(To make it clear, I am not up for a debate, I am just going to state some facts)
Pretty simple. You are Translating תורה (Torah) wrong. It does not mean law, it is the current practice and 'law' of the Jewish Nation. (Note: It is almost impossible to translate the 'Old' testament to English wit...
@swasheck good point. I commented as soon as I saw it, in part because I figured it was my job to try to redirect one of "my own", so to speak, but I failed to bring it up in here.
Actually, partially doctrine, partially not very polite, and mostly not starting from the text, but it all added up to a desire to prevent a knife-fight in the comments...
i changed my profile picture ... i'm assuming that it's delivered via imgur because it's blocked here at work. however, if i did it via gravatar then it'd show up
@MonicaCellio i understood the caveat and i understood it a very different theological framework and worldview. Jewish interpretation on these things is still very valuable even if we disagree.
@swasheck I'll see it when I get home. (I can see that you changed it because you're now showing up as text instead of your old picture.)
@swasheck it is, and the question was bad and that contributed. I do hope he comes back and tries again on a better question. If he works within our guidelines he'll be a valuable addition to the site. As I said in my comment, I'd like to not be so lonely. :-)
@JackDouglas, I removed the pin on this based on yesterday's chat (closed questions don't require review until they're edited, at which point they'll bump so we'll see).
@MonicaCellio I wonder if we can avoid value judgements in our pinned messages. I'm thinking more like "new user, forum-type answer". (Same result, different phrasing.)
@JonEricson Ron is, well, being Ron. I didn't downvote him because, buried in there, is the argument that God talks to Avraham via other means (so why assume he would speak through the messengers here?), but it's weakly presented.
@MonicaCellio Yeah. A useful addition to the answer would be to connect the passage to another (ideally in Genesis) that shows Avraham could not have spoken to God face-to-face.
@JonEricson indeed. I could even do that (not in Genesis though), in the interests of arguing with myself... is it worth doing? (it would be a so-so argument, I think, not incredibly strong) Edit: no I can't; never mind. Or, maybe I could, but not using Deut 34.
@DanO'Day indeed. I have been told that, contrary to what's been said in blog posts and stuff, the community team doesn't actually mind inactive mods if there are also active ones. I think they view this site as having three mods (the normal minimum number), and there's also Ray. Even if they remove Ray, they're not going to replace him. Of course, you could ask someone with the authority to answer that question, which I don't have.
@DanO'Day it would be nice for him to be active again. Richard too; Richard had a lot of good early questions and was a mod at one point (since removed).
@DanO'Day Richard was a mod (there's an old meta post listing the original mods); now he's not. I don't know the details of how the change happened; I had always assumed that he became inactive and they cleaned up. Jack or Caleb could probably tell us.
But AFAIK it wasn't any sort of "disciplinary" removal, if that's what you were thinking! Richard's a good guy -- just, now, an absent good guy, to our loss.
@JonEricson for now I'm going with Jack's idea of a week, and I counted from the date of the first comment about it. (Or the post date -- same in this case, but we should probably do the comment because we'll encounter old ones that were never challenged.)
First, remember that David was king, and as king he answered to no one but G-d. He could have ordered Uriah killed on whatever pretext and then taken Bat-Sheva. He had that authority. Instead, what he did was rely on the fact that Jewish soldiers going into battle are required to give their wi...
It sort of boils down to "David was above the law".
Is there support for this somewhere? I guess I'm intrigued, but I'm not getting enough detail for my taste.
First, remember that David was king, and as king he answered to no one but G-d. He could have ordered Uriah killed on whatever pretext and then taken Bat-Sheva. He had that authority. Instead, what he did was rely on the fact that Jewish soldiers going into battle are required to give their wi...
The Library
The Library