Penelope
weak force testosterone
you've got the word right, but you haven't understood how it works - yet.
i don't deny its *validity*, certainly not for you. all i am doing is suggesting that you are using a teaspoon to weed your garden. your methodology will certainly get results, but from my perspective, they are flawed, partial, tendentious and myopic results, because you are hampered from the get-go by your assumptions and prejudices. now, granted, you could say the same about the traditional methods, but the fact remains that you are dismissing them out of hand without taking the trouble to understand them and we have found them pretty robust over the last couple of millennia. remember, many, many scholars have trodden this path before you and almost all of them have come to the conclusion that the traditional methods of interpretation are extremely well-adapted to their task, almost certainly because they have evolved over a very long time indeed, unlike the "historical criticism" of the bible.
what you want to be true is not all that relevant to what the Text actually says. i keep saying it: in order to get anywhere, first you must encounter the Text on its own terms. if you walked into a music, art or design school, would you necessarily understand the methodology behind the teaching? would you expect better results if you tried to teach yourself the piano, sculpture or architecture? let me tell you a story:
no, no, no. you are completely missing my point. do i talk like my head zips up the back? what i am saying here is that if you apply inappropriate or irrelevant criteria to a complex, multilayered system, you completely fail to understand its essential nature. certainly, you could apply marxist political theory to middle-earth, but you would miss out totally on the actual purpose of LoTR. that is what you are doing right now - watching star wars and going "how are the orchestra playing in space? that would never happen!"
firstly, that's an assumption and a pretty questionable one. secondly, you couldn't get a more real society than jewish society - and, if you looked at the oral Law, you'd get a pretty good idea about this society even at this remove:
i haven't mentioned this.
yes - like the destruction of the first and second Temples, the babylonian and roman exiles, the crusades, the expulsions from europe, especially spain, the karaite schism, the challenge of supercessionist theologies from christianity and islam, the false messiah scandals of the C16th, the enlightenment, pseudo-scientific anti-semitism, nationalism and genocide. yet jewish society has survived all of these so far - the reason? a lifelong learning culture, based on these traditional methods of interpretation. as the sages say, just as the jewish people keep the Sabbath, so the Sabbath keeps the jewish people.
judaism agrees and so do i.
you are ignoring the possibility that you are not actually perceiving the real society that the sacred writings picture. i mean, if what you say is true - and your view of the Text and the Law and the society based on it is true, then we should not have a real, sustainable society. yet, by even the most critical historical view would say that judaism is the sole surviving diaspora culture of the ancient world. so the evidence does not support your hypothesis.
on the contrary, the point of religion - or judaism at least - is to inspire ordinary people to become extraordinary, to say, you too can be like this. avi mentioned one of the most important books in the Mishnah: the pirqei 'aboth, the "ethics of the sages". you can read about this here
My Jewish Learning: Pirkei Avot: Ethics of Our Fathers
you can find the actual text here:
The Translated Text - Ethics of the Fathers
(i do not endorse chabad, btw)
we read a chapter of the pirqei 'aboth each week on the Sabbath. the other side fo this, of course, is that even our "superheroes" have serious failings and are, in the final analysis, humans with human dimensions. moses, abraham, david - all of these people get things wrong, make mistakes and exhibit poor judgement. if that isn't "human scale", i don't know what is.
we have extremely strong structures and processes for dealing with this. look here for a start:
The Three Weeks - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
what do you think the Oral Torah actually is? take a look here:
Pe'ah - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
My Jewish Learning: Pe'ah: The Corners of Our Fields
all of this is derived from the Torah.
same answer: Nezikin - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
in terms of judaism, that era was the past, is the present and will be the future. one of the first things to understand about the Divine Name of G!D, the Tetragrammaton, is that it combines all three of these tenses of the verb "to be". the trouble is, penelope, is that this is how it works for me. i am not seeking a convert, nor am i permitted to do so. i can't tell you how religion can play a helpful role in your real life, i can only explain how it does in mine. it sounds, however, as if you already know much of what you need:
i wholeheartedly approve of this set of principles; it is covenantal in the best sense. and it sounds like you have got some excellent concepts of what "realness", "greenness" and "truth" are to you. 'owevair, you appear to be defining it using a false dichotomy with my religion and my sacred texts and in that, you do me a disservice and also yourself, in that you are basing it on an opposition to things that you perceive to be true, but are not actually true of the things you suppose them to be true of. judaism, to you, appears so far to be a sort of straw man for everything that you consider backward, primitive and intolerant. it is nothing of the sort. you are of course entitled to your opinion but you don't strike me as someone who is happy in ignorance.
yes, i can, penelope.
i can.
i'm not two years old.
sheesh.
and while we're at it, i think it's a bit infantile for you to be referring to me, effectively as "tiny-brain", like i don't get it. grow the hell up.
all of it - if you only know what you are looking at.
you don't. you understand the accrual process. otherwise, you end up in the same place as christianity, the karaites and classical C19th reform. your assumptions are wrong.
only if you assume that the ma'aseh bereisheet is there for that purpose. are you saying that i am *not* a sensible person? is it not at all possible that your criteria are mistaken? you sound like an anthropologist who encounters an alien culture and is amused because they don't have model T fords, because everyone knows that that is a necessary component of any sensible, credible modern culture.
how very rude. how dare you tell me what i should or shouldn't think? why are you so unable to question your assumptions? how arrogant. how eurocentric, how chauvinist and how laughably ignorant. the adam and eve story is about free will and how that is a necessary component of what it means to be human. it is not some fabulous treatment of a clan migration. that is simply not how we understand it. it is not "threatening" or "eyebrow raising", but simply redundant. use occam's razor here for a minute. why not actually read what the text SAYS?
they're not necessary - this part of the Text has huge credibility when you actually understand the ideas within it, which you have not troubled yourself to do.
this shows how much you don't understand what peshat, let alone PaRDe"S actually is. peshat is not "literal facts" - it is the PLAIN MEANING of the text. remez is "implied hints" of things that are missing from the peshat. derash is homiletic exposition of the events, personalities and symbolism implied by the language. sod is the deep structure, the anagogical, mystical level. the ma'aseh bereisheet is the most recondite, complex part of the Torah - who the hell are you to come along and lecture me about it?
i do not require your credibility or your validation. you are simply making yourself look doctrinaire, shrill and small-minded.
well, jewish culture, history, learning and life would disagree with you. "nor more significant in value"? it's more significant in value to me than, say, "finnegan's wake". what a fatuous assertion.
you are at far too early a stage of learning to sustain the positions you are presently holding. throwing me a link to some marginal academic theory is hardly guaranteed to make a difference.
b'shalom
bananabrain
... a 930 year old man ...
Bananabrain, it is a simple question:
[SIZE=+3]Yes ? ... or No ?[/SIZE]
