Which were the ten tribes of Israel and which the two of Judah?
Where is this stated?
My problem is with Reuben and Simeon that were far in the south.
Was the division territorial or on religious grounds?
Why are there ten lost tribes?
Tribes confuse me.
@user2027 If you'd like, I can delete some of your chat items in this room. But the room itself is public. As for the questions, go ahead and flag them for moderator attention as @TRiG mentioned.
Could use more close votes on this: unclear question only loosely tied to the texts it cites, lots of comments unsuccessfully seeking clarification, and several downvoted answers but no upvoted ones after 3+ months. I had previously voted to close and that vote expired, preventing me from casting another (grr).
And the devil that deceived them was cast into the lake of fire and
brimstone, where the beast and the false prophet [are], and shall be
tormented day and night for ever and ever (Revelation 20:10)
But the fearful, and unbelieving, and the abominable, and murderers,
and whoremongers...
Does the idea of a judgmental God jive with the idea of a loving God? How are the two compatible and incompatible?
Why does only God have the right to judge? How about Jesus? And why aren't the angels able to get in on any of this action?
Why do the non-believers refuse to repent, even after seeing God's awesome destructive power? What does that say about the nature of evil? Does God think it's better to be feared than loved?
Imagine you're God—how would you punish evildoers?
@MonicaCellio No, I didn't realize you could vote to undelete posts deleted by the original poster. I've added my undelete vote now, though; and I would upvote your answer if it were undeleted. But if you prefer that it stays deleted, I'd respect that.
@Soldarnal I deleted it because it appeared to not be useful. If you're saying it's useful I'll add my undelete vote. (The community can't override mod-deletions; that's probably what you were thinking of.)
@MonicaCellio I'm going to summarize the comment discussion under each of the answers with my name (and our discussion that I moved here) in the answers themselves. Might not happen today, however.
@MonicaCellio To summarize the results so far: there's strong support for asking answerers to qualify controversial statements and/or specify the framework they are working from. It seems we'd like to limit the frameworks use to some degree (probably on a question by question basis). And there is at least some support for remaining flexible.
@MonicaCellio yes. i just largely do not care anymore. if i see something worth answering then i'll answer, but my investment is severely stunted because of a corruption of what i believe to be the process itself. to me, it seems like CSE = "sunday school Q&A" where BHSE = "this question's harder, i'll ask it there"
@MonicaCellio i took no offense to anything you've said, btw
@JonEricson sounds like a pretty good summary. I'm not sure about the "we'd like to limit" part; do you mean we'd like to limit things that don't actually use a framework, or that you think some actual frameworks are out of bounds, or that it depends on the question, or ? (Is that "we'd like to be able to limit, e.g., in a question?) Sorry for not understanding; not trying to be a pain.
@Jack, I think you’ve helped me clarify my opposition to this proposal: “Bring Your Own Framework” is an attitude disrespectful of the questions. “Specify Your Framework” is not a perfect fix either, but it makes it possible to respectfully offer a perspective useful to people other than the OPs. If SYF is done poorly, down-votes & edits are appropriate, but I don’t see the possibility of BYOF done well. — J. C. Salomonyesterday
@swasheck I'm curious how Mi Yodeya (for Tanakh questions) fits into your perception. (Maybe you aren't seeking Jewish answers in particular and so don't care. That's fine too, but if you have some other impression of the site I'd love to know.)
@MonicaCellio That's the limit I'm thinking of. If a question assumes the Torah is coherent, a DH answer might not be appropriate. But if the DH answer offers itself humbly, with hat in hand, to the question, it could be extremely enlightening.
@MonicaCellio i've not spent a lot of time there. i was wondering, though, if that was a place for specifically jewish answers to specifically jewish questions on jewish sacred texts specifically?
@JonEricson I agree. But any answer to a question that doesn't specify should qualify its assumptions or come hat in hand or however you want to view it. And especially ones that are known to be controversial, which is (almost?) all Christian answers to Tanakh questions or (almost?) all Islamic answers to bible questions for example. Be respectful to the readers who do not share your bias, whatever the bias is.
@swasheck the scope is broader than just text, but text questions as you've described are on-topic there.
We've had Christians ask Tanakh questions there; that's totally cool. They'll get Jewish answers, of course.
@swasheck Mi Yodeya is theological in the way that C.SE and I.SE are -- there is a baseline of theology that is taken as given. An answer that says the torah says something that contradicts that theology won't do well, and if it's particularly problematic ("that means Jesus") it'll be deleted. Jewish sources can disagree with each other on interpretation, so there's still plenty of room for diverse answers.
And if someone argued from a non-Jewish source without contradicting our theology, that'd be fine.
@JonEricson most questions don't (currently) specify, so what's your baseline?
@swasheck right, I think MY and C.SE have more in common than either ought to with BH. Currently I think C.SE and BH do have a lot in common, hence the problem being discussed now on meta and here.
@MonicaCellio Most questions don't say things like "I want a Jewish answer." But all the questions set up a framework (however fragile or obscure) in which to answer.
@MonicaCellio in content only ... but not in "clinical definition" ... that's the rub and i've grown weary of fighting it because we can all agree on it but educating "new users" is almost always a painful process that causes discord.
@MonicaCellio Depends on the question. A first time asker is likely to have almost no idea what frameworks are even possible. There's probably a bit of reading between the lines required.
For that first time asker, we are probably doing them a disservice by not specifying our frameworks a bit better. But questions from regulars are likely interested in, well, the sorts of answers (which are very good and deep) common on this site.
Put another way, I've had my edits rejected because they failed to read a poster's mind, yet you seem to be proposing mind-reading as a basis for answers?
Regulars should know how to write questions that comply with whatever guidelines we come up with, so no guessing required.
Remember, the audience isn't just the OP; it's the Googleverse that SE is aiming for. They don't know that so-and-so expects such-and-such answers.
So we do everybody a disservice by not being clear about where an answer (and the opinions therein) comes from.
@MonicaCellio Let's not let the exceptions dominate our thinking on this. If I am thinking of the incident you are mentioning, you were editing out something essential to the answer (or rather, the answerer). It would be far better to downvote and (optionally) comment in that case.
@MonicaCellio I think we need to trust our readers a bit (no, a lot) better than we do. Remember, its easy for a reader to become an answerer on this site.
@JonEricson I'm saying that questions should be complete enough to enable good answers, and if you have to guess in an answer you should declare that, not just take it as given.
We see this all the time on other sites: "well, if you have such-and-such tool available, you can...".
@MonicaCellio We are pretty tough with questions (which is good), so most all of our questions are answerable. I think the smorgasbord approach to answers has worked out pretty well so far. Going forward, we might need to push aside the stinky cheeses and slightly disturbing cuts of meat, but there's no need to enforce labelling everything on the site.
@JonEricson but we need to label the stinky assertions of truth, even if some people like limburger, because they are unnecessarily controversial.
We've discussed that before ("truth in labeling" is probably a helpful search) and it's articulated in the no-truth-assertions answer, so no need to repeat myself.
@MonicaCellio I think that's how the voting tells us to proceed. But you have to realize that over-labelling is (or can be) just as stinky. There's really no need to tell people that an answer that mentions Jesus in the context of Hebrew Scripture is a Christian one.
@JonEricson if it isn't going to be obvious in the opening sentences then yes it should. No subversion, no guessing about what's important. Say up front "this answer assumes that the Tanakh prophesies Jesus" or "according to $gospel the snake is Satan, so..." or the like. If you are going to say anything that (a) contradicts the plain reading of the text and (b) would reasonably be seen as controversial (leading to knife-fights in the comments, I think you called it), then quality it.
That is not hard and it is the path of peace.
And anyway, the qualification isn't just about what religion you call yourself but about your assumptions. "Christian" is a shorthand for some of them, but you and Jack have both told me that there are many points of disagreements among Christians, so that's probably not very helpful on its own.
@JonEricson we should deal with them as they arise (e.g. if a post gets bumped, but not do a big hunt-and-fix operation. "It's old" should not be defense against dealing with it if something does come up.
But if you want to look at examples, obviously they have to already exist.
@MonicaCellio To be completely honest, I haven't read any of those answers and I wouldn't likely downvote that one unless it somehow managed to be the topvoted or accepted answer.
@MonicaCellio I'm not sure. The way accepted answers work, it's still ordered in a useful way on the page. And both posts start with the same premise: context is important.
@JonEricson so it's only the acceptance that causes the useful ordering, and we know that acceptances can be fickle or absent. Yes both start with context being important, but one takes a turn for the strange after that and only kinda-sorta answers the question in the end.
It's hard to have a question about Job without struggling with Job's question: why does God sometimes treat His servants so poorly? I think it's terribly useful to have an answer from a Jewish and from a Christian perspective.
@JonEricson if the Christian answer focused on that question I'd agree. Talking about Jesus's suffering when (I understand) no Christian thinks that was a normal case seems unhelpful. Job is an ordinary person.
@JonEricson how so? He's not divine, not part of God, not said to be God's son... in fact, if he is Jesus-like then any lessons from his suffering are less useful for ordinary people.
Sorry if my bringing those up muddled the discussion. I came across them while reviewing something else and brought them as examples of bad answers that haven't received enough attention. (Though do note that rhetorician makes some rather bold assertions too, like claiming without support that Ps 22 prophesies Jesus. That's a good place for an "according to..." statement.)
The psalm certainly does not "give[s] us remarkable details concerning the cross-death of Jesus Christ".
(That's not the only problem in that answer, to be clear.)
Part of the problem in this case is that rhetorician seems to think this is a site for sermons more than answers to questions.
@MonicaCellio There's a theological answer. It's not so much that Jesus was divine as that we believe God Himself chose to suffer for us. The Christian answer to Job's question is that we are not asked to suffer anything more than what God Himself (in the person of Jesus) suffered. I can't answer Job's question any other way. (Though I'd prefer a slightly less conversational answer.)
@JonEricson but Job didn't die, so he did suffer less. And if Job is a model for Jesus and Jesus bore more suffering than any other human could, then how is Job a model for us to persevere under suffering? Regular people get regular-people-sized suffering, not Jesus-sized, or they'd crumple, right?
(I'd prefer that that particular answerer cut his wordcount in half across the site... not due to raw volume but to signal:noise ratio.)
So (I hypothesize) it got upvotes from people who say "yeah" but don't understand it themselves, rather than because it's actually a good clear answer.
And the devil that deceived them was cast into the lake of fire and
brimstone, where the beast and the false prophet [are], and shall be
tormented day and night for ever and ever (Revelation 20:10)
But the fearful, and unbelieving, and the abominable, and murderers,
and whoremongers...
