I...have no idea what he's talking about. (See the post and prior comments.) Anyone else understand this?

@swasheck very true

@MonicaCellio Me neither. :-(

@JonEricson that's what I was afraid of.

@swasheck 87.117.249.243

@MonicaCellio Everything seemed quite friendly (if incomprehensible) up till that point.

^^^ This is a beautiful, thoughtful interpretation. It would be quite at home on Mi Yodeya. But is it an answer here? What do the rest of you think?

@JonEricson me neither

@swasheck I'd love to hear your thoughts on hermeneutics.stackexchange.com/a/5732/423 once you've read it. Especially if you think I should go down some more of the bunny trails :P - and of course also if you have any critique I'm open to it as well

@swasheck haha so true

@JackDouglas haha ... wow jack, thanks. i was just kidding about that, though :)

@Dan +1 looks good. i was going to say that that the adjectival vs. substantive differentiation is not a strong distinction since one could be considered a subcategory of the other - and you essentially noted that it doesn't really change the meaning.

Hi @MarkAnthonySonger - welcome to chat!

@FrankLuke, about your edit here, since the poster is already not understanding me (it appears) I'll ask you first -- if a priest in the order of Malkhi-Tzedek is one who didn't have a natural birth, then what about M-T himself? I mean, he was an ordinary man... or is there something in the Christian texts that says otherwise?

@MonicaCellio As I recall, the reference is that his ancestry is unknown, and hence might as well be non-existent. But that might be an idiosyncratic idea of the Witnesses. On obscure theology, I never know where the Witnesses are representative and where they're complete outsiders.

@TRiG christian perspective is somewhat similar though not as strong (and varies within the various veins)

Hello and thanks!

@TRiG huh, ok. It just seems odd -- everybody who doesn't show up explicitly in a genaelogy is unknown in that way, for example, but nobody says Nimrod or the five kings and the four kings etc are not natural.

@MonicaCellio because they're bad

:)

@MarkAnthonySonger is this your first time in chat? I've been enjoying your contributions to the main site.

@swasheck bad people are natural-born and righteos people (who are not explicitly linked in) aren't?

It is and thanks :) I enjoy forum type discussion. I used to hang out on a few apologetics boards but most of those shut down. The atmosphere does seem to be more civil here :)

@MonicaCellio ah. that was a tongue-in-cheek post that i made :). apologies.

@MarkAnthonySonger we try to keep the main site focused on questions and answers (not side discussions), but chat is completely different. :-) BTW, you can reply to a message in chat by clicking on the little arrow in the bottom right of the frame of the message you want to reply to. In this message you'll see a little arrow in the top left; hovering over that shows what I replied to. It's handy when there are multiple conversation threads, like now.

@swasheck ok, saw your smiley but didn't know how broad its scope was. :-)

@MonicaCellio ohhhhh ok, cool

@MonicaCellio broad enough to enjoy highlighting the double-standard :)

@MarkAnthonySonger you can also address a comment to anybody in chat by just typing @ plus the name, like I'm doing here.

<nods> ok, good to knwo

know

@MarkAnthonySonger if you ping someone by using the @ notation who isn't in the room right now, but has been here recently, that person will get an inbox notification (the big red thing in the top left on the main site that also tells you about comments, answers to your questions, etc).

There's help for chat, um, somewhere, to learn about other cool things you can do, like editing your posts. But the reply and @-pings are the main things most people need to know. Anyway, welcome again!

@MonicaCellio gotcha. I saw the "1" and wondered why it was different until I came back to this page

@MonicaCellio Thanks again :)

@MarkAnthonySonger if you click on the "1" (or whatever the number is) it'll take you to the exact message that was addressed to you.