V'dibarta Bam

2:15 AM

What do we want to do about answers based on the "documentary hypothesis"? Does that have any semblence of a Jewish pedigree? (I don't see one on a skim of the Wikipedia article, but that's hardly a thorough analysis.)

HodofHod

@MonicaCellio Doesn't the documentary hypothesis essentially assume the non-existence of the Jewish G-d?

Monica Cellio

@HodofHod it assumes that the text was not written in one fell swoop by God. I was just rereading our meta posts about pluralism and I think that if DH is a Jewish position (obviously not mainstream!) then such posts aren't mod-deletable, though of course the community is free to vote however they like. But if it's a Christian thing then such answers seem akin to "Father so-and-so says...".

HodofHod

@MonicaCellio What do you mean by "Jewish position?" Do you mean is it within the pale of Jewish beliefs?

Monica Cellio

@HodofHod yeah. Is there anybody within Judaism who considers it at all relevant?

HodofHod

2:30 AM

@MonicaCellio I really don't know much on this, but I have to assume that any Jews who accept the DH, would have to be on the more liberal side of Reform. It's certainly out of the pale of both orthodoxy and conservatism.

Monica Cellio

I mean, it's obviously not an Orthodox position, but we're not an Orthodox site by policy.

HodofHod

That comes back to:

18

Q: Is there not room for non-orthodox opinions?

Should Mi.Yodeya/J.SE maintain its solely orthodox standing? I love StackExchange and when I found the Judaism group I thought that it would be interesting to participate. However, I am neither an Orthodox Jew nor an orthodox Jew and have found it difficult to find applicable questions on which ...

@MonicaCellio Precisely.

Monica Cellio

@HodofHod yeah, that's one of the questions I was looking at.

So, because we're not an Orthodox site, if there's a Jewish community that actually holds by DH then such answers are in scope (though they may get DVed).

HodofHod

So the question remains, how far are we willing to go?

Can we accept Jewish opinions that state that there is no G-d and that Judaism is only relevant culturally and historically?

Monica Cellio

@HodofHod good question. And I guess I'm trying to skirt that (though it wasn't intentional) by asking "is this even Jewish by any definition in the first place?".

HodofHod

2:36 AM

Granted, this is perhaps the most extreme of possible opinions, and I think most would agree that we needn't worry about that too much.

Monica Cellio

Yeah.

HodofHod

@MonicaCellio I don't know. But even if no, say, Reform or Reconstruction rabbi has publicly stated their adherence to this idea, it would still be within the broad definition of a "Jewish opinion" so long as it's theologically acceptable within their basic tenets.

Monica Cellio

@HodofHod I can see that. Thanks.

HodofHod

(Sorry that was a bit obvious :( )

Monica Cellio

:-)

BTW, my (Reform) rabbi's take on DH is: if you're going to assume an editor, why would you assume such a bad one?

HodofHod

2:42 AM

Haha! That made me laugh out loud.

Monica Cellio

Glad to help. :-) (I don't think much of the hypothesis either, just in case that wasn't obvious.)

HodofHod

In my opinion, absent some evidence that there actually are those who adhere to both this idea, and that of whatever other criteria we require*, I would assume that the DH is primarily, and perhaps entirely, atheistic in nature and effect.

*(I.e., if the community requires a belief in G-d for an Jewish opinion to be acceptable , then that. If we require a belief in a personal G-d and the "Chosen People" doctrine, then that, etc., etc.).

Monica Cellio

We're pretty fuzzy on what we require. :-) (And I'm not suggesting we should try to change that.)

Good point that this is probably primarily an atheist perspective.

HodofHod

@MonicaCellio Yeah, I think that's actually worked for us so far, though we may have to emend that someday.

@MonicaCellio At least, I think so.

Monica Cellio

@HodofHod I think it's worked well too.

HodofHod

2:54 AM

@MonicaCellio Not to mention a terrible answer. The question clearly assumes a meaningful reason (i.e., a single and divine Author), and the answer ignores that. Every. Single. scriptural analysis question could be answered with some variant of "The documentary hypothesis says that this meaningless."

3

It's the equivalent of answering every halacha question with: "Well, halacha isn't binding, so..."

Monica Cellio

@HodofHod I've seen more than one DH answer tonight, which is what led me to bring it up here.

@HodofHod good point -- ignoring the premise of the question makes for a bad answer.

HodofHod

@MonicaCellio I saw one and downvoted it.

Isaac Moses

I'm pretty sure there are Jewish scholars who study and support the DH. That, by itself, isn't enough to make it a Jewish source for answers, any more than the existence of Jews for Jesus makes Christianity such a source. ...

HodofHod

@MonicaCellio Sometimes. If you can undermine a mistaken assumption, then that could make for a good answer. But ignoring an assumption that is valid and acceptable to the community makes for a bad one.

Monica Cellio

@IsaacMoses right, that's not positive support, but its absence would be negative support.

Isaac Moses

3:00 AM

... That said, there are frum scholars who use the formal observations like those of the DH within scholarship that also assumes that the whole text was written by God, such as R' Mordechai Beuer

Monica Cellio

@HodofHod right, I'm not talking about answers that correct a mistaken basis in the question.

@IsaacMoses thanks!

Isaac Moses

... However, just saying "DH" to explain a textual inconsistency is not a source at all, but a cop-out.

HodofHod

@IsaacMoses Well, that's because every Jewish group has rejected the J4Js. The line excluding them has been drawn pretty clearly. Our lines haven't though. The only lines we can assume are those that every Jewish group agrees on. Any others we have to draw ourselves.

Monica Cellio

@HodofHod 1 2 3

HodofHod

@MonicaCellio ▼ ▼ ▼

Sorry, ignoring the question's assumptions makes for a bad answer in my eyes.

Isaac Moses

3:04 AM

@HodofHod I agree, and if the assumptions are important to the question enough, clear enough, and ignored enough, I'd say it's grounds for deletion.

Monica Cellio

@HodofHod how'd you make the arrows there?

HodofHod

@IsaacMoses That's not really the DH anymore, I'd argue. He can draw from it, but the essential piece of the DH is that there are multiple authors, no?

@MonicaCellio Quick Google search:

430

A: ASCII character for up/down triangle (arrow) to display in HTML

Unicode arrows heads: ▲ - U+25B2 BLACK UP-POINTING TRIANGLE ▼ - U+25BC BLACK DOWN-POINTING TRIANGLE ▴ - U+25B4 SMALL BLACK UP-POINTING TRIANGLE ▾ - U+25BE SMALL BLACK DOWN-POINTING TRIANGLE Use ▲ and ▼ if you cannot include Unicode characters directly (use UTF-8!). Note that th...

@IsaacMoses Oooh, free helpful flags!!

Isaac Moses

In addition, I'd say that both en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Documentary_hypothesis and billpringle.com/talks/flood.html, the only sources cited in these answers, are non-Jewish sources with no reference whatsoever to Jewlsh lines of tradition or scholarship. Given that plus the ignoring the question's assumptions plus the weakness of the answers, I'd say delete away.

@HodofHod Good point. Stand by ...

Too late for one of them, but I stuck my flags into the other two.

HodofHod

@IsaacMoses I'm still seeing all 3....

Isaac Moses

@HodofHod Oh. Oops. Flagged the third. I got confused because there's another already-deleted answer by the same author on one of them

HodofHod

3:15 AM

@SethJ @Menachem We seem to be in agreement, do you guys have anything to add?

Isaac Moses

@MonicaCellio @HodofHod I've also left comments on all three backing up my flags

HodofHod

@ShmuelBrin @DoubleAA @msh210 Feel free to jump in at any time. (I assume there's something going on in the office too)

Monica Cellio

@IsaacMoses thanks for adding comments.

Isaac Moses

@MonicaCellio NP

Menachem

3:32 AM

@HodofHod Not really. Even if we don't delete it, it's not a very good answer. I guess deleting them depends on whether we accept DH as being in scope with this site. "Mi Yodeya is for those who base their lives on Jewish law and tradition and anyone interested in learning more." -- is DH Jewish tradition?

Isaac Moses

@Menachem I think my comments on the questions justify deleting them regardless of your answer to that question. Related to that and with an eye toward better DH answers in the future, I'd suggest that the burden of proof is on a DH answer to demonstrate that it convincingly answers the question without recourse to outside-of-Judaism sources. If it doesn't, I recommend deletion.

(Where by "better," I mean "a step beyond just saying 'DH: nothing needs to be consistent.'")

@MonicaCellio Thanks for your deletions.

Monica Cellio

I just ran through the flag queue. @Isaac's comments pointing out that these don't actually answer the questions were particularly helpful; I was hung up on "is DH Jewish?" when the real question was "does this answer?".

I agree that the burden of proof should be on the answer; just asserting something doesn't make it so!

Isaac Moses

@MonicaCellio ... and I unabashedly advocate strict and swift application of this burden to answers that come from perspectives that appear to be outside of traditional Judaism and/or explicitly associated with blasphemy. By contrast, if someone makes a lazy and unsourced allusion to, say "אין מוקדם ומאוחר בתורה" (~"we needn't assume chronological ordering in the Torah"), I would tend to give them more time and coaching toward the possibility of a fully-formed answer.

3

@Menachem ... I think such bias is consistent with our charter

Monica Cellio

3:47 AM

@IsaacMoses that's a good point (particularly the blasphemy angle). While we don't want to be in the business of declaring what is or isn't blasphemy, we can still reasonably say that the farther afield something is the more, and more promptly, it needs to add support. And now that users can get to their own deleted posts (recent ones anyway, or via comments in the inbox), the consequences are less dire. Undeletion after repair is possible.

3

Isaac Moses

@MonicaCellio I like this formulation: "the farther afield something is the more, and more promptly, it needs to add support."

Monica Cellio

@IsaacMoses thanks. So אין מוקדם ומאוחר בתורה has clear support from within our tradition, and we'd still expect the answer to provide that support but we can work with the author on that, as you said.

msh210

4:21 AM

@Menachem / all, I think we can assume the DH is beyond the pale of Judaism unless and until proven otherwise.

That said, I agree with

47 mins ago, by Isaac Moses

@Menachem I think my comments on the questions justify deleting them regardless of your answer to that question. Related to that and with an eye toward better DH answers in the future, I'd suggest that the burden of proof is on a DH answer to demonstrate that it convincingly answers the question without recourse to outside-of-Judaism sources. If it doesn't, I recommend deletion.

HodofHod

Ok. @Monica's formulation that "the farther afield something is the more, and more promptly, it needs to add support" is excellent and useful, but does it specify a criteria by which we can flag and delete posts, or merely those which deserve downvotes?

Isaac Moses

@HodofHod If something is, in your judgement, far afield and also NaN, I suggest flagging for deletion and deletion.

HodofHod

@IsaacMoses And either of those on their own is only a downvote?

Isaac Moses

@HodofHod NaN is always potentially ground for flagging for deletion, but as I said above, I'd probably stay such wrath a bit if I saw ground for initially judging favorably. "Far afield" is a situation-dependent judgement call.

HodofHod

Fair enough

I've always been a little bit confused by the NaN thing, really. SE seems to define it a lot more narrowly then most users do.

Not an Answer --> "Thanks.", "I have the same problem.", "Anybody knows the answer?", asking questions in answers, comments posted as answers. Things like that. — Robert Harvey Nov 28 '11 at 3:54

Ok, not confused really; he's pretty clear on what it's for. I'm not sure I agree that it should be so limited.

Double AA

5:06 AM

@Menachem I think that is far too simplistic an algorithm.

@HodofHod I disagree. The DH is useful in understanding parallel stories, not random minor textual issues. IAE the DH is not by definition an axiological claim so I don't know how using it would declare things meaningless.

@HodofHod Essentially it's that there were multiple texts. That the multiple texts were written by multiple authors is a reasonable guess, but not an essential part of the theory.

HodofHod

5:30 AM

@DoubleAA 1) On the assumption that the DH precludes the classical Jewish understanding of the divine origin of Torah, I asserted that it makes traditional scriptural analysis meaningless. If the Bible was written and edited by man, then there is no compelling reason to assume that inconsistencies between parallel passages are Judaicly meaningful. Historically and linguistically, perhaps, but then that's for BH.SE.

Double AA

@HodofHod But that's not what the answerer did. He just used it to explain why the story appears twice. He made no axiological claim. He just answered the question as posed. So not only did his answer not negate the implied assumption you see in the question, it also isn't a variant of your quotation.

The answer was not "You all are stupid for caring" it was "This is why there are two parallel stories". Those are very different answers.

Isaac is right that the sourcing was beyond weak, but the three that I didn't initially delete did answer the right question. Whether or not it posed a scope problem was not something I was going to decide on the spot.

@HodofHod Incidentally, lots of very effective drush can and has been written based on fictional man made works, so parts of parshanut are not by definition negated by non-Divine authorship.

HodofHod

I think they ignored the implied premise that comparing parallel scriptural texts leads to conclusions that are meaningful from a strictly Jewish perspective. If you transplanted both the question and the answer to BH.SE, I think he'd be in the clear. Here however, scriptural analysis questions have this implied assumption, else they'd be off topic. A question asking for answers from a linguistic or historical perspective would be OT. An answer to a question that didn't is deleteable.

Double AA

@HodofHod (OT is a terrible acronym)

HodofHod

:D

I've been thinking that forever. Glad someone agrees.

Double AA

@HodofHod I don't see how he ignored that premise. Like I said, non-Divine texts can provide Jewishly meaningful bases for exposition, and moreover a linguistic/historical answer to a regular parshanut question is totally acceptable. We usually call it "pshat".

HodofHod

5:47 AM

Its not pshat if it assumes that G-d and Moses didn't write it.

;)

Double AA

@HodofHod Now you are arguing scope, not structure. (Like informal vs formal fallacies.)

HodofHod

6:03 AM

It was always a little of both scope and structure. My hypothetical "halacha is invalid" troll would be OT and NaN (or whatever). That said, my primary concern is structure. I think meaninglessness of traditional analysis necessarily follows from (at least his approach to) the DH.

Those three answers can literally all be summed up as saying "the editor(s) messed up." If every question becomes answerable with "the Torah made a mistake" then, religiously speaking, the analysis is meaningless. Fascinating in linguistic, historical, and cultural ways, yes. But religiously?

As regards the "multiple authors": It seems to me that DH exists to answer a question, namely: "Why are there inconsistencies in the language and style of the Torah?" The answer they give is that the bible was compiled and edited from multiple sources. If you say that these multiple sources were not written by multiple authors, we're back (nearly) to square one.

Double AA

@HodofHod You're jumping the gun. To say that they user different words because they come from different sources is not say they are meaningless and can't produce good Jewish valued homiletics. It's no different from someone asking a question, with one answer explaining why the dagesh in this case is an exception to the rule of ati meracheik because of the previous vowel sound, and another explaining the dagesh as an emphasis in the speaker's determined prayer.

@HodofHod His approach to DH was about as removed as you can get. It just said: these stories are the same story recorded slightly differently. He made no other conclusions or assertions.

@HodofHod Fair.

HodofHod

@DoubleAA By omission, he did. If you want to say he made no conclusion, then they should be comments, at best. The implied conclusion is that it was simply a result of the editing job.

Double AA

6:19 AM

@HodofHod He made a conclusion, but only one. The relevant one for answering the question. And like I said, a linguistic/historical/technical answer to a regular parshanut question is totally acceptable. We usually call it "pshat".

@HodofHod You may not find dikduk (for instance) religiously inspiring, but it is still a valid answer.

0

Q: Can a woman ever wear a prayer shawl?

I've seen prayer shawls for girls available on the internet e.g. for Bat Mitzvah. Is this a good thing? I'm not sure what to think of it or if I'm comfortable with it. Can someone give me any guidance / insights here? I would be grateful.

clothing

Is ^^^ off topic for asking for personal guidance?

It's also kind of unclear, too broad, and opinion based.

At least it's not a duplicate :)

HodofHod

6:52 AM

I simply think that chalking everything up to editorial differences or mistakes is not traditional Jewish scriptural analysis. Human error is not inherently meaningful; rather, G-d's choice of words is, which is the assumption of Jewish commentators throughout history.

If someone could use the DH in a way that didn't come to that conclusion, I'd be more amenable, if shocked. These answers were very clear in their conclusion that the differences were non-Divine, and therefore, not essentially meaningful (if they were incidentally, he left that out).

@DoubleAA This. The personal guidance thing is easily rid of.

Monica Cellio

1:01 PM

@DoubleAA I edited to focus it more on the (objective) question in the title and less on the subjective opinion poll.

@HodofHod @DoubleAA @IsaacMoses should any of the DH discussion end up on meta somewhere?

Double AA

2:06 PM

@HodofHod Question: Why does this aggadata in the Talmud involve an XXX. Answer 1) The Lubavitcher Rebbe explains that XXX symbolizes.... Answer 2) All manuscripts of the Talmud from before Basel have the word XXY which connects the story linguistically to the previous story, using a common Talmudic memorization technique.

Is the first answer now meaningless? Is the second off topic?

@HodofHod His leaving it out is the important thing. He did not answer by dismissing the question. He answered the question. Directly. If you think his hermeneutic was non-Jewish, then that is a scope issue. But he answered it. He did not dismiss it a priori as irrelevant, which is what you claimed he did. He left it for anyone to derive their own conclusions.

It's no different than if an answer to a question rided on different Rishonim having different spellings of the word ויהיו in this week's parsha. Someone can give an answer explaining that (provided it's in scope) and leave everyone else to wonder about the meaning of the fact that we have such a difference.

Isaac Moses

@DoubleAA Tachlis, WRT these questions, what's your position on the assertion that they need to go past saying "DH" and say something specific about the anomaly at hand to be considered answers?

Double AA

9 hours ago, by Double AA

Isaac is right that the sourcing was beyond weak, but the three that I didn't initially delete did answer the right question. Whether or not it posed a scope problem was not something I was going to decide on the spot.

I removed one answer on the spot that didn't mention anything about the answer.

judaism.stackexchange.com/a/31456/759

Isaac Moses

@DoubleAA And the others, you're fine with @MonicaCellio's having deleted after deliberations?

@DoubleAA Also, what's your position on my assertion that BillPringle, in particular, is out of scope as a source?

Double AA

@IsaacMoses The answer is extremely low quality: There is little to no scope for improvement would seem to apply here, though that is a community function, not a mod function. (Unless it's out of scope.)

6

A: Using Christian interpretations in answers

We have had examples of people suggesting their own answers to questions, particularly those related to Biblical exegesis. The answers stand on their own merit and people can take them for what they're worth. (Regarding the authority to suggest new answers, see this; as examples of answers sugges...

Isaac Moses

@DoubleAA Huh. I have no votes recorded on that Q&A, which suggests that I missed it. Thanks for bringing it up. <reading>

Double AA

2:22 PM

@IsaacMoses meta.judaism.stackexchange.com/help/badges/32/…

Isaac Moses

@DoubleAA 's what I'M talkin about

Monica Cellio

@DoubleAA thanks for the reminder. Even though I'd seen it (I have votes there already), I didn't remember it last night.

@WAF Perhaps I should say: a read, such that if it were suggested by a Jew, we would not recognize it as out-of-scope. (What I want to avoid is someone reading Jesus into Isaiah, not someone reading a Pshat against a Midrash.) — Double AA Mar 22 at 14:39

Yes, that. ^^^

Isaac Moses

@DoubleAA So, to citation of a random dude DH-divvying up a passage based on his own conjecture, you say "eh, could be."? (I'm not intending to be sarcastic.)

Double AA

@IsaacMoses (assuming DH is in scope) Basically, Yes. It's not all divvied up by his whim. The different names of God are clear indicators which anyone can check in his work.

Isaac Moses

@DoubleAA Really? If you don't start from an assumption that DH is problematic, isn't there clear scope for improvement - making more specific claims?

@DoubleAA I meant, his own analysis.

Double AA

2:32 PM

@IsaacMoses There could be. But how little is little? That's why the community needs to be involved. In theory, I'm ok with the community voting to delete as wasted space almost anything they want. The fact that it came from a new user (who is unlikely to remain around extensively IMO) does not help.

@IsaacMoses You lost anonymity on your votes :)

Isaac Moses

@DoubleAA I don't prize that anonymity as much as some do.

Double AA

@IsaacMoses Moreover, the Pringles source is more like the scientific source than the religious source (from my answer). It's is reporting an academic consensus, not making drush for church.

Isaac Moses

@DoubleAA Thanks for your clarifications. I am glad that we have someone here (esp. on the mod staff) who is Torah-adherent, thoughtful, and familiar with academic Biblical scholarship.

(Not, chas veshalom, impugning anyone else's qualifications along any of those axes. Just appreciating @DoubleAA's thoughtful and knowledgeable contribution to this discussion.)

Double AA

3:02 PM

@IsaacMoses I'd like to think that to the extent that it is true the latter is not my top qualification for this job

Isaac Moses

@DoubleAA Useless without the other two, but it helps.

Monica Cellio

@IsaacMoses I agree. I've read layman-level stuff about DH in the distant past (ISTR a book called Who Wrote the Bible), but I wouldn't call myself particularly knowledgabe there.

Isaac Moses

@MonicaCellio That's one book more than I've read about it. :)

HodofHod

4:46 PM

@DoubleAA I think the DH by definition dismisses all such analysis as a priori irrelevant. He didn't leave out his conclusions: they were very clear. His conclusion was that all these textual inconsistencies are because of 'R's editing job of the bible. The assumption of the question is that the inconsistency is meaningful; his answer is that it's not.

Perhaps using the DH would not be a structural problem on other types of scriptural analysis, but certainly for those that deal with inconsistencies, the DH is clearly in conflict with such questions' assumptions

Double AA

@HodofHod He claims the inconsistencies derive from multiple manuscripts, not R's fancies. Why is it again that such a text, even without direct Divine authorship, can't be meaningful? Where does the DH say that? How is this different from the examples I gave above?

HodofHod

5:03 PM

@DoubleAA If you truly believe that it doesn't preclude the Jewish analysis' assumption meaningfulness (I do), then it doesn't answer the question. The question asks what is meaningful, and the answer ignores it.

Double AA

(For anyone following, the Basel edition of the Talmud Bavli was printed in the late 16th Century, basically under the auspices of the Church. The vast majority of the changes that we attribute to "the censors" derive from changes made to this edition.)

@HodofHod The question asks why there is a difference and this answer it.

HodofHod

"Is the difference between the words tzur and selah significant here?"

I believe that the DH's answer to this (and every other textual discrepancy) is "no."

Double AA

@HodofHod First of all, that completely literally answers the question. Second, it is significant in helping "us" work out which verses belong to which text, whereby "we" can search for themes and patterns in the respective texts and their inter-relations.

You have a strange definition of "significant" and "meaningful".

HodofHod

Yes, it answers the question by ignoring the assumption that it's significant.

@DoubleAA A Jewish one, I like to think.

Double AA

@HodofHod No. First of all, it explains the significance. Second, there is no such assumption. If there was, it would be written, "What is the significance of the difference between...." and I would have probably complained in a comment that the OP was assuming things without basis :)

@HodofHod No. A particular one.

Yours seems somewhat like "a ruchiniesdika geshmak" as opposed to "what can be learned from X".

The latter is totally a "Jewish understanding" of the word "significance' (whatever that means)

I take it back.

Yours is definitely a Jewish one. But it is by no means exclusive in that category.

HodofHod

5:14 PM

@DoubleAA You have indeeed complained on that in the past, though I can't remember where, and I completely disagree with that. I think it's nearly universally understood what the question is assuming and what it wants to know.

Double AA

@HodofHod You think it was asking for Drash as opposed to Pshat? Why so?

What if my answer was that contemporary Akkadian documents show that the word Tzur was used regarding desert rocks that are far from egypt. Would that be no good?

This is the same thing.

It may remove any need to make drash, but that doesn't mean it removes the potential.

HodofHod

@DoubleAA Absolutely good. Because it means that the Author's choice of words was meaningful, which is the question's assumption.

Double AA

@HodofHod What if my answer was "Radak writes that the two words are completely interchangeable"?

@HodofHod How does the DH imply that the words aren't meaningful? Maybe it will claim that Tzur is early Hebrew and Sela' is late Hebrew or something. The question is why is there a switch and this answers it.

It's a theory about origins not value. I don't know how it could possibly be used to evaluate something's "meaningfulness" (in your sense of the word).

HodofHod

@DoubleAA What if you extrapolated that answer and went to every question and wrote: "Based on the Radak over there, these words are probably interchangeable and incidental."

Double AA

@HodofHod 'Twould be a weak answer. If Radak actually said it though...

HodofHod

5:28 PM

15 hours ago, by HodofHod

@MonicaCellio Not to mention a terrible answer. The question clearly assumes a meaningful reason (i.e., a single and divine Author), and the answer ignores that. Every. Single. scriptural analysis question could be answered with some variant of "The documentary hypothesis says that this meaningless."

Replace "meaningless" with "incidental"

Double AA

@HodofHod What's your point? If Radak actually said it it would be perfectly valid as an answer. So too here.

HodofHod

@DoubleAA But very low quality. In this case, the answer does not have the Radak to back him up. His rejection of an assumption that is acceptable to the community is based on a (largely) atheistic doctrine. It doesn't have the credibility to ignore or contradict the assumption.

Double AA

@HodofHod Now you're talking scope again.

and lack of good sourcing.

The content of the answer is no less an answer than דברה תורה כלשון בני אדם. It should be sourced well and be in scope like all answers need to be.

HodofHod

12 hours ago, by HodofHod

It was always a little of both scope and structure. My hypothetical "halacha is invalid" troll would be OT and NaN (or whatever). That said, my primary concern is structure. I think meaninglessness of traditional analysis necessarily follows from (at least his approach to) the DH.

14 hours ago, by Isaac Moses

@MonicaCellio I like this formulation: "the farther afield something is the more, and more promptly, it needs to add support."

Double AA

@HodofHod I never argued (or, technically, commented) on this.

@HodofHod Whatever it implies about the value of other methods of parshanut is irrelevant. It answers the question itself and it is allowed to participate in a machloket.

It is structurally an answer.

HodofHod

5:39 PM

@DoubleAA Yes it is. But a very low quality one, as we've agreed. Answers to every Halacha question with "Halacha isn't binding" or "It's a machlokes" are also structurally sound but they're low quality. In the case of the former, its problems are compounded by its rejection of the community.

Double AA

5:49 PM

@HodofHod The latter is a weak answer in need of serious sourcing and/or elaboration. I don't think the former is an answer. It is not basable in sources. As Isaac wrote: Pre-existing basic agreement on the need for authoritative sources to back up statements about law maximizes answer quality and minimizes the chances of people talking past each other. (See also his reformulation meta.judaism.stackexchange.com/a/472/759)

HodofHod

But structurally?

Double AA

@HodofHod As far as SE is concerned, no. "We expect answers to be supported by facts, references, or expertise".

@HodofHod Incidentally, I don't know if your last statement is true. schechter.edu/AskTheRabbi.aspx?ID=443

HodofHod

I was under the impression that Conservatism firmly held to Torah MiSinai? No?

Double AA

6:05 PM

Conservative Judaism

Conservative Judaism (also known as Masorti Judaism outside of the United States and Canada) is a modern stream of Ashkenazi Judaism that arose out of intellectual currents in Germany in the mid-19th century and took institutional form in the United States in the early 1900s. Conservative Judaism has its roots in the school of thought known as Positive-Historical Judaism, developed in 1850s Germany as a reaction to the more liberal religious positions taken by Reform Judaism. The term conservative was meant to signify that Jews should attempt to conserve Jewish tradition, rather than re...

FWIW

HodofHod

Interesting. I stand corrected. It actually mentions the DH specifically in there, unsourced though.

Charles Koppelman

9:49 PM

Holy clock is annoying. It's definitely not shabbas here.

Monica Cellio

10:02 PM

@HodofHod that's interesting. The Conservative rabbinic body, more than anybody else's so far as I understand it, runs to majority and minority views in responsa, with the idea that a sufficiently-supported-but-still-minority view (i.e. not outliers) can be followed. But a C rabbi decides for his community; individuals don't get to pick and choose. That's the theory, anyway. But all that said, they follow a halachic process, so there must be some idea of divine revelation of torah?

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