Is it important for a Jew to avoid making the letter "t" without the curl on the bottom in order to avoid making a letter that looks like a cross? Is it something that some communities try to avoid but others do without qualms or is it something that all Jews avoid? Is it important enough so that...
@Mr.Bultitude That's dicey. I'd say Christianity and Biblical Hermeneutics are out, the former because it's pure speculation, the latter because it doesn't involve a Biblical text except as a plot device.
That leaves History which probably has the most amenable crowd towards such speculations, but it still doesn't seem right. For Mi Yodeya I would ask in their chat if any angle of approach would work there.
@Mr.Bultitude A question like "what is the earliest historical record of Purim" would I'm sure be acceptable at History. That's not quite the same, but it's a good place to start
@curiousdannii I think they're appropriate. I operate under the theory that the OP gets more leeway for answer invalidation than others do, and in this case the OP made the initial edits in question. Moreover, the current answer wouldn't fit current site standards on probably any question. You could say that the OP should just ask a new question, and that's certainly an option and one I'd push for had he not been personally responsible for the edits. But I think they're valid.
@curiousdannii Thanks. I agree that's a good place to start. Good thinking.
@curiousdannii I guess I'm seeing it sort of as a literary analysis, "what is the significance," type question. Not sure how valuable it is but hopefully with the more specific scoping it can be answered with more than random opinions
@Nathaniel The original question was "I know it's great, but why?" I agree with @curiousdannii. It's not a good question in the first place. Maybe it's technically on-topic now, but I'd certainly not up vote and might even down vote.
Yeah, I won't be upvoting. I think it's okay to have open unless it continues to get unsourced commentary, hence my reopen vote, but it is rather borderline to me.
@Nathaniel A problem I've seen in the past is people just slap "according to Catholics" onto any old question and and find they have a technically on-topic question, having followed the letter exactly, but not really the spirit, of the site policies.
Yep. How do you distinguish between those folks and the ones who are actually Catholics and hadn't considered that they should just ask for their own church's view?
@Nathaniel That doesn't really have anything to do with it. Whether the asker really cares or not is not important. The question we're talking about now would be much better if it asked for modern opinions on any theological significance the work may have. That's closer to the spirit.
But I'd rather see the asker show some research he's done already, and ask for expansion on the ideas he's found or for counterarguments.
@Nathaniel Site policies. I think the question Peter had in mind is "Hey, this was supposed to excite my class, but it didn't and I can't really articulate why they should be excited about it."
It's got all kinds of problems, starting with the assumption that his class should be excited about it.
"modern opinions on any theological significance the work may have" – I'm okay with that, except that I think it's important to include Catholicism in there, as that's clearly what the OP had in mind originally.
It has the mark of a lazy question. If he posted links to some commentary about the work, historical and modern, it would show he's vested into it already, then would be able to ask a better, more specific question, that might mean something to anyone else reading it.
@Nathaniel Yes, that's what I meant. "Opinions" meant "catholic opinions".
Part of the formulation now is a catch 22. If a lot of people talk about it, the question is far too broad. If not, then it answers itself: no significance. This on top of the assumption that it has significance makes is a bad question that invites "bad subjective" answers.
@Nathaniel Well, I'm not going to vtr, but I'm not sure I'd vtc either. Like I said, it's technically on-topic, but I would consider a downvote.
But it's also old, so I would have just left it alone. If it was asked today, I'd probably comment along the lines that I have here in chat.
Same here. But given that the OP is working to improve his question that drops it into my queue. And I can't skip or I'll fall further behind curiousdannii :)
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