bimargulies wrote a while back:
People who set up and operate interdenominational academic institutions have spent decades learning how to structure an environment that allows respectful collaboration on texts across the various lines. Yet it seems to me that some people here stubbornly insis...
@Caleb, I think I have a pretty good understanding of where Mary is coming from and can help her frame her Q & A's more appropriately for the site. (hermeneutics.stackexchange.com/questions/8235/…). I would like to try any ways. Just wanted to let you know what I am up to.
@Sarah You are welcome to try –it's not like they are going to get worse– but in all honesty I'm not sure it is going to be worth your time. She has made several expressions about her purpose in using the site that are really a miss match for our site. You have the magic touch that can work one or two questions into shape, but unless you also convince her to also adjust her expectations, I'm not sure how much benefit she or anyone will see out of the effort.
@Caleb That is exactly my intent. I sent her a comment to the effect that the site is not a podium for preaching--we start with the text and stop short of application. If she is not OK with that we are just both wasting our time. But if she is OK with that we will proceed after my edit. I wanted to tell her that if not she can expect we will just begin voting to close/deleting her posts, but I did not have the authority for that.
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If she does not cooperate, I personally intend to begin simply voting to close.
@Sarah She's heard that comment many times. You might not be able to see it but the vast majority of her posts are already deleted (3 out of 16 answers remain). Her response has always been some form of resistance.
She has claimed in as many words that she is a prophet, that her interpretations are inspired, that it is her mission to correct the error of both Christianity and Judaism, that all established knowledge on the scriptures is wrong except hers, and that she is here to do battle in the sprirtual realm.
(And that isn't to paraphrase, she's outright said all that.)
I've tried really hard already to figure out if she has any questions, but literally all of her questions are focused on issues she thinks everybody else has wrong. She isn't trying to learn something by them, she wants to get a message out. I'm not sure what more we can do unless you succeed in bending her whole paradigm.
@Caleb I know, she said those things to me as well. I actually think she removed the last question I edited for her. We shall see what becomes of this.
@Caleb OK, she brings some good questions to the surface that I think we can harvest and maintain respect to her original posts. We'll see how she responds to the edit.
It is not clear to me but this site welcomes Judaism too right?
I 2nd the notion that the title Biblical Hermeneutics sounds like Xtian Hermeneutics.
To me, Bible = Xtianity
I think Judaism call it Talmudical hermeneutics.
How about just plain Hermeneutics -- a site for Christianity and Judai...
@JonEricson Appreciated your thoughtful post. (Key bits of "my" quote are your words, of course! ;) On closing sentence: "But don't treat us as students; treat us as peers." Are there examples of patronizing posts to learn from?
@JonEricson One of the things I enjoy about BH.SE is that it is a "commons", and explanations of the text stand or fall on their own merits.
@Davïd I don't know what @JonEricson had in mind there but it fits well with the other motif we've had an issue with. The struggle with partially identifying with Academia is one end. the other is characterized by the preachy/teachy tone that seems to be instructing what to believe on faith as opposed to a "peer" voice that would be reasoning through the text with others who were also studying at the same level.
@Caleb There's one way of talking about "hermeneutics" which absolutely levels and relativizes all "readings", of course.
@Caleb I guess BH.SE is still trying to work out the nature of the most appropriate filter(s) that can help to discriminate the worthwhile from the worthless.
It's hard not to do this when so many questions are so basic, but a "peer" focused approach to answering where some parts of an answer may well go over the heads of the asker will be more valuable to the wider audience of topical-experts we are aiming for.
Obviously talking right past the people asking is a dumb idea and part of what real experts do is disseminate otherwise obtuse data in a meaningful way but keeping in mind we are dealing with peers in the field will keep all posts form focusing on the lowest common denominator.
@Davïd I'm not sure about that line after sleeping on it. I guess what I'm suggesting is that the lessons that work well for academia on handling this topic don't work the best if not everyone is onboard with the usual rules of engagement in a university setting. So when I tell someone not to use BC and AD (for instance) that can come off as patronizing even if I'm trying to educate.
@JonEricson Hi Jon - thanks for that. I had in fact wondered about date designations! I take it you're saying: "let the posts do the work", so to speak
@JonEricson i.e., demonstration rather than overt instruction.
@Davïd I didn't really think about it in those terms as I wrote my metapost. I could poke around a bit, but I really feel like I'm preaching to the choir.
In the interest of being considerate of users who come from a variety of religious (or non-religious) backgrounds, is it right to use BC and AD to express dates or should we use BCE and CE instead? Or does it matter?
@JonEricson (and I won't take offense, I didn't answer my own question, I just asked it because I can see good arguments both ways - in my mind it'd be a bit like correcting folks on SO who write MB to make them write MiB)
@Daи That one I can't figure out. I'm happy for someone to edit that for me. But not everyone will be.
So I think the problem is we are asking people to be wise about their teaching. Don't bother casting your pearls before people who are not interested in learning.
@Davïd Here's an example. What frusterates me about that answer is that I would really like to learn what the author has to say. But I can't get past the tone of the first sentence.
@Daи MHRA Style Guide (UK standard): [quote]Initial capitals should be used with restraint. In particular, adjectives deriving from nouns taking initial capitals are in many cases not capitalized (but see 6.3): Alps, alpine; Bible, biblical; Satan, satanic (but Satanic with reference to Satan himself)[/quote]
@JonEricson Interesting case: answers own question (I've done that on other Q&A sites for a reason), but maybe that contributes to the quite opaque opening.
@Davïd I think I unconsciously followed that guideline, but may have learned it for APA (undergrad), Turabian (grad biblical studies), or one of the various publication formats for specific journals or conferences I've submitted to (IEEE, ACM, etc.)
@Davïd No, which begs the question why I created it at all. Obviously I was using SuperUser for LibreOffice questions well before then. Why would I create an account to do nothing?
@Davïd Yes indeed. And have you ever tried to read the source code? <shudders> I hear they've done a lot of cleanup and it's saner now but back in the early OO days when I was trying to figure it out it was an impenetrable disaster. I stopped shocking me that the interface was sometimes so opaque when the code powering it was so convoluted.
That's was a huge decision that is going to cause a lot of consternation, but I fully expected it to take a couple release cycles of floundering before they reluctantly adopted it, but Mark stepped up to call a shot that will keep them in the running on the first day.
@Davïd Keen to stop having to write 3 way compatibility into everything for no reason! I actually helped port Upstart to another distro before we had systemd as an option and it was a step forward. Canonical could have chosen to use it as a weapon and battle it out just to keep their ecosystem, but they got eclipsed by an upstart (sorry, couldn't resist) and executively decided to play nice with the rest of the distro dev community.
That sacrifice early in the game when they will be contributing developer time to making it work will benefit everybody else in the distro dev community.
> I will ask members of the Ubuntu community to help to implement this decision efficiently, bringing systemd into both Debian and Ubuntu safely and expeditiously.
That will benefit more than just Canonical / Debian in the long run, but they could have jumped ship later only whet theirs started going down (which I would have predicted but is just a guess).
@Davïd I mostly use PLD Linux and have for over a decade now (I'm on the core developer team) but it's not what I can recommend to non devs, esp since the dev effort slipped about 4 years ago. I'm a new-ish convert to the Arch Linux camp for when I can't have my perfect druthers.
I'm this minute working on spinning up a new server that all is going to move too next week so I'm not too motivated to debug it, but I do like to know when something is broken. I'll look into what it might be. Can you check this domain for me and see if it has the same problem? incil.info
@Amaterasu Hmm, I was actually talking about in-chat rules. You can ask for advice in here, but just cut to the chase and spit out your question, then sooner or later if anybody drops by and has input they can leave it. "Can I ask something" is not something those of us that are in and out are likely to respond to.
@Amaterasu There is a recent documentary out on that but the scholarship is ... um ... feeble. It might take some time to attract a really good answer on that. Expect it to sit for a long time with maybe a couple half baked answers with enthusiastic but not rigorous takes.
@Sarah I agree with the content although the first sentence is kind of abrupt. I left him a note to that effect so he can clean up his own mess, but I do think what he said needs to be said and we don't always have time to baby sit every new poster.
@Sarah Flags go into a sort of first come first serve in a queue, I happen to be around.
@Caleb sure, it was the first line and also the last couple words just before "We are a little different from other sites." that seemed abrupt. I agree, it needs to be said, but on a first post I think it should be gentle, "I have edited out "we statements" because this is not a Christian site.. . " something like that.
@Amaterasu Interesting! I was not aware of that element surrounding the other various flood stories.
even though I am Atheist, I believe that the Bible is a true and accurate record - so on eof my motivations is to prove Biblical events using science and archaeology
@Amaterasu Wow! an atheist. I grew up in the church, in the context of strong faith. It is difficult for me to even imagine your perspective. So, how do you come to regard the Bible so highly?
My grandparents were very religious, but like my parents, allowed my sister, brother and I find our own path - but made sure we understood the Bible and its profound significance to not only people, but to history and the human story
I have read the Bible sevral times over and it always captures my attention, the same way that mathematical equations do (which is very big for me, as a Physicist)
@Sarah several life changing events in a very short amount of time (betrayal, being stabbed, losing my sister [overdose], a friend [murdered]) shook me, but made me want to understand not only why these things happened, but also to reconcile with the profound good tehre is in the world
so, then I started to read and reread everything I could get my hands on
to really listen to lyrics of songs, to observe nature closely, to listen to the words of people intently
I realised that I may never heal properly from them - but the sadness, resentment, and bitterness can be transformed into determination, resilience and hope
which they have
@Sarah I fell and fell hard...
but I got myself up, brushed myself off and kept on going
"We never know how strong we truly are until we have no other choice"
@Amaterasu You must be strong to have made it through all that. I want to hear the rest of your story, but I must tend to family. I hope we can pick this up at another time.
It is not clear to me but this site welcomes Judaism too right?
I 2nd the notion that the title Biblical Hermeneutics sounds like Xtian Hermeneutics.
To me, Bible = Xtianity
I think Judaism call it Talmudical hermeneutics.
How about just plain Hermeneutics -- a site for Christianity and Judai...
In the interest of being considerate of users who come from a variety of religious (or non-religious) backgrounds, is it right to use BC and AD to express dates or should we use BCE and CE instead? Or does it matter?
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