Option 1. The verse divisions are misleading. The phrase in parens goes with the next verse:
There, the Shepherd, the Rock of Israel -- The G-d of your father that helps you,
...
In other words, it's a descriptive epithet of G-d.
Option 2. Look at the entire blessing of Joseph as a unit, and t...
if this is a good answer, we need to vote it up
(I'm don't know enough to say that it is or not, but I'm worried the DV is an 'I disagree' rather than 'this is not useful')
@TRiG The faq says "We welcome Jewish, Christian, Atheist and other viewpoints as long as they take seriously the process of understanding the Biblical texts. "
@Soldarnal mods can see deleted comments, but not in the usual place so you have to be looking for them
@MonicaCellio yes, but first and foremost I don't think the 'editing' approach will work. I've been arguing here and on meta that choosing which bits you consider 'doctrine' is subjective: you and me would choose different bits of different posts. We need objective criteria first and foremost to be able to justify any edits to the person whose post is affected
take the edit to @Dan's post above: say Dan is a new user and has had this edit. He feels strongly the meaning of his post has changed: what does he do? rant on meta? rollback the edit? revenge edit your posts?
the last option is the most problematic outcome of all: what if his edits are also arguably valid too? Unless we have clear and objective criteria for good/bad edits, how do we justify rolling back his but not yours?
If someone proposes such clear and objective criteria, I think their proposal would be worthy of serious consideration: the word 'doctrine' is imo woefully short of that standard, however a rule such as: "you may not use the word heresy" meets it.
(I'm against such a rule but it is the kind of rule that could be enforced fairly if it was adopted)
Similarly we could have a rule that states: "no answer is allowed that makes only bald doctrinal statements without any reference to either specific Bible texts or external sources"
On balance, I think the rules we have are working!, and I've tried to back that up with links to questions and answers that show how the voting system is promoting well reasoned, backed up and referenced answers. Any change we make may make things worse, either through unintended consequences or by driving away current contributors who are broadly happy with the status quo.
If things were demonstrably not working the risk would certainly be worth it; as things are going smoothly I think it would be reckless to make major changes
@JackDouglas It looks plausible to me (and I have voted up), especially option 1 -- punctuation and verse divisions are not original. He's right about the mem prefix being rather fluid in biblical Hebrew.
@JackDouglas I don't think bulletproof, concrete rules/definitons are the way to go. I mean, Stack Exchange doesn't even have such definitions for "offensive" and "spam", and those have much more severe consequences (deletion and rep penalty). Rather, we use the "reasonable person principle", and I think we should do that with edits. Edits leave a complete audit trail and controversial ones can be (a) discussed and (b) rolled back.
@JackDouglas As for @DanO'Day 's case, he should roll back the edit and comment. We should assume that editors are trying to be helpful, not malicious, so a comment explaining why that apparent-to-the-editor "clarification" was actually a change is a positive action -- educational, acknowledges the good intention, and perhaps starts a dialogue.
You appear to be following the rule of "original post stands unless you can bring a solid case for an edit". I think that's harsh, and also no less arbitrary than the approach I favor, which is "continuous improvement is good; edits should be made/proposed freely and if there's a problem we'll deal with it".
@MonicaCellio there still has to be something objective in a mix, eg in a courtroom a jury might need to ask did something objective happen beyond reasonable doubt*—a mix of objective and subjective I agree, but you would never use that kind of criteria to decide what flavour of ice-cream is bet (vanilla btw), because that is *entirely subjective. I think I am a reasonable person but I think 100% of all posts is doctrinal—I don't see how a 'reasonable person' criteria can work in this case.
You say yours is working because there aren't a lot of problematic posts; I say we don't have a lot of problematic posts despite your approach, but we already have some ill will and discomfort.
I think this post is a wake-up call, coming from someone who hadn't been involved in the discussion beforehand:
Response from recent visitor:
If you want this site to take off, I think you need to attract the attention of people like my Hebrew teacher, who is a PhD candidate in one of the relevant fields. He's a committed Christian, and yet teaches Hebrew Bible at my synagogue, where he and his students ...
@MonicaCellio no, I say that edits should never change the intent of the author. They should unambiguously improve the post in an uncontroversial way :)
@MonicaCellio I think the burden should be on you to provide some evidence of that, don't you?
@JackDouglas If an author says "X is true" an edit shouldn't change that to "X is false" or "Y is true" or the like. But an edit can remove the statement as irrelevant. That was my edit that you rolled back.
@JackDouglas Why shouldn't the burden of proof be on you? You're asserting that your current policy works; I'm asserting it doesn't. Why is the burden only on one of us?
@JackDouglas And we don't know how he's feeling because we haven't asked him. If you want more evidence, I'll tell you that I have considered walking away from this site because of these problems. I don't want to do that.
but there will be one day: until then we have to keep making our cases I think. It may be that the site changes in a way that proves you right, and if that happens I hope many will change their position (I will)
If you want to say "the current state is the default and presumed acceptable unless there's a clear uprising on meta", that's not starting from a sound position. This isn't a graduated site; it's a beta.
The current state is what happened when a mostly-Christian, mostly-doctrinal crowd started a site. That doesn't mean it's best. Beta is all about exploring these things, but your approach places an undue burden on the exploration IMO.
@MonicaCellio but what's getting lost in all this is that you and I mostly agree on what is a good answer and what is not: just not on how to get there.
A truth is the set of rules and reality to which a world ascribes to, in this case. For example, in a video game, the design of that game dictates the truth of that world. The creation of existence, the logic that supernatural forces perform on, and whether or not you can carry more than 99 of any particular item or fit 10 elephants on a boat.
This is what I mentioned about when you got me in the mod room earlier - to call a perspective as opinion is to claim that it can be questioned whether or not it is truth. And that's not rather what people who ascribe to a religion intend, generally.
I don't mean like parallel worlds or anything, but the fact is that different religions purport separate realities to be the one we live in.
There is an antagonistic way of saying "all other religions are wrong" and a perfectly civil way of doing so without qualifying every statement with relativistic qualifiers like 'I believe' etc
Anyone who spends time talking about faith issues needs to be able to tolerate the latter in my opinion
It also applies to probably all of the religion sites in general, since there are different... uh... divisions in each one? I don't know the term and I think it differs between each religion anyway.
Zedekiah figured that he would not be taken to Babylon because Jeremiah said he would not see Babylon. It was his opinion that the prophets disagreed. The understanding is that Zedekiah refused to believe Jeremiah because Ezekiel had prophesied that Zedekiah should never see Babylon (he had no id...
@GraceNote Yes. Mi Yodeya, where I'm a moderator, has certainly had this come up. Our approach is to shy away from truth-assertions and toward source-assertions ("X says this", and if most of us consider X authoritative that's a separate matter).
This is what I meant by multiple (intersecting) truths - we have people who see different realities and that's very different from just seeing different sides of the same reality.
@JackDouglas It's working reasonably well. We, like BH, have unbalanced demographics, so it's a little hard to tell. But we aren't having fights and it's not because the minority has been surpressed (as part of that minority I would notice).
@JackDouglas I don't think we need to add "I believe" all over the place. He's looking at the sources and making an argument; that's fine. But that's not the kind of post we're talking about here. Show me a Joseph-style example.
@JackDouglas Ok, we agree on that. A lot of why I don't like them is that he treats his doctrine as fundamental truth and spreads it all over the place -- and you won't let me edit that. Why don't you like them (since it's probably not that)?
the last section deals with the thorny issue and doesn't offer much guidence if it is allowed to be taken as separate to the rest of the post (which I think is excellent btw)
@MonicaCellio I really don't think Kazark's posts should be put in the same bag as Josephs: Kazark writes in a similar 'definite', 'this is the truth' manner but without the aggression or attitude
@GraceNote I see what you mean, but there is fairly broad agreement on the kind of answers we all like, just not on whether we should 'edit out doctrine'
you seem to be saying "Edits are to improve and fix posts, not to change them" (which is my line too—we have other levers to pull for stuff we don't like or don't think fits the tone of the site), but then imply 'but this doesn't apply for doctrine'.
I'm saying that whether or not doctrine should be edited out or "qualified" is inherently dependent on whether or not "doctrinal statement" is tolerated and accepted and in what fashion it is. This completely dictates how editing it would be done, and this decision is not one that network policy decides.
In the spirit of biblical hermeneutics, the general hermeneutic that I will be applying to this text is historical-grammatical-critical. Since no real discussion can occur unless we agree on our hermeneutics, here are some of the hermeneutical principles that I apply as I interpret scripture, inc...
@GraceNote, @JackDouglas and I agree wht "edits are to improve and fix posts, not to change them". But when Jack says that he means something different than what I mean when I say it. I think editing out unneeded doctrine improves posts; he thinks it harms them.
@MonicaCellio reading what @JackDouglas is saying ... i think that he believes it does damage to what the original answerer was attempting to communicate.
@MonicaCellio I'm aware. The policy on editing is subordinate to the policy on the material itself. Hence my repeated point that we can't address the matter of "Should doctrinal statement be edited out" by looking at editing, but it must be looked at on the matter of the posts itself and allowing it as a whole.
@GraceNote ok, so starting an effort to agree on what sort of content we do not want in answers, using words that we agree on the definitions of (ie not 'doctrine') is one possibility?
@GraceNote I see. Thanks. And thank you for your answer, which -- even if it doesn't wave a magic wand over the doctrine question -- does bring clarity to other areas, like editing out attacks ("be nice").
@MonicaCellio on the issue of personal attacks ... as i said in my answer, from the perspective of reason and logic, ad hominem attacks betray a breakdown in logic to the extent that the attacker loses credibility and their argument suffers.
@JackDouglas perception matters more than intent. If it wasn't intended the author shouldn't object to cleaning it up so everyone agrees there's no attack.
If someone asks a Tanakh question, is "that means Jesus" or "that's a reference to Mary's perpetual virginity" valid as a response? If someone asks a NT question, is "that's an allusion to Muhammad" a valid answer?
An answer that brings "out-of-context" doctrine, like a Christian answer to a...
@MonicaCellio "heresy" is a much more powerful word than most wish to accept. i think that people should be educated as to the implication of that word. it's why i tried to choose my words carefully the other day when exploring Bob's methodology.
It seems from this question, its comments, answers, and chat, that the word "heresy" and any of its derivatives can be seen as offensive. We are a non-doctrinal site and so there's no such thing as orthodoxy here. Therefore, anyone addressing some point of view as a "heresy" is not making a val...
@swasheck yes, I chose it to harken back to that discussion. But Joseph's "all religions are really about Jesus, including Judaism" paragraph is comparable.
Oops, I have to drop off for about two hours. I'll be back later to pick this up.
@swasheck I haven't seen many personal attacks; the attacks are more oblique ("heresy", repurposing tanakh, etc).
I don't like the tone of Joseph's posts, and I think we should discourage folk from engaging with other users of the site (including with answers) in that manner
i hope i'm not speaking out of turn on behalf of @MonicaCellio, but Judaism is fascinating. it is not easily reduced to being a belief system ... it's a way of life that incorporates belief.
@JackDouglas and i think that this is where @MonicaCellio is coming from. her perspective, if i understand it correctly, is that we can circumvent a good deal of this by making doctrine off-topic
@MonicaCellio however, this works pretty well within the Jewish mind if I understand correctly. Sources are very important in Judaism. Most Christians are running around with a worldview of Sola Scriptura and don't care about sources other than the biblical text (often blind to their actual sources and biases)
@JackDouglas i'm thinking through the degree to which it accurately represents my perspective --- that's how i understand voting on meta. if i'm wrong then correct me. on the main site i upvote for accurate synthesis (whether or not i agree, per se) of solid research
@JackDouglas and this has been my contention since this debate started bubbling to the surface. this also is the reason why i tend to tread on the side of no doctrinal/theological (by)products from the synthesis.
@JackDouglas yes. sorry. i'm hyperbolizing ... for the dramatic effect
@JackDouglas but because of the implication of the name, "Biblical Hermeneutics" there is going to be some degree of theology/doctrine/faith that is injected into the consciousness of the site. i get that and i understand. as i keep saying, i totally understand the tension in which we all walk when participating here
@JackDouglas my apologies ... i am terribly lazy sometimes ... do you have a formal proposal? would it be a synthesis of your "Edit" answer and your "Doctrine" answer?
as an aside ... while i personally agree and believe in Kazark's answer --- i am of the opinion that it steps over the boundaries of BH a bit. i think that's evident in my comment.
Metaphors are a pithy way to express truth, and as such are heavily employed in proverbs such as this one, and indeed in all of wisdom literature. This metaphor should communicate strongly to anyone familiar with rope (or, interestingly, in our own day, cable). A rope woven from two strands is so...
and this is a tremendous non sequitur
> For me to separate Christology or Trinitarianism from my Old Testament exegesis to give up my faith.
Within the Tanach/Old Testament there is no association of the angelic “adversary”, the satan¹ in the books of Job and Samuel, to be any sort of fallen or rebellious angel. Aside from the rather obscure verses about the nefilim in Genesis 6, I know of no Biblical verses that Jewish scholars take ...
i approach my answers for this site from a scientific (for lack of a better word ... maybe systematic) perspective. this is because i have a scientific mind (BS in Mol. Bio). it's also because i have specific, academic training in such activities. i have been formally trained to divorce theology/doctrine from the process of extracting meaning through the identification of internal and external evidence
@JackDouglas no, but it is to say that i dont mind filtering out the inherent judaism Rashi references for the sake of extracting a kernel of information regarding the meaning of "bread" just like i dont mind filtering out Kazark's Trinitarian reference for the sake of gaining more information regarding perspectives on a cord of three strands.
but when an answer starts with a clear theological bent, and then reads that bent into the the text, and then is justified with "because the word of god is infallible and must be consistent," i get my downvote clicker ready.
in an ideal world, it'd be neat to see BH.SE become a knowledge base/repository for Christianity.SE ... but i know that's not what the community wants, nor am i even sure it's what's best for all parties involved. so i'm quite flexible there :)
@swasheck but @Monica wants us to edit, and I think that would be going too far
@Caleb, I think a polite society places the burden on both sides: the reader should strive not to take offense, and the author should strive not to give it. I'm not talking about hyper-sensitive political correctness where we distort language and twist our brains to make a point (which I find problematic); I'm talking about something much more basic. In this case we have some perfectly good terms that everybody understands (Hebrew bible) or can learn easily (Tanakh), so I'm having trouble understanding why you think we shouldn't ask people to use them. — Monica Cellio2 days ago
@JackDouglas well, in my opinion, an answer that starts with theology/doctrine is right out and demands a fleet of DV/VtD unless the answerer demonstrates a willingness to put some effort into it.
@JackDouglas i guess i'd start with DV ... and this is also where the ethos/mechanics of SE is lost on me. if something is way off, why should it remain?
@swasheck Calebs answer the Monica's comment above refers to is well worth reading, alond with the entire comment thread. I think Caleb's position is the only reasonable one
The obvious solution is to let answers that are "plain wrong" be downvoted into oblivion - where they will serve a useful purpose advertising their wrongness :)
The problem is that there are two kinds of votes:
informed votes from people who could have answered the question themselves or who h...
@JackDouglas i can see that. but that means that we have to have the ... courage ... to DV bad answers. but that brings back the theology phoenix. if it's technically correct but outside of the scope of the site, what then?
yeah. this whole thing is why i've relegated myself to answering text/source criticism questions. WAY less chance of theology flaring up and consuming the community
@JackDouglas maybe in a vacuum ... just all of the posts from that question yesterday and then a scan of Christianity led to a few other JW questions. i may have overstated again. i tend to do that.
Simply my opinion. I would argue that the term Biblical applies to:
The canonical 66 books of the Protestant
extra 7 Deuterocanonical books used by Catholics?
extra 12 used by the Eastern Orthodox church?
Not:
ancient Jewish literature considered of import to understanding the Canon(s)?
Apo...
@swasheck I don't understand your "show your work" comment. Are you saying I needed to prove Joseph's assertion wrong? If so, why doesn't he (or you) need to prove it's right? (In that case, though, it's irrelevant to the answer, as I've said. But if it were relevant...)
Hey! it does include this book. Thanks for posting @JackDouglas - I thought it was only the Protestant bible, didn't know I could also post about the books my church uses
@JackDouglas I stand by this answer. You presumably stand by your disagreement with it. It has votes in both directions but is not near the top, but note that the top-voted answer also calls for it to be relevant and soured, so that's a little puzzling.
@swasheck Oh! You're saying Jack needs to show his work. I agree. I thought someone (and again, I misread the poster, sigh) was saying I needed to and I was puzzled by that.
@MonicaCellio I think Jon's answer is great and I agree that answers should be "relevant and sourced" and that we should encourage that. The specific question of whether to edit a question that isn't is addressed on your meta post separately.
@JackDouglas The two top answers on the doctrinal-answers question, at 5 and 3 net votes, are in conflict with each other. I think it's a little disingenous to say that on a question with votes of 5, 3, 1, 0, 0, -1 the top two have broad support. It looks to me like one of them has, one of them has so-so support, and the rest don't even have that.
@swasheck "i'd like to mention that those that that answer claim to be "not" should still be in-bounds for hermeneutical process" - please reword, not sure what you're saying
@JackDouglas Note that Jon's answer calls for editing. It was on that basis that I edited Joseph's post.
So here we were talking about an unsourced doctrinal statement that did not answer the question. It failed the Jon test on multiple levels. The rest of the answer didn't deserve deletion, though, just that part.
@DanO'Day with regards to the the answer that Jack linked in here about "on-topic" texts, the answer gave three categories that were in the "not" section. i was just re-emphasizing the "not"s' value in exegesis, if only from a linguistic perspective
@JackDouglas Re "all religions are not really about Jesus", where do you intend the "all" to bind? Certainly not all religions are about Jesus, but that should be uncontroversial. Christianity and derivatives are; others aren't. ?
@MonicaCellio all I mean is that the negation of Josephs statement is equally doctrinal
@JackDouglas, any question on the tanakh texts (I'm not actually sure what's latest, Malachi or some of the writings like Esther), except where the OP has asked for a Christian (or Muslim) perspective. We allow the questioner to set those kinds of parameters, so it should be opt-in, not opt-out. — Monica CellioNov 19 '12 at 18:16
@JackDouglas That comment is saying "answer questions in their context". In my doctrine any assertion that tanakh is really about Jesus is false; in yours it could be true. If the question asks what the gospel-writers meant in refering to that text, fine and dandy. But it is disingenuous to say, in response to a question like "what does this word mean", to say "Jesus".
@JackDouglas ok, that is news to me. Thank you for enlightening me.
That is a doctrinal statement not actually rooted in the text, though. Can you see how that is different from an answer that draws only from the text?
@swasheck Using mdrash to say "this is what it means" is a problem (and I strive to avoid that). Using it to say "this is how the rabbis of that time understood this" is on par with saying "this is how Augustine/Paul/etc understood this". Saying "oh by the way the midrash says X", as an add-on, is ok if not the bulk of the answer IMO, like anecdotes.
Just to complete that second clause -- that's ok as a way of showing how other presumed experts (e.g. in the language) understood something. That's evidence, nothing more.
@swasheck nailed it. That's what I'm trying to say -- we can circumvent the ill will that is otherwise inevitable if we eschew doctrine. Is that possible? Maybe not 100%, but we can do better.
@JackDouglas I do not understand what is so bad about using neutral terms. (I have not yet voted on his answer; he makes good points but the "burden is on the reader only" part is off.)
@JackDouglas I'm not talking about a hunting spree. I'm talking about the idea that changing "OT" to "tanakh" or "Hebrew bible", especially in a question that's not about the christian testament, should be noncontroversial.
@JackDouglas Is anything mandated in academia? I'm not an academic; I don't know how often people use other terms there. My knowledge of the usage comes from wikipedia.
@MonicaCellio i think that "Hebrew Bible" is somewhat open to misunderstanding since an implication can be drawn that it is of no use to the Christian. but i understand where you're coming from.
@JackDouglas i guess it'd depend on your circles and audience. if you're writing to Christians, "Old Testament" is probably within scope ...
@swasheck Of the two I actually prefer "tanakh", which I've seen people other than me use here already. But I don't know why "Hebrew bible" would convey "not relevant to Christians" while "old testament" (old, superseded) wouldn't.
@MonicaCellio a lot of it is cultural and Christian heritage - and i get that you're arguing from a heritage value position too. do you find it unreasonable for you to answer questions and address the Scriptures as "Tanakh" while someone who is less familiar with your heritage conventions to call them according to their own heritage ("Old Testament")?
@JackDouglas if I write an answer about avodah zara and talk about how worshipping multiple gods or multi-part gods or saints is idolatry, does it matter that I didn't mean to offend you?
@MonicaCellio downvote and comment and move along. i dont know if it was here or on DBA.SE where i downvoted, let them know why i downvoted and then left a message for future visitors to know why the answer was a trainwreck. perhaps that was too far, but ...
@swasheck I downvote, so obviously I don't think I'm being rude. What's rude is to downvote when instead we could have fixed a glaring problem. Sort of like that formatting mess yesterday; plagiarism aside, is it better to DV or to fix the formatting?
@JackDouglas you don't know that; most people haven't voiced an opinion. No one wants to create or step into an edit war. I edited, you rolled back. Actually, Jon agreed with my edit here.
Another answer lists 3 options. I will show that there is an Option 4 in the "Twilight Report" [PDF] offered freely at Paschal Lamb Ministries website.
Option 4—There is one author to the Bible, the Holy Spirit.
He used many instruments. This option states that the Jewish "inclusive rec...
I downvoted that answer for that reason. I also left a comment. It's a self-answer so that makes me a bit skeptical that this is an agenda-driven question.
If someone asks a Tanakh question, is "that means Jesus" or "that's a reference to Mary's perpetual virginity" valid as a response? If someone asks a NT question, is "that's an allusion to Muhammad" a valid answer?
An answer that brings "out-of-context" doctrine, like a Christian answer to a...
The obvious solution is to let answers that are "plain wrong" be downvoted into oblivion - where they will serve a useful purpose advertising their wrongness :)
The problem is that there are two kinds of votes:
informed votes from people who could have answered the question themselves or who h...
Simply my opinion. I would argue that the term Biblical applies to:
The canonical 66 books of the Protestant
extra 7 Deuterocanonical books used by Catholics?
extra 12 used by the Eastern Orthodox church?
Not:
ancient Jewish literature considered of import to understanding the Canon(s)?
Apo...
Another answer lists 3 options. I will show that there is an Option 4 in the "Twilight Report" [PDF] offered freely at Paschal Lamb Ministries website.
Option 4—There is one author to the Bible, the Holy Spirit.
He used many instruments. This option states that the Jewish "inclusive rec...
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