V'dibarta Bam

Isaac Moses

12:32 AM

@TRiG that guy Aubrey is wicked smart

Isaac Moses

12:51 AM

Two questions entirely to do with royalty.

HodofHod

3:14 AM

@WadCheber In Hebrew, G-d's different names are associated with the different ways that G-d interacts with us and with creation in general. "Job description" is actually a way I've explained it myself before.

So YH-VH and Elokim, for example, are said to represent G-d's aspects of Mercy and Judgement respectively:

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Q: Divine Names for Judgement and Mercy

I have been told that the name of God אלוקים‏, Elokim represents the מידת הדין‏ or aspect of judgement, and that the name יקוק‏, the ineffable name represents the מידת הרחמים or aspect of mercy. What is the source for these names meaning these aspects? Where do we see Elokim correlated with judg...

msh210

4:24 AM

@WadCheber I think the point is not to prove Jesus wasn't the messiah but to refute any argument that he was. A proof he wasn't would have to be from a correct point of view; but a refutation of a claim can be according to claim's own viewpoint, which in this case includes that he was God's son.

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And now I see that @MonicaCellio said much the same thing.

@WadCheber I have no idea what you're talking about here, but that records are messed up from millennia ago shouldn't be surprising and doesn't seem to be a strong argument against a religion's belief in one version of those records.

Wad Cheber

4:43 AM

@msh210 You have to remember that many Christians are literalists. They insist that the bible is infallible. And there are two genealogies, but not only do they not match, they follow totally different courses all the way from David to Joseph.

The number of generations is different.

@msh210 And the worst part is that Matthew copied his genealogy from the Tanakh, but he deliberately left several generations out because he wanted there to be 14 generations between Abraham and David, 14 generations between David and the Babylonian captivity, and 14 generations between Babylon and Jesus. But he couldn't even get that right. The actual numbers add up 14 14 13.

And if you compare Matthew's genealogy to the Tanakh, you see that Matthew fudged the numbers. He left people out.

@msh210 So the fact that the genealogies go back a long way doesn't mean anything, because all the authors had to do was copy most of it out of the Tanakh and agree on the part not covered by the Tanakh. Instead, we get this:

The most important part of this is also the most noticeable error. Look at who comes after David. In Matthew, it is Solomon. In Luke it is Nathan.

Neither account can be true.

The fact that Jesus calls Joseph his father in the early manuscripts is a problem. The fact that the first gospel to be written doesn't even mention Joseph, and suggests that Jesus' neighbors didn't know who his father was, is another problem.

The fact that Matthew claims that Herod slaughtered thousands of babies, but no one else has ever mentioned it, is a much bigger problem.

The fact that Luke claims that a tax census in Judaea forced Joseph to leave Galilee to register for a tax census in a country he didn't live in is a problem. The fact that no one traveled for the census, since the whole point was to see how nice your house was, is another problem.

Everything about these accounts is totally wrong. You can find flaws in every passage.

If Jesus was G-d, why were his last words "Heavenly father, why have you abandoned me?" Why does he pray? Why does he beg to be let off the hook the night before his crucifixion?

msh210

5:07 AM

@WadCheber I don't disbelieve you, but people say stuff like that about (l'havdil!) Tanach also and a careful study grounded in Jewish tradition will resolve many of the difficulties. I don't believe that that's true (mutatis mutandis) of the Christian scripture, but I'm guessing they do.

Wad Cheber

I know you don't need to be convinced, but there are so many problems with the story that you just don't need to use the "Jesus' dad wasn't human" argument.

@msh210 I think the problems with the Christian bible are more significant than the problems with the Tanakh, in part because the Tanakh is not usually taken quite as literally, as I understand it.

Most Jews I have known don't think a boat carried two of every animal on earth.

Christians are currently building a replica of that boat in Kentucky.

Christians were able to take a religion about a Jewish preacher and turn it into two thousand years of murdering Jews.

msh210

@WadCheber chabad.org/582812

Wad Cheber

I don't believe the Jewish religion any more than I believe the Christian religion, but in my experience, Jews are more reasonable about the obvious metaphors and allegories

@msh210 Point taken. :)

msh210

@WadCheber That's a page for kids, but the sources it cites (Nachmanides and ibn Ezra) are very highly regarded. That said, it doesn't cite them as saying that every animal on earth was on the boat -- just as explaining how whatever animals were on it managed to fit.

Wad Cheber

I once worked out how much food would be required to keep the elephants, rhinos, hippos, giraffes, and buffalo alive for the entire time. It added up to hundreds of tons.

msh210

5:16 AM

@WadCheber I recall that the commentaries talk about that, too. I don't remember (alas) what they say.

Jewish commentaries, I mean.

Wad Cheber

@msh210 Well, the Christian literalists believe that two of EVERY animal were on the boat. Including kangaroos from a continent that wouldn't be discovered for another 1800 years, and a species of mud devil that only lives in a 6 foot wide puddle in Death Valley California.

@msh210 Have you ever heard of the wandering Jew?

msh210

@WadCheber I've heard the expression. AFAIK it usually refers to the Jewish people as a whole, which has settled but briefly in any given area since the Temple's destruction ~2000 years ago.

@WadCheber Why do you ask?

Wad Cheber

The story goes like this, if I remember it correctly. Jesus was on his way to Golgotha, when he passed a random Jewish guy who had previously said something nasty to Jesus. Jesus had already said that he would return to earth before some people who were alive at his time died.

msh210

@WadCheber (And, no, I'd never heard of this wandering Jew before AFAIR.)

Wad Cheber

A thousand years later, Christians are concerned about the fact that Jesus still hasn't shown up. So they invent the wandering Jew. They say that Jesus cursed the guy to walk the earth endlessly until he finally came back.

This solves the problem of Jesus' obviously inaccurate prediction of his imminent return.

msh210

5:24 AM

@WadCheber Mel Brooks?

Wad Cheber

The wandering Jew is the guy who will still be alive when Jesus comes back.

@msh210 Hahaha!

I don't think Jesus' taste in comedy was that good.

Jerry Lewis maybe.

The worst thing about Christian teaching as compared to the well supported facts is that a large portion of the clergy know about these problems, but they don't tell their congregations about them because they think they're too stupid to handle the truth

My dad saw this when he was attending Theological Seminary. It's the reason he was a deist instead of a Christian by the time he graduated.

msh210

@WadCheber FTFY.

@WadCheber That must be difficult to pull off in the Internet age.

Wad Cheber

@msh210 Oops. I forgot I'm not in Mos Eisley

Sorry.

msh210

@WadCheber No worries. I'

Wad Cheber

We're a bunch of foul mouthed savages over on SF&F

msh210

5:34 AM

m not even sure I was right to FTFY... AFAIK we've had no discussion of it here or on Meta.

But it seemed the appropriate course of action to me.

Wad Cheber

I would assume that the regulations are more rigid on religion sites than Star Wars and zombies sites.

Our policy is to curse, but not excessively. And keep it pg 13 most of the time.

I'm afraid I have to go to bed. I'm bushed.

Thanks for the chat!

msh210

@WadCheber I can check English Language & Usage's on-topic list to see if we can migrate judaism.stackexchange.com/q/62224/170 there....

@WadCheber All right, good night.

Wad Cheber

@msh210 Nah, don't worry about it. It isn't that important.

msh210

@WadCheber Already checked. Looks good to go.

Wad Cheber

I wasn't happy with it anyway.

Oh, okay. Whatever's clever :)

msh210

5:41 AM

And not a duplicate of anything already on English Language & Usage.

@WadCheber Oh, you've deleted it. Okay, never mind then.

Wad Cheber

I did. It isn't a big deal. If you think it should be moved, I can reopen it tomorrow. If not, it can stay dead. I do appreciate the offer though. See you around

TRiG

9:03 AM

@IsaacMoses And that was only round one. Toward the series finale, the questions get harder.

(Though on the specific question I linked to there, I got the answer at the same time he did.)

Isaac Moses

1:29 PM

@TRiG I, alas, did not, despite having been primed by you to expect a Jewish context. In my defense, I was simultaneously learning the format of the question.

Isaac Moses

2:00 PM

The discussion of the laws of danger to life and of womens' voices in the answers to this question seem to me to be almost entirely beside the point. The question is whether, in the context of a society not governed by Jewish Law, Jewish Law encourages, approves of, or disapproves of causing discomfort to a random stranger because her action causes Judaism-related discomfort to you. ...

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... Unless you're going to make an argument that Judaism approves of such as, say, a means of rebuke (tochacha), the justification of the stranger's actions would seem to me to be irrelevant. Both answers spend a great deal of time on this irrelevant issue, and then slap on a paragraph saying "no" but without substantive argument for that, which is directly relevant.

I have voted to re-open the question because, at least in its present form (and possibly also sufficiently in its previous form, though its present form is better), it asks a well-formulated question about how Jews should act according to Judaism in a certain type of situation, and motivates that with a personal experience.

I am downvoting the two existing answers because they both focus on the motivating experience, needlessly distractingly, and don't do a great job of directly addressing the actual question about proper behavior.

Meta-Man

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Q: What are the general demographics of the site?

The interpretations and applications I've seen here have been much more strict than I am familiar with from my experience with my Jewish friends. Out of curiosity, is there any sense of what portion of people here are Orthodox, Reform, non-practicing, atheist (I know I'm not the only one), etc? ...

discussion

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Q: Can I help out with the glossary?

I think I would be well suited to help improve the glossary. I don't know the terminology, so I always notice it when I see it. I look the words up as I see them, but obviously I am not qualified or well enough informed to write the definitions. I would be happy to make a list of the words tha...

discussion glossary

Wad Cheber

2:17 PM

@IsaacMoses I think I bear a lot of the blame for that.

When I asked the question, I hadn't slept in about two days, and it showed. I didn't do a very good job.

I think the current version is much better.

Isaac Moses

@WadCheber I, for one, am not interested in blame. I'm critiquing existing documents for the sake of disposing of them correctly via edit, closure, opening, deletion, voting, etc.

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TRiG

@IsaacMoses Yes. The format does take a bit of getting used to. I love Only Connect, though. It's a very intelligent quiz.

Isaac Moses

@WadCheber We get "I had this experience. Was this OK?" questions all the time. Often (like here), it just takes a little careful separation of story from question via copyediting and formatting to give the latter the status it needs to have. It's no big deal. Thanks for taking care of it.

@TRiG I get that sense. (Applies to each of your last two sentences.)

TRiG

7:36 PM

@MarcGravell We may be misunderstanding each other. I'm proposing that the flood story emphasizes non-supernatural human actions as the means of accomplishing the incredible event--and so believers (often?) conceive of Noah's ark as a story about obedience, hard work, project management, and the resultant success, maybe due to God's Home Depot-like instructions ("You are to build an ark...just this big"). They do not frame it as a miracle. And yet, yes, science-minded types think it requires heavy use of miracles to have the project work--and that is the point they tend to argue. — Chelonian Mar 9 '12 at 18:51

Isaac Moses

@TRiG I think (the analog of) that question would have a hard time staying open here. Or on Skeptics.

TRiG

@IsaacMoses For some reason, it's on Meta.

Isaac Moses

8:34 PM

@TRiG Oh. Interesting. Yeah; I think the right place for such a question, as stated, is probably Chat.

HodofHod

11:06 PM

@Meta-Man Yeah, I kind of wish there were some built-in tooltip function that the community could populate with data for this kind of thing. It's come up on Meta.SE a couple of times.

It'd be simple to write userscript for, but I don't know how helpful that'd be for non-regulars/non-power users.

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