh? where does r. steinsaltz or anyone else say they can? the only contradiction you're ever going to get is an apparent one - in this case, it is the resolution of this apparent contradiction that functions as a tiqqun on the most fundamental level. much of traditional wrangling at pshat level is based on the need to reconcile two apparently contradictory teachings, this is the content of the vast majority of discussions in the gemara in my experience.
There are stories and commandments where the traditional explanations at the lower level are either intellectually ridiculous or morally repulsive or both.
or at least they would be if the pshat was alienated from the other three levels.
The Akedah or Binding of Isaac story is the most conspicuous example. They read that on Yom Kippur, right? I used to dread hearing it every year and absolutely grit my teeth all the way through it until I finally learned there was a higher level of interpretation.
oh, me too.
Is that behavior to be emulated? I mean...what would you do about some lunatic running around claiming that God commanded him to sacrifice his son?
but, you see, the step that you take that i don't take is to assume that traditional jews would see nothing wrong in emulating the pshat behaviour! of course we would have exactly the same moral quandaries - but you seem to think that we would all quite happily slit our kids' throats if a Heavenly Voice told us so! this could not be further from the truth - because of the "oven of achnai" story and another principle of the Torah itself, namely "lo ba-shamayim hi".
I understand that there's a traditional way of dealing with problematic texts that Rabbi Jonathan Omer-Man once described as "creative misinterpretation." He has spent many hours in traditional Torah study and that's how he described the process. He said there are certain traditional rules you follow and steps you take to arrive at a more tolerable understanding or interpretation of the text.
yes, much of traditional learning is reverse-engineered and learning how this reverse-engineering is done is a lengthy and difficult process.
I don't know what they are and I don't have the patience to find out either!
so, because *you* don't have the patience to find out how other people think, you assume that the way they think is simply invalid. in your own words, how is that different from the "assumptions of the most brain-dead fundie"? at least i have the intellectual honesty to ask when i don't understand! i bet you wouldn't do that with aboriginal art, or native american myths - but because you're jewish, you think that gives you the right to pass judgement on traditional jewish methods without understanding how they work?
I've seen the results when you have presented them on the board, and they irritate me and occasionally outrage me.
you're entitled to be irritated and outraged at the results, but you are not entitled to pass judgement on the methods i use to get them if you "don't have the patience" to find out how they work.
That kind of "logic" or whatever you call it just comes across as hypocritical to me, and irritating beyond belief. I will never give lip service to that kind of thing and I'm not going to waste my time becoming proficient or even literate in that kind of sophistry (if that's the right word). It's digusting and I refuse to even pay lip service to it.
this argument is nearly word-for-word the exact argument of the church fathers in the early years of christianity when they wished to dismiss the "old testament" and its "G!D of Law" in favour of the "new testament" and its "G!D of love". i will accept that argument about unjust *results*, if they cause inequity and harm, but i will not accept that the method itself is inherently wrong and lacks holiness. i love G!D and Torah. i will jump through hoops to make G!D Happy, go to the most extreme lengths of devotion, make myself ridiculous in the eyes of the world, just as i would do for mrs bb. i don't expect everyone to, but i won't apologise for how i feel and the results thereof.
The commandment to exterminate the seven nations of Canaan should have been totally ignored and written off even when they were identifiable, and I hope it was. It did NOT come from God, but from some all-too-human human being with an ax to grind and a big chip on his shoulder.
if the commandment came from G!D, it was also some all-too-human human being that had the humanity to stand up to G!D and say "no, we have reason not to do this - didn't You Command us to learn, to become adults, to become responsible? well, we're doing it - so butt out!" you don't think G!D would be Pleased? wouldn't *you* be pleased if your kids showed such maturity, independence, purpose and reasoning skills?
b'shalom
bananabrain
, now that sounds like a Henny Youngman joke
