Do people think this is an answer? Week-old comments question it and the author's response was "when the answers are good already what can I add?", which seems to miss the point. I flagged it once and it was declined.
I have added the "conclusion" section to the show-your-work question in an effort to tidy up loose ends. I believe I've captured the consensus discussed over the weeks in chat and on meta; if anybody thinks I got something wrong, please say so or edit.
Both the piercing of Christ side and the flow of blood and water (John 19:34) are unique to John’s gospel and it’s clear from the testimony which follows (19:35) he sees in them great deal of significance.
Three times he swears to these events. (1) “He who has seen has borne witness” (2) “and hi...
@Soldarnal feh. I hadn't noticed that. (I mean, I'm not tracking the question closely, but I tend to notice downvoted posts, and nothing there was in that state last I looked.)
My limited view of voting has been weird lately too. I mean, I'm not so arrogant as to think that all my work is great or anything like that, but my last several answers/edits have not produced much in the way of results compared to similar efforts in the past. (Please do not interpret this as whining or shilling; it's just an observation. I don't know what's up.)
@MonicaCellio You answered one of my questions recently and I know I haven't voted on it yet, but that's because I've not had time yet to think it through. I'll probably end up marking it as the accepted answer too.
Especially on my own questions I tend to wait to vote to encourage other answers
@Soldarnal that makes sense. I tend to wait a while (sometimes too long) before accepting, but I hadn't considered the effects of early voting. (With notifications I'll probably be among the first to see answers to my questions, after all.)
For me personally, Stephen's accusation and speech represents the modern attitude towards serious believers who are actively committed to God's work yet constantly falsely accused by the stiff necked carnal self centered, 'what is in it for me ones' who persecute and even destroy faithful and loy...
@swasheck NP. One comment should be enough for the author, and one flag enough for the mods. :-)
@swasheck (And good luck on the housing thing. I don't know what's up and I'm not prying, but it sounds stressful and i hope that gets better for you soon.)
@MonicaCellio i'm trying to get jas3.1 to back himself further into his own logical hole
@MonicaCellio we sold our house. we can't find a new one that isnt ridiculously overpriced. tension about what this "means" and now i have that lingering phd thing in the back of my head
phd is not particularly conducive to much fun with family ... but our kids are at a good age to go for it ... particularly if we go overseas.
@JonEricson i've come to realize that theology and personalization are just going to be a part of this site. so ... whatever ... i wont set my hair on fire if it becomes a comment.
On my phone - lost network. Yeah, convert to comment seems reasonable; the flag explanation offers that option ao I didn't customize. Sorry for the ambiguity.
@MonicaCellio I know the feeling! I see these tablet commercials where people use the touch screen or a flat keyboard and I wonder how terrible it must be to use those things all the time. I must not be the target demographic.
@swasheck and @MonicaCellio: So the idea is to use convert to comment to give our drive-by users an outlet? They can't comment directly, so we are stuck with answers that don't answer otherwise.
@JonEricson on a tablet it actually works ok, but the on-screen keyboard on a phone, combined with the limitations of the mobile site (no reply-to or @-addressing, for instance) is much harder. On my tablet I just use the full site. (Mind, I'm new to tablets, but so far it's an ok replacement for my dead laptop, and the portability is nice. I use an external keyboard for anything real.)
@JonEricson I much prefer a full keyboard and am much slower on the tablet one (I have the Asus Transformer). I'm also slower on a laptop than on a real keyboard, so maybe part my brain is already wired for "not real keyboard, slow down". :-)
@JonEricson I think we'll have to judge individual cases. Link-only answers can become comments (if the link isn't totally useless). I'd rather see less of personal opining like in that answer, but people with commenting privs post those too (as comments) and we let them stand, so there's precedent. In general I prefer to convert to comment (rather than delete) for new users unless it's really bad, to give them a gentler introduction. But that's just me.
@MonicaCellio if it is an answer it should stay as an answer or deleted, not ever converted to a comment
if it isn't an answer it may be useful as a comment
comments can't be improved, downvoted, searched, etc.
I've had permission to post this outside the TL:
> if it answers the question, it should be an answer. If it tries to answer the question, it should be an answer. If it provides some sort of tangential information / asks for more information from the asker / etc. then it should be a comment. --Shog9
@JackDouglas I think a lot of link-only answers are of the "tangential information" sort. It's unusual to get a link that really goes after the question that's asked.
tbh I don't see the point of this, if anything it is more prominent as a comment on the question than off the page as an answer:
For me personally, Stephen's accusation and speech represents the modern attitude towards serious believers who are actively committed to God's work yet constantly falsely accused by the stiff necked carnal self centered, 'what is in it for me ones' who persecute and even destroy faithful and loyal believers in the name of God. — Ruth9 hours ago
@JackDouglas I'm willing to go along with noise, but I wasn't ready to call it myself. We do get comments of that sort, coming in as comments; maybe we need to think about ways to handle those?
@JackDouglas yes, when a link-only answer looks promising I comment asking for a summary. If none is forthcoming then I nominate for conversion to comment.
@MonicaCellio I meant we can often edit, sometimes just a quick cut'n'paste is enough from the source. In other cases I think it depends on the user how much we think it is worth the effort (it's a good way of educating new users for example)
@JackDouglas I'm guessing that's about hitting 10k? (Can't see the image.) Wow, cool -- hit it exactly! Now if anybody upvotes we'll mess up the round number. :-) (I shall feel free to mess it up as applicable...)
@JonEricson I recently hit 3k by just a couple points (not round) on another site, and knew I had to be careful with DVs lest I lose access to close-voting. :-)
(This is no longer an issue there, in case you're wondering. It was MSO.)
@JackDouglas We have an answer with today's date (==>) that seems appropriate to a forum, but not our site. It seems to be another drive-by. Do we all agree we should just go to deleting it?
@MonicaCellio By the way, getting rep on MSO is easy, if you know how. ;-)
@JonEricson apparently pointing out a grammar error is a good way to see rapid oscillation. But as for knowing how to get the positive rep, please enlighten me.
@JonEricson I suggest deleting. The author never came back, it's unsupported, and it's sufficiently non-mainstream that I don't think anybody else is going to come along to fix that.
Either way, there is no explicit biblical rule or law against eating milk and meat together (or meat and with other dairy product). Boiling a baby goat in its mother’s milk suggests that the goat is alive. Therefore, it is forbidden to do that. Another reading would be that killing the mother and...
@MonicaCellio And not so mainstream quirky that I'm interested in it. ;-)
Hmm, I think I discovered an "unintended behavior". To delete I needed to DV (to get ti below 0); when I did I saw that someone else had just done so (so it was -2). I voted to delete. Then, out of curiosity, I removed my DV. If that other vote hadn't been there, it looks like I could vote to delete without putting any rep on the line.
@JonEricson the delete link isn't available until the answer is at -1 or lower. You don't personally have to cast that vote, but it was at 0 when I went to VtD.
@JonEricson btw, this is why I have sometimes had to resort to flagging deletion candidates. We have non-answers and bad answers that have nonetheless picked up an upvote along the way (maybe from someone who agrees with the conclusion despite the non-method), and I can't VtD those even after a DV.
@JonEricson mods aren't subject to the 5-minute limit on comment edits.
Do people think this is an answer? Week-old comments question it and the author's response was "when the answers are good already what can I add?", which seems to miss the point. I flagged it once and it was declined.
@MonicaCellio Heh. I could too, I suppose. Done. ;-)
@MonicaCellio I had a comment started and it was hard for me to articulate why I was deleting without seeming rude. The answer didn't help me learn more about the question. (I'll add that comment to the answer now...)
@JonEricson good comment. The post is pretty cryptic. I'm actually more concerned about the comment that implies that he thinks he should post even if he's got nothing new to say. How do we respond to that?
@MonicaCellio Right. People are used to a world where their opinion is desired. Our sites are the opposite, which can be a culture shock. I hope that giving him my perspective (as the asker) we can start to help him see why just posting an opinion doesn't help.
-Please do not be offended by the content of this question. I am bible believing Evangelical Christian who absolutely disagrees with the premise of the Da Vinci Code.-
On the surface, the conversation between Jesus and the Samaritan woman is primarily about water and worship. Beneath the surfac...
I'm wondering if part of it is that the question seems to be self-answering. I love the observations, but I can't yet get my arms around what you are asking exactly.
@JonEricson I think bob.sacramento's answer is right on. He basically answer the question at the end. He basically says its in my own dirty mind and not the intention of John.
Right on in the sense that he gets the question
@JonEricson The question is really asking are all of these things part of what John is doing as an author.
@JonEricson 1 John 3:9: "No one born of God makes a practice of sinning, for God’s SEED abides in him, and he cannot keep on sinning because he has been born of God."
Some have postulated that the letters to the seven churches at the beginning of the Book of Revelation correspond to seven successive "church ages". For example, the Wikipedia article on the subject says the following:
The messages to the seven churches, while being for actual churches, can a...
@JackDouglas Hmmm... We need a policy for dealing with eschatological theories. I can't find a meta-question. But it sure sounds like the question is coming from the theory and not from the text.
@JackDouglas I don't see it. Looks like he's being given a doctrine (or doctrinal interpretation) but wants to read the text and see if the text really does indicate that. Seems like the purpose of exegesis to me.
"What I am wondering is whether there is any indication in the text that these letters were meant to describe successive church ages? In other words, was that the intent of the author/Author? I am specifically looking for exegetical support, if it exists."
@JackDouglas I think he's trying to get around "starting from doctrine". Instead of starting from doctrine he wants to take a step back, set the doctrine aside, and see what the text says.
It's not really different from some of the on-topic examples in Richard's proposal: "Does Hebrews 6:4-6 imply that we can lose our salvation?" -- that could be said to "start" from the doctrine-based interpretation of that text (that one could or could not lose salvation), and seeks to test it against scripture
@MatthewMiller no, just that questions must start from 'the' text. In practice I think that means one passage or exceptionally, a few related passages.
It's an interesting problem. I can't really address the Revelation question specifically, but in principle I don't think questions asking about themes throughout an entire book are off-topic. However, such questions should cite some passages that are related to the theme being asked about.
So, for example, a question comparing the betrothal-at-a-well passages in Genesis along some axis would be on-topic, in principle.
@JonEricson, I assume your candidate question is an exegesis question, which I mention because "source history" questions and the like are also on-topic and can apply to whole books.
@JackDouglas Exegesis often necessarily deals with structures of texts, where the important structural elements are lost when narrowed too much. For example, perhaps you are interested in the use of inclusio in the Sermon on the Mount, or a chiasm in Zechariah--which may encompass several chapters. The scope of the question must be limited to not go into detail about the whole section of the text, but if it deals more strictly with the broad structure of it, I don't see a problem
@Ray I agree with that. But the question itself must arise from the text. If this one does, or it seems to most in here that it does, it should stand. We don't want to open the floodgates though!
@JackDouglas I agree; I think he does make clear that he wants to deal more directly with the text, and that the doctrinal issue is background. But then he doesn't make clear enough what the text is. Citing the "letters to the seven churches" section would focus that better.
@JonEricson maybe not one per Jew, but more than one for sure. :-) I'm not sure how many can be drawn just from the text, though... consider this, for instance, or this. BTW, there is also a rabbinic debate about whether God should have created man -- great stuff, but far afield of the text. :-)
Can you add a source for God creating trillions of worlds? It would help us to answer if we had the context of what you've read already. — Monica CellioJan 2 at 14:12
Chassidic interpretation doesn't in my experience meet our standards of textual focus, to be clear. But that's one set of Jewish answers to your question. There are more, though I don't have them to hand.
@MonicaCellio Well, part of my problem is that I'm asking as a philosopher. Questions (good, answerable questions) are so much harder in philosophy than in exegesis.
@JonEricson yeah, it's tricky. And I sure don't want to cut off the "why?" exegesis questions. I guess there's some measure of "do we think the text can tell us or is it a mystery?" analysis that we have to do on each one. Why punish Moshe for hitting the rock? Check. Why create the world? Less clear.
But the notion that we have to know enough to be halfway to an answer in order to vet a question is also not so good. So sigh, content gate-keeping is hard?
@JackDouglas Actually, this is good. It would have been messy to coordinate fixing the answers and the questions. Let's just start over. (And I should have closed the question right away, I'm thinking.)
Covenant Theology
Redemption, as seen through the framework of Covenant Theology, requires at least two Persons. As Paul puts it:
For there is one God, and there is one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus, who gave himself as a ransom for all, which is the testimony given at ...
Now I need to find another question to answer in order to make it a trilogy.
Out of curiosity, does anybody look at suggested tag synonyms? Probably very few people are able to vote on them. I just happened to notice that one I suggested back in October is still sitting there. It's not a big deal or anything, but it got me wondering if suggesting synonyms is actually useful (as opposed to just asking mods to make them).
I've never seen a tag synonym created via the voting mechanism and I see evidence that the system isn't working to create synonyms without moderator intervention.
Does anyone have any figures about the number of synonyms that are create by votes as opposed to the number created by moderator fiat...
@MonicaCellio I'm not sure I agree with some of those. In particular, I think synoptics is distinct from synoptic-problem. (But I need to think of some examples to demonstrate it.)
@JonEricson ah, well that's disappointing. Ok, I'll stop using that interface then.
@JonEricson not all synonym requests are really synonym requests; some should be merges. (But there's no affordance for directly suggesting a merge. When you decide to act on one, you'll see a merge option.) This example is one that I think should be merged; I can't see either tag accumulating more than a small two-digit number of questions; the latter currently has 4. Why not merge it into the former? Is the synoptic problem so significant that its questions should be separately indexed?
And wouldn't you want to also tag them "synoptics" anyway?
Some have postulated that the letters to the seven churches at the beginning of the Book of Revelation correspond to seven successive "church ages". For example, the Wikipedia article on the subject says the following:
The messages to the seven churches, while being for actual churches, can a...
