The Library - 2013-04-12

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1:32 AM

This is my attempt at a @Caleb imitation:

Hey @BobJones, we're really making an effort here to have answers demonstrate interpretation rather than just asserting it. Can you fill in some of the jumps you've made? Why do you think the branch is Jesus? Where do you find what you say about translating aph? On what basis do you connect (your reading of) Isaiah to Ezekiel, and why do you think either is about crucifixion? — Monica Cellio 1 hour ago

7 hours later…

8:23 AM

@swasheck Lord, Lord, did we not vilify in your name?

@swasheck I'd like to get a handle on that: do you have any accessible examples? (by accessible I mean I don't have to read a whole book to understand them!).

I've only ever read one thing Piper has written. I thought it was very good, though admittedly I was specifically looking for ammunition against Packer's "Evangelism and the Sovereignty of God" which I find incomprehensible.

9:12 AM

@MonicaCellio The civil and religious aspects of marriage are already separate. I don't know why people think they aren't. Anyway, the word marriage matters.

4 hours later…

1:06 PM

@TRiG logically they are separate, but if they really were separate then people wouldn't be arguing so strenuously against gays getting the same legal rights that straights have. "You can't have civil legal status because my religion says you're wrong" isn't a sound argument, but many hold it. This is why I said "civil unions for everybody"; the word "marriage" is loaded and that word could be restricted to a religious domain. But that's apparently not enough.

(And of course each religion may define it differently, and that's fine if it has no civil consequences. To most religions, gays can't get married. In the Catholic church, divorced people can't. In Judaism, a marriage is between Jews. Etc.)

@JonEricson, @JackDouglas - yesterday we were talking about "escalation" when new users persist with bad answers. In that context (and I invite others to review the thread and cast whatever votes they like):

@MikeBull, the question asks about grammar. You can object to that all you like, but if you don't want to answer the question, don't answer. Ask your own question seeking the kind of analysis you want if you like. Most of what you've written is not an answer, and the one sentence that technically is, in your last paragraph, is just your unsupported assertion. You can do better and this site deserves better. — Monica Cellio 19 mins ago

@JackDouglas, @Caleb (to whichever of you declined my most recent flag; I think Jon was asleep): I am confused by the response. I used "other" so I could explain and you suggested it was the wrong reason. If you want a VLQ I'll be happy to provide it, but I thought "other" was sort of a superset of the others. What is your approach to flag reasons?

@MonicaCellio The decline wasn't from me, so I will decline to comment on that for now.

On reviewing the question however, I am not sure I agree with your analysis. The answer seem to be directed at the original question, only the opening sentence is directed as a comment on the other answer. The body of the thing seems to be his version of answering the question, however much we may disagree on methodology. (I think he's actually zooming out to theology not zooming in to the context like he suggests, but that's neither here nor there)

As such I think the only thing we need to do is challenge him to fill in the gaps and downvote it for not showing his work. If anything this is closer to showing work than some of his entries, and I don't think it's actionable by a mod delete (although I wouldn't object to a community delete).

This is a case where you have more power than a mod. It looks like you've use your vote. Now we need to find you some friends!

1:26 PM

@Caleb have we ever had a community delete, I wonder? :-) I've used my downvote and my delete vote, and commented. This reads like a theological answer (which we're not looking for) combined with a dismissive unsupported assertion. His response in comments has been, to my eye, somewhat hostile; it seems clear he's not going to fix it. So I hope others will use their votes.

As for argumentative, I don't think his comments are particularly argumentative except that he doesn't agree and engaged in discussion from his perspective. I'm not sure I would label either side argumentative, but your comments come across pretty harsh, almost belligerent on that one.

(Goes looking for who else has delete vote privs that we can page in here!)

I added some comments of my own to that thread by the way.

@MonicaCellio Looks like yourself, Soldarnal, Frank Luke, Mike, and Kazark are the options for putting together a community delete.

1:48 PM

@MonicaCellio The text started with "Not an answer": I think I got confused by that. You can't add custom text unless you select 'other', can you?

@Caleb If he had left out the first sentence of that one comment I might have felt he wanted to work with us instead of doing his own thing. Consider I would also like to say that I am appalled by the myopia of this approach: "but it is not appropriate to not deal with the issue at all and fast-forward straight to the doctrinal framework." I would like to better understand your characterization of my comment as 'belligerent", especially since that's a word I almost used for Mike's.

@JackDouglas right -- custom text means "other", which means I didn't select "not an answer". I was trying to explain why this wasn't the kind of answer we're looking for, even if, by the "'no' is an answer" rule, it technically is.

@Caleb thank you. Good stuff.

@MonicaCellio I think he may have misunderstood you but it is hard to be sure

@MonicaCellio Hmmm, that might NOT be the right word, so cut me some slack here. I was specifically thinking of this bit:

> You can object to that all you like, but if you don't want to answer the question, don't answer

@MonicaCellio just to chip in, "come across […] almost belligerent" is not the same as "is belligerent" whether or not it is the right word!

@Caleb I only went there after a long record of bad answers from this user. He admitted that he wasn't answering the question that was asked, because he thinks it's "myopic". Sigh. Do you think it would be better for me to remove my comment? I'm not trying to make this about me; I'm trying to get him to try to consider our norms.

@JackDouglas true. And I wasn't trying to focus on that word specifically as to understand what provoked that reaction (whatever negative word it is).

1:53 PM

Ok I officially take back "belligerent" because it has connotations that don't apply. What I would point out is that you're playing really hard ball in comments and I don't think that will get him on board. Playing hardball with your delete vote and comments that encourage a different response seems like a better play.

@Caleb Wasn't trying to start a fight with you over a word, sorry. I will rewrite my comment.

@MonicaCellio I don't think you're reading him quite right. He didn't admit not answering the question, he defended his method as being different than the other one employed in the other answer. I read that as him thinking he was answering the question. Also the "myopic" (whatever that means) comment was about my comment not the question.

My 2¢: the underlying problem is that the two of you (Mike and Monica that is) have so little common ground that neither of you are really communicating: just responding to what you think the other meant and never knowing what they really did mean.

@MonicaCellio No worries, if you're not hung up on it neither am I. I'm the one that could have chosen better diction to start with :)

@JackDouglas I've asked Mike to explain his method. He partially did, which I appreciate, but he hasn't come back to the followup comments so it's still pretty unclear. To me Mike is just another Bob right now -- he's got something that makes total sense to him in his head, but he's not communicating it out very well. Obviously it's not just me or his answers would be faring better.

@Caleb no worries. We're good.

2:00 PM

@MonicaCellio well for example, I also don't think Mike admitted not answering the question. It's VLQ right enough, because it shows no work, but that doesn't change the fact that he doesn't understand your comments.

@Caleb so of those, Soldarnal and Frank engage in these discussions sometimes (and come to chat), Kazark seems semi-absent (pops up now and then on the site), and we haven't engaged Mike yet. So unless Soldarnal, Frank, and I work together, we won't get community deletions any time soon. When it's that focused of a group that kind of feels like collusion -- y'know, the "secret masters of the site" (ha!) deciding what lives and what dies. That's no better than the mod-hammer.

@MonicaCellio That his answers are scoring so poorly I think is highly indicative of our general agreement on what we want to see. If we don't come away from an answer understanding how they got to a conclusions, we downvote. Particularly recent voting trends bear that out pretty strongly.

We need to grow more users who are both privileged and engaged. We talk sometimes about metrics like visits/day, but I think this, the user base, is our biggest barrier to graduation. That's why I said "2 years" in some recent conversation.

@MonicaCellio hear hear

I think the result is very low quality, but since he's actually trying to answer the question and not saying something offensive, most of his answers are not actually mod-delete material (although as I said I for one would be more than happy to see the community say no a little stronger).

@MonicaCellio Yes, I think BH has a long road to graduation. Right now we're struggling to get enough 4k users. To graduate you need about that many 10k'ers!

2:04 PM

I would also like to say that I am appalled by the myopia of this approach: "but it is not appropriate to not deal with the issue at all and fast-forward straight to the doctrinal framework." The grammar-only approach provided no firm answers, so I zoomed out and looked at the context. If that is "not appropriate" on this site then the approach taken is an artificial one which has no place in literary interpretation. Did anyone read the actual chapter? Has anyone commented upon its Covenant structure as an allusion to Moses? The Bible is literature and this is not an autopsy. — Mike Bull Apr 4 at 21:19

I'm actually looking forward to the priv level reset on C.SE coming (hopefully) soon. We have new people coming in and getting privs so fast they aren't actually learning what to do with them or how to use them, and they think they are experts on how the site works.

I'm not feeling the same here. We need some of our experienced people that could do this stuff to have enough rep to actually do it.

@MonicaCellio how do you get from that to "yes you are right I didn't answer the question"?

@Caleb we are struggling to get users full stop

@Caleb where do flags fit into your view of mod-delete? I mean, people who can't vote to delete can raise flags; does that matter? Are you willing to be the third (or even second) vote, in principle? (I'm not asking about this case; I'm asking about site operation.) I do that sometimes on Mi Yodeya; we have mor privileged users than BH does, but still, sometimes a delete vote and a convincing flag are together enough for me.

@MonicaCellio I think Mike drew a false dichotomy between my comment (which he quotes) and the approach in the other answer and his own approach. I think he thought I was advocating that he had to use a different hermeneutical approach (I wasn't, I just want him to SHOW the one he is using).

yes, he thinks his hermeneutic is under attack and is defending it.

2:07 PM

@MonicaCellio Yes. On some sort of graduated scale, I'm happiest not having to vote at all, sometimes willing to be the only vote ever, and in between sometimes back up 1/2 votes to make it happen. And flags are the way to get my attention to do that.

@Caleb yeah, from your description we have the opposite of C.SE's problem -- people not using privileges that they should be. How do we change that?

In this case, I wouldn't have, but in theory (and practice both here and on a massive scale at C.SE) I do backup single delete votes on flag.

@JackDouglas well, fast-forwarding to doctrine is fine with him, the grammar approach in the question is wrong, and our approach is artificial and has no place in "literary interpretation" (setting aside what that has to do with anything; he thinks it's relevant). It all added up, to me, to "I know how to answer this and you're all wrong".

@MonicaCellio to me it looks like someone backed into a corner lashing out.

Understood. You are right. It's a whole book. :) — Mike Bull 2 hours ago

@JackDouglas cue: site name, diversity, docrine. :-)

2:11 PM

@MonicaCellio cue: patience.

@Caleb ah. I can see that.

@JackDouglas if he'd explain it he wouldn't have to spend so much time defending it...

this is a long game

@MonicaCellio I don't think he understood that was what you wanted any more than you understood him

@JackDouglas I'm not calling for haste; I'm just pointing out that those are barriers to some of the growth you want.

@MonicaCellio Hear hear. I'm looking through comments on his other answers (esp the ones I have post notices out on!) and we've been here before.

@MonicaCellio well, I don't think they are, but you know that already. We are working through these issues on meta too.

We are a field with a small number of experts who do not form a big intersection with computer programmers

2:14 PM

@Caleb which is what led me to comment this morning. We have a user who's posted a lot of low-quality answers, not explained what he's doing, not really responded to questions about it... what do we do about that? We can just keep downvoting him and let him waste his time, but is he redeemable?

whatever we do growth will be slow: the key is to aim for steady growth not fast growth

@JackDouglas some of those experts are hanging out at Mi Yodeya, but they're mostly not going to come to something that looks like a Christian site. Just sayin'. We've had a few and I hope they stick around, but they haven't engaged all that much so far. Now maybe many of those MY experts don't care about engaging with Christians even on neutral ground; I don't know. But we'll never know until we get farther on some of the issues we're talking about.

@JackDouglas yes, definitely. Besides, an explosion of new users all at once would be hard to deal with.

@JackDouglas YES! The best thing we can do is settle in for the long haul. Find/spot and encourage people that fit the mold into long term participation. Not waste our limited energy forcing round pegs into square holes. Realize there is always going to be some level of noise and 100% good answers aren't the point of Stack Exchange. The point is that the signal to noise ratio is high because of close scoping and voting.

2

@Caleb did you mean to attach this to my question about encouraging users to use their privs?

Can you ask a question and get a good answer now? Even in just-starting-to-limp-along stage we are at now, I think we have something valuble here. Sure it's not perfect and we almost all want more out of it. But now I think many of us are better off for the time we've put into asking and answering. If we keep doing that, the rest will come with time.

@MonicaCellio No, sorry fixed.

2:22 PM

@MonicaCellio I'm not sure I understand what 'neutral ground' has do with 'show your work'. iiuc we aren't and never have been aiming for neutral ground: the opposite is true, we are moving to greater discrimination against hermeneutics that find 'showing your work' harder (and this is a good thing!)

@JackDouglas I meant "doctrinally neutral", meaning that there's not a doctrinal premise to the site. This is a hand-wave at all the doctrine discussions and I'm not trying to re-open all that now. But "show your work" does help with that, because unsupported assertions that, e.g., everything is Jesus, even if we're talking about Leviticus, won't be tolerated as much as they have been.

@JackDouglas in general, piper appeals to traditional/"neo-Reformational" principles. "the future of justification" is a more balanced response than his initial reaction but ... i'm not really a piper fan. but then, i'm wary of theologians, systematic or otherwise

The SP and typology people are going to have to work much harder to show their work. That's a good thing, and I would say the same thing if anybody were making Jewish-kabbalah answers without support. (But nobody is.)

@JackDouglas christianitytoday.com/ct/2009/june/29.34.html

@Caleb lmgtfy.com/?q=myopic :P

2:27 PM

@MonicaCellio well there isn't and never has been a doctrinal premise to the site, but I don't see how 'show your work' helps because for most folk if you won't participate on a site that allows certain doctrinal conclusion in answers, you still wont if they show their work.

@swasheck thanks!

@JackDouglas it's died down quite a bit ... with "love wins" rob bell stepped up to start taking the bullets for wright

@swasheck haha yes, wright got a little break - although wright has never actually challenged justification as he is often painted, he mostly challenges what verses you can use to back it up

@swasheck but he tends to be debated by folks who don't really actually read his works

@JackDouglas no, the difference is that in the past we have allowed a lot of bad answers that assert doctrine to stand unchallenged, and they have all been Christian doctrine. Hence the impression that this is a Christian site. Supported Christian conclusions are still fine, just as supported Jewish ones or supported secular ones or whatever. But we don't need to argue about what-ifs; we'll move forward on "show your work" and see what happens.

@DanO'Day yes. i agree. i've loved reading his stuff - and i've loved getting to meet with him. super guy ... swell guy. he's often strawmanned into something that is unrecognizable from what he originally said ...

@MonicaCellio I'm not sure that last bit is necessarily true. I expect to still see plenty of Jesus in Leviticus around, we're just going to make them work a little harder to show it. The same assertions that you will hold to be false will still be present, they will just need some support. "Unsupported assertions" is not equivalent to "doctrine you disagree with". Does that make sense?

2:34 PM

@Caleb I said "unsupported" for a reason.

@swasheck Ha ha, funny but true even if they are hardly in the same genre.

@swasheck that's awesome that you got to meet him.

@Caleb genre doesnt matter to The Gospel Coalition

@JackDouglas @Caleb and, with respect, will you grant the possibility that I have a little more insight into what about this site turns off members of the Mi Yodeya communtiy than you do? We don't talk about it a lot, but it has come up from time to time. I don't claim perfect knowledge, of course.

Hey @FrankLuke, we were just talking about you. :-)

1 hour ago, by Caleb

@MonicaCellio Looks like yourself, Soldarnal, Frank Luke, Mike, and Kazark are the options for putting together a community delete.

This is the complete set of people (other than mods) who have delete votes on answers. Just a reminder that it's out there.

@MonicaCellio Sorry, my comment was not about Mi Yodeya's perception, it was zoomed in on "assertions that, e.g., everything is Jesus, even if we're talking about Leviticus, won't be tolerated as much" not where you started in on that topic from.

2:39 PM

@MonicaCellio Of course you do, but you just said you don't know whether they'd come even if we changed: did I misunderstand that?

22 mins ago, by Monica Cellio

@JackDouglas some of those experts are hanging out at Mi Yodeya, but they're mostly not going to come to something that looks like a Christian site. Just sayin'. We've had a few and I hope they stick around, but they haven't engaged all that much so far. Now maybe many of those MY experts don't care about engaging with Christians even on neutral ground; I don't know. But we'll never know until we get farther on some of the issues we're talking about.

@JackDouglas I don't know if they will come in the future; I do know that some of them have declined to come in the past.

As the site evolves, some may look in on us again. If I feel comfortable with the site I'll even say that (for what that's worth). Will it lead anywhere? Don't know. But it won't be worse than now and could be a lot better.

@MonicaCellio are the experts the high-rep users on MY?

@MonicaCellio Hi there. About 10 minutes ago, I put a delete vote on Mike's answer being discussed here. (There are only 5 nonmods with enough rep to VTD?)

@FrankLuke link to answer being discussed?

@JackDouglas many of them, but we're a diverse community so some are lower rep too (e.g. many people got their high rep from things other than text questions). Not trying to be cryptic; I just don't have a specific list to offer off-hand.

@FrankLuke yup, apparently. And only three of us tend to discuss stuff here.

2:44 PM

@MonicaCellio if I wanted to engage them directly, would a meta post on MY be appropriate?

@JackDouglas sure thing. Somebody, I think Jon, made one early on, so you might want to search for that too.

thanks I'll look out for that

@JackDouglas Here you go:

6

Q: Would anyone be interested in helping out Biblical Hermeneutics?

I'd like to invite you all to look over and hopefully participate in a new StackExchange site: Biblical Hermeneutics. The purpose of the site is to study the Bible on its own terms. We try be be doctrinally neutral (if such a thing is possible). The majority of the text that is on topic for us...

@MonicaCellio, I haven't looked around the site much, but I checked out one of the questions linked to here. Oddly, although the question was about Tanach, an answer claimed that the pasuk was talking about Jesus. Go figure. I commented on it and gave, l'havdil, a Jewish explanation in a separate answer. But I doubt I'll frequent the site. — msh210 Oct 31 '11 at 7:18

hmmmm

I wonder what sort of response I'll get

@DanO'Day This one.

2:55 PM

@FrankLuke ahh ic, thanks

@JackDouglas well, I think msh210 is probably not going to be interested in the site, based on his comments there. On the other hand, Bruce James came over and has posted a few times.

Quick question. I've gotten 70 points of rep on this answer in the last two days. I posted the answer a year ago. Has the question been put on a hot topic list or is the verse in the media somewhere?

3:14 PM

@swasheck That looks helpful. Now I need a few moments to read it. ;)

@FrankLuke perhaps it'd just come up as a good vs. crap answer

@FrankLuke I don't think so, it just hit the front page again due to a couple of new answers

@FrankLuke it got two new answers yesterday, bumping it on the main page. One of those answers (the dowsing one) was discussed (briefly IIRC) in chat.

Thanks, all of you.

@FrankLuke To add to the list, I missed the answer the first time around. I upvoted it once I actually read it. ;)

3:19 PM

@FrankLuke I've also gotten a smattering of rep on random-seeming old questions, BTW. And I did encourage people to go out and vote a couple days ago (having noted that we have very few people who've earned Civic Duty, compared to the number of votable things we have).

(To be clear, I didn't mean "vote for me" in particular when I did that. :-) )

@JackDouglas IIRC I was being disingenuous/humorous with my "Oddly" and "Go figure". I knew and know that Christians read Jesus into the OT.

@MonicaCellio ...only because any question that I can answer well at BH I can answer equally well at MY, and with the same answer. (I may have to ask it first, of course.)

@msh210 :) are you happy for me to post a follow-up on your meta?

@JackDouglas Depends what it says (I haven't completely followed the conversation above), but probably. Is it essentially going to be a dupe of Jon Ericson's post? If so, maybe bump that instead?

@DanO'Day Welcome to 3K rep.

2

@msh210 no. I want to sound out whether there are many on MY who would post and answer here more once we have implemented a 'show your work' policy.

or if really the experts there are perfectly happy asking and answering on MY whatever we do

3:34 PM

@JackDouglas ... Okay, I'm really not following the conversation above, then. (I didn't know, for example, that such a policy was under discussion. I'm not following BH at all, tbh: I just happened to glance in here today for no good reason and saw my nickname.) But sure, ask away.

@msh210 That's the downside to having essentially three sites where the same (or nearly the same) question may be asked.

@JackDouglas I suspect this is the case. But you can definitely ask!

@JonEricson Yes. Well -- OT questions seem to get turned away from C. So two sites.

@FrankLuke I have 3,000 already? Holy crap, last I checked I had 1,500 or so haha

@msh210 It's a bit hit and miss, actually. Some are and some aren't.

(Where by "OT" I mean "Old Testament", not "off-topic". (Well, both. :-)))

2

3:39 PM

@msh210 yeah, for questions that also show up on MY I agree. (Except that others will probably answer better and faster than I will. :-) )

@msh210 Why in the world would C.SE turn away Old Testament questions? As an OT guy myself, this attitude always boggles my mind.

@msh210 :-)

6

Q: Why do we migrate Christian questions to a Christian audience about the Christian bible to a non Christian site?

I have often wondered when people ask an Old Testament question why sometimes they will be told to ask Judaism.SE as though everything in the Old Testament was not a Christian subject. If I ask a question on Christianity.SE I am looking for an answer that might have a Messianic twist even though...

...and (especially) its answers.

@msh210 @JackDouglas one of the things I said in that comment thread on MY, and have also said here in various places, is that for the most part we're not going to be motivated to ask questions here. We can ask them on MY. I have asked a few questions on BH -- one that I asked in order to save a tag, and a few where I didn't get answers on MY. But Jewish participation, to the extent it happens, is going to be weighted toward answers.

@MonicaCellio Yeah, I concur. It's because I will rarely be interested in a non-Jewish view of the text, but I'll be glad to supply a Jewish view if it's on-topic on BH.

3

3:44 PM

@FrankLuke It has more to do with scope. C.SE is supposed to be about theology (and Christian history), so some questions amount to "Bible trivia" in that context. Our site could reasonably be called Bible Trivia, in my opinion. ;-)

@MonicaCellio FYI: I joined the club ;)

@DanO'Day congratulations! I've been watching you rise thorugh the ranks. You post good answers here and I appreciate it.

@DanO'Day yay!

@MonicaCellio this site keeps my language skills fresh. Especially my Hebrew. I've been re-reading Waltke/O'Connor (which was assigned reading for me a decade ago) ever since answering this question, for instance

@JonEricson Questions on C.SE regarding Old Testament Theology would be on topic then? Such as if I were reading from Old Testament Roots for New Testament Faith and wanted clarification? That is an excellent book, BTW.

@FrankLuke I'm sure it would be. It would be a breath of fresh air. ;)

4:05 PM

i suppose i should answer more questions.

@swasheck Here, C.SE, or both?

@FrankLuke not c.se

@swasheck Ah, yes. I've read your thoughts on that here in chat before. I recall that now. Sorry I forgot.

@FrankLuke no worries. i just dont spend enough time on the main sites of the primary SE sites that i'm in to actually answer. i spend too much time in chat :)

4:33 PM

with our recent moves to move from crap answers to good answers, we're not getting polished turds

2

A: How should James 2:18 be translated?

It seems painfully obvious to me that all of verses 18-19 should be attributed to an objector and not to James. This is comparable with these passages: Romans 9:19-20 (ESV) 19 You will say to me then, “Why does he still find fault? For who can resist his will?” 20 But who are you, O man, ...

(and i wasnt asking for an upvote there)

5:31 PM

Apropos of nothing in particular, this blog post showed up last night and I thought folks here might enjoy it. (Do read past the first couple paragraphs; it's not a politics post.)

2

> By jerks, he means those who go out of their way to proclaim their faith in a way that is sure to alienate others. By jellyfish, he means those who settle for relativism, the belief that there is no one true way to God. He affirms that his expression of Christianity is the true way to God. For a Christian to suggest otherwise, he believes, is to be as spineless as a jellyfish.

And what struck me in reading that is that we should not be jellyfish; we should feel free to affirm our faith (in appropriate ways :-) ), but that's different from pushing it or asserting it as true for others. Well duh, but I think it helps us all to remember that distinction from time to time. And this was a pretty good discussion of that, I thought.

@FrankLuke We don't, at least not on the basis of them being OT questions. Sometimes OT questions happen to be more about something else other than the OT itself, sometimes they are actually textual criticism questions or sometimes Jewish history. I think the example that hit out meta (linked above) is kind of an odd ball, but we have seen one or two others. Topically, the OT and Christian interpretations thereof are fully on topic. (Although Our base of experts is kind of weak in that area.)

good find. i'll have to read it sometime sonne

@swasheck That's my rabbi, so not so much of a "find" as an "RSS feed entry". :-) (I did mean to say that up front but failed to.)

no worries

@FrankLuke Yes. Please. Brace yourself for people breezing right over what you were really asking and having to downvote the first rash of answers, but the question would be good to see.

5:41 PM

@swasheck Are you still around?

@JackDouglas i am

@swasheck can I debate one part of your comment on my 'casting out demons' answer?

without sounding ungrateful for the feedback!

@JackDouglas absolutely.

thanks :)

"The context of Matt. 7 is a family talk that Jesus is having with his disciples (Matt 5:1-2)"

that's not correct imo

because it fails to take account of 7:28

at some point or gradually along the journey from Matthew 5 to 7, the audience widens

and 7:22 is pretty near the end

@JackDouglas sure. but there's no break in the dialog, no purpose shift. the conversation never breaks from this dialog with the disciples. that the crowds discovered their location shouldn't be used to shift the point of the sermon itself.

5:46 PM

@swasheck "the crowds were astonished at his teaching", they didn't just discover their location, they were listening

at least they were by the end

and most of the folks that i've read indicate that we have to consider the focus of the message to be specifically for the disciples with accumulating crowds who could listen once they found him ... but the message itself was for the disciples

@swasheck I think that is a strange conclusion. I'd say the end of Matthew 7 is stronger for determining context than the beginning of Matthew 5, eg "for he was teaching them" (ie the crowds) and consider the ambiguity of the ESV rendering of 5:1-2:

1 Seeing the crowds, he went up on the mountain, and when he sat down, his disciples came to him. 2 And he opened his mouth and taught them, saying:

does 'them' refer just to the disciples? perhaps you can tell me from the Greek?

@JackDouglas it'd be ambiguous because either way it'd be 3rd plural.

@JackDouglas i understand your point, by the way ... i just see it differently

@swasheck that's fine :)

now I know you weren't just ignoring the end of 7, you just attribute a different significance, that's helpful…

it'll make me think about it more

i see your perspective that the most natural reading would be to find the closest referent and say "ah, they're the listeners." my thought is that the most natural reading is that since there's no break in the narrative, we have a picture of Jesus intently focused on this conversation with his disciples and other people begin to accumulate and overhear this family conversation

in my estimation, it makes more sense to have a family conversation about what to watch for in the long run instead of making it a broad topic of "preaching" to crowds who were there for a miracle

however, in the end, the point of context stands. Luke is about authority ... Matthew is about intimacy

6:31 PM

@DanO'Day thanks for the +1

@DanO'Day you're welcome to go through and edit my greek fonts :)

@swasheck you edited it while I was editing it haha

Now I need to start over to ensure it saves :P

@swasheck ok all fixed

7:17 PM

@FrankLuke This is now down to -5 (+1/-6) and has picked up several useful comments trying to guide the poster. Good job, all. (When I cast my delete vote it was at -1, whcih is to say I downvoted before VtD.)

7:37 PM

@MonicaCellio Given his long track record, I think piling on with some insistence is merited. I hope we didn't just create a case of too many cooks in the kitchen :)

@Caleb Demonstrably, we need to call these posts out (on meta or in chat) to get more than the stray passing vote. Once we do, we're calling everybody. :-) While I see Jon's concerns that new users can feel ganged-up-on if a lot of people respond, this isn't that case. At some point we need to stop worrying about fragile egos and start dealing with content. Politely, of course, but we have to do it.

This user, in particular, appeared on the scene one day and posted something like a dozen answers in his first day or two, without stopping to learn. He's slowed down now, but he still hasn't learned from what I've seen. Is there anybody among the users who "get it" who's enough on his wavelength to guide him? (Assuming he's willing to be guided, of course.)

@MonicaCellio I pretty much agree. Dealing with somebody with > 60 answers like we just did is very different than the 1st post I commented on and linked in here the other day.

2

@Caleb I've lost track of the 1st post you're referring to.

yesterday, by Caleb

Re new "show your work" policy being put in action -- how do my comments here strike ya'll?

yesterday, by Caleb

1

A: Where is the citation of John 7:38 taken from?

I would suggest he is referring to Jeremiah 2:13 & 17:13 and that by doing so, he is making two points: He is indeed the same as the God of the Scriptures (as he has amply pointed out in previous chapters). By the new covenant, those who believe in him will have him dwelling not just around but...

@Caleb oh right; thanks for the reminder.

(Last seen the day he posted. But it's only been a few days.)

7:51 PM

@MonicaCellio Unregistered, will probably end up being a drive by that never shows up again, but I still think leaving it (for now) with the treatment we gave it is the right thing to do.

@Caleb I agree. I haven't downvoted it yet, by the way. (I guess you can see that. :-) )

1 hour later…

8:58 PM

@JonEricson: meta.hermeneutics.stackexchange.com/questions/536/…

9:19 PM

@MonicaCellio I haven't forgotten. ;) I'm getting ready for a weekend retreat, so I'll have time to consider this, but not to respond.

I'm not sure where my unease stems. :(

@JonEricson Just wanted to make sure you saw it, that's all. Have a great retreat! I love ours when we get them (last one was in early March).

At any rate, Shabbat Shalom!

@JonEricson thanks, you too! :-)

10:04 PM

@DanO'Day Thanks for providing an outlet for me to say something positive on C.SE meta today. I needed that :)

10:22 PM

@Caleb no prob ;)

@Caleb I was hoping it would be welcome at C.SE - because I fear as CogSci.SE they may approach it by dismissing the theological polemic altogether

@DanO'Day Quite likely. I haven't spent time there, but if it's anything like Philosophy it's hard to get them to take something with an aspect outside of their personal world view seriously. On the flip side, I'm afraid we might have a deficit of real expertise on the matter right now, but eventually we should be a place you could get that answered.

@Caleb even if it sits there awhile and somebody eventually finds it thru google, no prob

or i may answer it myself

10:48 PM

@DanO'Day I'd be happy to see that. If you do plan on it, you might tweak the question just a tad to remove the hint at your experience/possible answer and save that for your answer.

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