The Sand Trap - 2023-02-02 (page 1 of 2)

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12:17 AM

hey @Adám, decided to check on how TNB was doing and saw your name, and coincidentally remembered a quick question about judaism I had the other day and figured you might have a quick answer :)

what's the common equivalent to "biblical" for the tanakh? tanakhical/tanachical? tanakhic?

Scriptural.

came up in a convo with my roommate, who is jewish, and he had no clue and said it had never occurred to him

hm, but specifically pertaining to the tanakh rather than scripture in general?

That's the only scripture in Judaism.

yeah, but scriptural as a term out of context of judaism isn't particularly clear :/ the context it came up in was a retelling of the story of esther so just referring to it as 'scriptural' leaves it unclear which scripture you're referring to

But note that Tanakh is an initialism for three types of scripture that are often, but not always, printed together, although they don't share status, so bunching them together in a Jewish context doesn't make so much sense.

If speaking about Judaism in a non-Jewish context, I'd rephrase using "Jewish scripture".

Like "Orthodox Jews do this and that based on Jewish scripture".

12:21 AM

fair enough. was just curious if there was a commonly accepted term like "tanakhic", since googling and searching mi yodeya both gave me instances of "tanachic", "tanachical", etc. but no canonical answer

No, there isn't an while an English speaking orthodox Jew probably will understand the word (though wondering what exactly you mean by it), there's no way to translate that directly to Hebrew or Yiddish.

@Adám yeah, this was a non-jewish context, or at least a "we're not already talking about judaism, i'm only bringing it up now" context so it made sense. my original sentence was something like "have I shown you the biblical/tanakhical story of esther rewritten as a scifi story"

@Adám makes sense!

I'd just use "biblical" then. It is understood that in a Jewish context, that excludes the new testament.

hm. now I'm curious about what distinctions the christian and jewish bibles have for specifically the story of esther but that's probably a lot easier to find out the answer to :)

i dont think the christian old testament deviates from the jewish scriptures

12:26 AM

but yeah, knew that. i go to a predominantly jewish university in the US so I'm relatively familiar with most more "well known" aspects of judaism by now but I'm not there at the moment, so couldn't ask this to anybody around me

I don't know of any differences. But note that the Jews have a large volume of oral (but since written down) traditions that explain a bunch of details in the biblical stories.

@Seggan in theory, no. but the christian bible has been translated and heavily edited over the years by a lot of different people, and the jewish versions are not

Like, why did the queen refuse to appear before the king?

I would not be surprised if there's a lot of things included in the jewish ones that were cut from the christian ones, though I would be surprised if there were any major factual differences between the two

Or, why does Esther ask for the same acts to be repeated after Haman and his sons have been killed?

12:27 AM

@Adám huh, is there a short answer for that one?

@Riker but they have all been translated from the same hebrew/greek, not each other

they use hebrew sources

@Seggan not always! see KJV vs NKJV

they're an updated version but it was specifically done to be as close to the original KJV version while being more readable

the nkjv simply uses the same sources as the kjv, not the kjv itself

and there's 80 billion different biblical translations as well. and that's even not counting the differences that are sure to come up via mistranslations, especially in older versions like the original KJV. much less accurate to a hebrew copy that's not been adjusted over the years, i'd hazard

though i admit they probably did borrow wording from the kjv

12:30 AM

@Riker The king wanted her to come naked to show off her beauty, but she had a disfiguring affliction.

@Seggan partially true, the NKJV version specifically attempted to interpret things in the same way as the KJV version - which isn't necessarily the correct way, that's debateable and is debated!

@Riker as i said earlier, they are (mostly) translated from the hebrew, not each other

so mistranslations wouldnt (or shouldnt) pile up

trust me - I'm raised and practicing christian and have spent a large portion of my life reading many versions and studying them partially, though i'm not planning to attend seminary school

@Seggan shouldn't is the key word

Lots of translations are secondary or even tertiary, at least partially (as in they looked at other translations for help).

^

12:32 AM

You can even trace such in the gradual mangling of names.

@Adám what's the best way to read those as a non-hebrew/yiddish speaker? are there any good copies (hard copy or digital) that package the oral traditions relating to each book/scroll together or something?

now I'm curious

my point is the still use the same sources at the core (not counting the older versionos)

English biblical names are exceedingly far from the originals because they went through Hebrew→Aramaic→Greek→Latin→German→English.

i concede that

@Seggan yes, they do. and there's a lot of potential for mistranslation or editorializing since then, regardless of whether or not there's any known major flaws

12:34 AM

@Seggan i read the bible in russian, and a lot of names are quite different (across different languages)

people still debate strongly specific english wordings in the old testament about things like marriage laws, and whether or not this english word properly conceptualizes it, or was it an artifact of the time of translation, etc.

and as far as I know nobody does that for the hebrew bible :)

you are correct

i appear to have taken your words too extremely

all good!

@whoeverisro mind moving this to ottnb?

← 53 messages moved from The Nineteenth Byte

12:38 AM

@Riker There are now English translations of many "Midrashim", e.g. Amazon. There are also many midrashic stories in the Talmud which has multiple English translations.

@Adám neat, thanks!

@Adám TIL

@Seggan This is true for the most part, for modern translations. The "for the most part" is that there are some differences in wording in the different Greek and Hebrew manuscripts we have, and different translation committees make different decisions about which wording is more plausible.

One aspect that I believe is rarely translated is when we have a legal tradition to read one thing but write something else.

@Adám interesting, can you elaborate?

12:46 AM

Qere and Ketiv, from the Aramaic qere or q're, קְרֵי‎ ("[what is] read") and ketiv, or ketib, kethib, kethibh, kethiv, כְּתִיב‎ ("[what is] written"), also known as "q're uchsiv" or "q're uchtiv," refers to a system for marking differences between what is written in the consonantal text of the Hebrew Bible, as preserved by scribal tradition, and what is read. In such situations, the qere is the technical orthographic device used to indicate the pronunciation of the words in the Masoretic text of the Hebrew language scriptures (Tanakh), while the ketiv indicates their written form, as inherited...

@Riker on top of this is that different versions have different emphasises on different things. For example, The Message version paraphrases some things to get the point of the verses across while other versions like the NLT and NIV focus more on concise, readable and modern english

and then there's the fact that different interpretations of what's said impacts how the translator translates things

@lyxal yeah I was ignoring any translations that are more evangelism focused like the message

since i felt like that didn't really count

fair enough, I was just generalising further

yeah no you're absolutely correct

i personally prefer the Lolcat translation

12:49 AM

Something else that is entirely missed out in translations is adjacent usage of words that are obviously related in Hebrew, but won't be in the target language. This includes lots of given names.

@Adám interesting. so it's basically like an set of editor's notes (by various editors) that clarify or adjust things for various reasons

and when read aloud, you would recite one version while maintaining the written version as the written version

so it sidesteps the issue of "lost in translation" or i guess "lost in editing" by preserving a history of the changes. cool

(unless I'm missing something)

No, that's correct.

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in any case even if some christian traditions would have some part or another meaningfully divergent from the hebrew wouldn't it still not be the case that there's some default baseline by which "standard reference christianity" would diverge

@UnrelatedString lmfao that's assuming a lot about the homogeneity and actual stock many christians nowadays put in the good lord's book

you're not wrong in principle, but many many modern christians don't actually refer back to the bible on any level other than NIV or whatever the most popular/convenient translation is at hand

and furthermore, some christians disagree with parts of the bible, either believing them to be mistranslations or irrelevant to the current day (see things like many of the jewish traditions in the christian old testament that we don't follow, like kosher rules, as popular examples)

Note that the soil in Israel is red, and that vowels are not written in Hebrew. How in the world do you translate:
dam — blood
adam — person
adamah — earth
adom — red

12:53 AM

@UnrelatedString ... I can't parse this sentence :P

@UnrelatedString ~~Christianity (dzaima/christianity)~~

@DLosc "even some sects have divergent versions of the bibe, isn't there a canonical ur-bible at which you can compare against, that those sects have split off from?"

@Adám ah, fun!

@Adám A lot of Christian translations I've seen will have footnotes mentioning some of these parallels, especially for meaningful names. Still not as good as reading it in the original language, of course.

user image

i pasted a lame google translate to experiment - and I do notice the אדם that's so similar, and when I translate it back it does get a little confused (even accounting for how bad google translate is with many languages)

@DLosc that's right (about reading in the original language). If there's one thing concordances have taught me, it's that a lot of hidden meaning that adds quite a fair bit to the understanding of scriptures is lost in English translations.

12:59 AM

@DLosc i am aware

Rydwolf Programs

@emanresuA PR'd

but the majority of the text is identical

sure but i'd argue the meaningful differences are often the funkily translated ones

@lyxal a nice thing is when you know multiple languages. sometimes it really helps out. for example, apparently the greek word kai has no direct english translation, but it does in russian

@Riker which leads to lots of arguments in the comments on Hermeneutics.SE :P

1:00 AM

OK, how about the, obvious to the Hebrew reader, splitting of the original person into man and woman by way of fire and God's name:
man — /ish/ — A-I-Sh
woman — /isha/ — A-Sh-H
God — /yah/— I-H
Fire — /eish/ — A-Sh

^^ :P

nobody's got an issue with "love your neighbor as a brother" or "it was 40 shekels per bushel" but many of the ones that are hot topic issues today are funny translation errors

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more or less my point yeah
or rather that the closest there would be to such a christian "ur-old testament" would not merit a terminological distinction from the jewish bible except... okay wait i looked it up and some of the deuterocanonical stuff is actually in the middle of the "protocanon" books so never mind lol

@Seggan gosh dang single language skills of mine :p

@RydwolfPrograms What who where how?

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1:01 AM

and in particular in esther

Rydwolf Programs

@emanresuA nitro-viewer, ya boi, GitHub, lots of googling

@UnrelatedString yeah, i think the original texts are very similar if not identical, but placed in different orders and there's extra inclusions. not even counting the christian prophet extra books or w/e

@RydwolfPrograms Thanks. I'll try to keep it updated myself

:62896061 deuterocanonical = catholics et al say it's the bible, protestants think it's not

I was procrastinating on it because I fricked up my remote

1:03 AM

protocanon = the og jewish ones iirc

@Riker ah the apocrypha

apocrypha is a general term but yeah

Heh, the Christians added chapter breaks that change the meaning of the text.

example? i dont see how chapter breaks change meaning

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@Seggan и?

1:03 AM

yep

apocrypha is the term for anything apocryphal, whihc could be extended to include things like the book of mormon or something. the deuterocanon is the specific ones that're apocrypha if you're a plain christian but canonical if you're a catholic

so its typically not called apocrypha just apocryphal

@Adám My Hebrew must not be good enough because that's not at all obvious to me, even after looking at how you've laid it out :P

@Seggan The original doesn't have chapters, only blank lines and inline "tabs", but chapter breaks have been inserted such that a verse adjacent to such a break is bunched together with the other part of the text, switching context and therefore meaning.

@DLosc I've not laid it out well, then. Sorry.

@Adám huh, so man and women are different subsets of fire+god stuck together

Yup.

1:05 AM

@Adám does it have verses?

also id argue that inserting breaks doesnt change meaning. i know of a lot of places in the new testament where a verse probably should be in the next chapter (contextually speaking), but my mind automatically associates it with the next contexts

huh, looks like god splits the fire into adam and then woman is created from taking fire and adding part of god. interesting and probably overthinking it

@Seggan Yes, but only as somewhat unsure oral tradition, and the ten commandments have two different ways to split into verses, which changes how we read. One is used when reading in private, the other in public.

weird

(not intended to offend)

@Riker IIRC, Protestants are the only ones who don't accept the deuterocanonical books; both Catholics and Eastern Orthodox do, and there are some smaller Orthodox groups that accept even more

i know some syriacs dont accept revelation

1:08 AM

@RydwolfPrograms So, needs to be p4/c1 rather that p4/p4c1. Also you can test it by opening index.html in a browser

@Riker The traditional view is that if man and woman become one, the can unify God's name, but without God in their relationship, all there remains is fire.

@Adám oh, that's a much cleaner reading than I got out of it. neat

@DLosc Yeah: "considered by the Catholic Church, the Eastern Orthodox Church, the Oriental Orthodox Churches, and the Assyrian Church of the East to be canonical books of the Old Testament, but which Protestant denominations regard as apocrypha."

@Riker "love your neighbor as a brother" is a ridiculously bad translation.

it wasn't mean to be a quote and I know it's off :) i just wanted to not get a witty response along the lines of "not sexually" or something like that

1:10 AM

@DLosc i actually have never seen a quote from those anywhere

@Seggan Interesting. (I assume you mean the book of Revelation in the New Testament, rather than the concept of revelation in general?)

yep

it was strongly paraphrased from "love your neighbor" and the fact that christians typically regard each other as brothers & sisters

so I was mentally writing it and thinking more of "treat those around you as you'd treat a fellow sibling in christ"

@Riker No worries, but taken literally, it says "love that which pertains to your fellow like you love yourself". How much more so should you love your fellow, if you are to equate their things to your*self*‽

i hadn't joined TNB for long enough i'd forgotten you're the only person i've ever interacted with who uses interrobangs regularly

1:13 AM

And that's another aspect that is usually completely ignored in translation: grammatical peculiarities. In the "love thy neighbour", one letter "L" is ignored, changing meaning from "love [that which is] of your neighbour" to "love your neighbour".

so youre saying the passage reads "love your neighbors things as yourself"?

Yes.

@Adám huh, so it changes from a concept to an injunction?

Similarly, Genesis 1:1 says "In the beginning of, God created…", and not "In the beginning, God created…"

@Riker Not sure what those two things are.

"love of your neighbor" as a noun vs. "love your neighbor" as an verb/order

1:15 AM

@Adám most christians i know are aware of that

What do they make of it?

@Seggan Really? I can't say the same

well, i guess its russians then :P

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not christian but i too have literally never heard of that

I agree with DLosc - I think saying "most christians" vastly overstates the amount of knowledge many christians have about their own religion

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1:17 AM

^

@Riker No, it is a possessive form, as in "Which house? — [That which is] of (i.e. belongs to) your neighbour".

@Riker thats why i said "i know"

the majority of ones I know in america (mostly protestant) don't read the bible very regularly on their own outside of sunday school, outside listening to it on sundays

@Adám ah, got it

@Adám some interpret is as the gap theory, others say its a reference to the beginning of time (i.e. the creation)

@Riker well thats bad

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i can definitely see how it would translate better into russian :P

1:19 AM

@Seggan is it? I don't really see anything explicitly wrong with it

@UnrelatedString unfortunately i still have В начале сотворил Бог небо и землю

@Riker remind me to keep my personal opinions down

I mean, would they be better served reading the bible more often? probably? but there's no biblical injunction to read the bible daily that I'm aware of, only to consider it

I'm not telling you your opinion is wrong, I just disagree lol - you don't have to silence yourself because some fuck on the internet has a slightly different take

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oh wait yeah never mind you can't exactly put a prepositional phrase in the genitive

@Riker i am not aware of any either, but once a week?

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or rather it's the other way around

i assume the original hebrew uses the semitic construct state?

1:21 AM

although it does make more sense in the russian than english

as far as I know, the bible only says you should attempt to live a god fearing live, and there's no particular reason it has to be via any particular means. i know a couple pentecostals who very rarely read the bible but typically spend an hour or two in prayer daily

@UnrelatedString hmm perhaps itd be better as Сначало сотворил...

@Riker I've heard Deuteronomy 6 quoted to that effect ("talk about them when you are at home and when you are away, when you lie down and when you get up")

@UnrelatedString The original is grammatically incorrect.

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interesting

1:23 AM

wait is сначало a word or is it с начало

@Adám Is it even possible to represent that in a translation, then, do you think?

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it's сначала :P

@DLosc It'd be awkward to read, at the very least.

@DLosc yeah I think I've heard that too but never really interpreted or heard it interpreted literally :p

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funnily enough i was just in a lecture yesterday about speakers trying to predict how reduced vowels are written

1:23 AM

only as a statement in the abstract about not being a christian only on sunday mornings

@UnrelatedString hmm that looks wrong :P

@DLosc That's talking about that specific section. There are two such sections, which Jews have a biblical obligation to recite twice daily, one during normal "getting up hours" and once during normal "lying down hours", i.e. (simplified) 6 am–9 am, and 6 pm–6 am.

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yeah i definitely would expect an adverb to end in -о too

well that kinda makes sense too, its literally "from the beginning"

i love russian etymology

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oh of course

i have not learned enough to reliably remember that с can take the genitive lmao

1:28 AM

@Adám Yes, I've noticed that (some) Christians have a tendency to overgeneralize statements that are about part of scripture to apply to the whole thing instead.

@Adám Being more familiar with Greek than Hebrew, the example that comes to my mind is an instance in the New Testament where the author takes the word for "least" and tacks a comparative suffix onto it: "least-er"?

Can't blame them when they're missing the oral law that explains it all. Can blame them for rejecting the oral law (probably part of rejecting the Pharisees — I'm a Pharisee!)

they still exist? the more you know

@DLosc Yeah, sounds similar, but is there meaning attributed to the quirk?

@Adám and whats wrong with the oral law iyo?

@DLosc I think it comes from the general lack of old testament traditions christians follow

1:31 AM

@Seggan Oh yes, all the other groups died out or were reduced to very small numbers. All orthodox Jews today are Pharisees.

@Adám I think the common consensus is that it adds emphasis, like "most unkindest" in Shakespeare. My Greek lexicon glosses it as "less than the least."

mm

and it's an extension of the general idea of taking the bible as more of a guideline than a set of rules

@Seggan Uh, nothing. I'm a Pharisee, so I don't have an issue with the oral law of the Pharisees :-)

yeah ik i just mean what do you mean "can blame them"?

1:33 AM

@Riker But that always bothered me. Christians tend to take some Biblical commandments as strict rules, some as mere guidelines, and some as… obsolete? But who decides which rules are in which category‽

@Adám :) that's a very good question and that's very dependent on personal beliefs, and to a large extent the beliefs of the pastor at whatever church you went to as a kid

@Seggan They knowingly rejected the oral tradition kept by the Pharisees, and now a lot of things seem confusing to them.

@Riker Right, from a Jewish perspective, that's just wrong, as we see the law as absolute, precise, and eternal.

yeah, and from a christian perspective we see it as something that changes with the times /shrug

Differences in opinions on practical matters of Jewish law, between orthodox Jews, are minuscule to the point of being either silly or not noticeable to outsiders.

my personal belief, and I know I'm not alone though I'm not sure i'ts a majority belief, is that the bible itself is more of god's word filtered through enough humans that it's not to be taken as literal in most cases

1:37 AM

And this is despite centuries or even millennia of wide geographic spread with little to no contact.

@Adám afaik the conservatives say nothing is obsolete as long as christ didnt explicitly nullify it, while the liberals say the entire law is obsolete. most are in the middle

@Riker Hmm. I would've said it was a symptom of putting the Bible (as a whole, and somewhat in the abstract) on a high pedestal, and therefore looking for any evidence that could be construed as supporting such a high view. (E.g. taking any reference to "the word of God" as meaning the Bible rather than whatever specific thing God was saying in that context.)

@Seggan conservatives of what? the more strict textual catholics and protestants for SURE don't believe that

He did say the entirety of the law can be summed up as love god and love your neighbors, so i can see that

idk about eastern orthodox or something though

1:37 AM

@Riker i meant the conservative view on the topic

ok, not everything

@Seggan he=Jesus?

yeah I've just never encountered anybody who would espouse anything that conserative lol

i think its called "dispensationalism" (the liberal view)

@Adám the big j-man, we call him /s

@Adám yep

1:39 AM

ah, i've heard of that in a different context- more of a set of beliefs about the end times

Interesting that he added "love God" to a well-known teaching by Hillel that he would have learned in rabbinical school.

its slightly in a different context imo

Jesus replied: “‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.
...
‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’
All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments.

OK, Fair enough. Those are indeed two important verses.

@Adám I think the other difference with christianity is actually shown here, amusingly enough

as a christian if somebody told me the bible summarized to "love god and love your neighbors" I'd be like yeah that checks out, even though it's absolutely a vast oversimplification

^ (vast)

1:43 AM

whereas you, as an orthodox jew, notice immediately that it's a departure from the bible and remark on it

which mirrors the jewish ideals of adhering to the bible vs. the christian ideals of "whatever it's close enough" :p

(this is not a moral judgement on which is accurate)

^^

in russian, we call strict adherence to rules "phariseeism"

@Adám I notice you said practical matters. Is that the key distinction? I read a book once about Jewish interpretations of one sentence (Jacob's statement, "Surely God is in this place, and I did not know"), and they seemed wildly divergent. But those were about theological & philosophical matters, not the specifics of how to live one's daily life.

(Though I also notice you said orthodox Jews, and I'm not sure how many of those interpreters were orthodox.)

christianity's debates are mostly theological as well

@Riker Some Christians are more "whatever it's close enough" than others :P

@DLosc Yes, Jews will argue hashkafa ("outlook") without end, but it usually makes no practical difference.

Btw, Babylonian Talmud, Tractate Sabbath 31a:
[There was] another incident involving one gentile who came before Shammai [and] said to [Shammai]: Convert me on condition that you teach me the entire Torah while I am standing on one foot. [Shammai] pushed him [away] with the builder’s cubit in his hand. [This was a common measuring stick and Shammai was a builder by trade. The same gentile] came before Hillel. He converted him [and] said to him: [That] which is hateful to you do not do to another; that is the entire Torah, and the rest is its interpretation. Go study.

1:49 AM

interesting

@DLosc true! but at least the majority of people who refer to themselves as christian on a census probably fall under close enough, if not the majority of people who attend church regularly

^

@Riker ... Yeah, that's fair. At least in the US context I'm familiar with.

we dont exactly wash each others feet, do we?

@Seggan Some do!

1:50 AM

i am aware, but not the majority

(So refreshing to be able to have a civilised discussion about religion with intelligent people. Thanks, all!)

^

^

i am amazed no one was offended

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i barely participated but it was very nice to watch

@DLosc hmm it is interesting though. christ commands the communion, which (hopefully) everyone does, but john 13:14 says "Now that I, your Lord and Teacher, have washed your feet, you also should wash one another’s feet."

iirc some interpret "washing feet" as symbolic by taking the preceding verses

1:55 AM

Wow, it must be so scary to just have some vague texts and no thorough source for what it means in practice.

@Seggan Yes. A number of denominational differences can be summed up as: "Jesus said it, so that's what we should do/believe." "Well, he didn't mean that literally." "Of course he did, why wouldn't he?"

Oof.

@Adám no offense intended, but what if the explanations are wrong?

surely there are differences/arguments in them?

1. We have some very thorough methods for ensuring their stability directly from Moses. 2. It doesn't actually matter, as the teacher of the misinformation becomes liable rather than me.

@Seggan And yes there are, but again, in minute details, and in such cases, we strive for a way to follow both opinions.

For example, when it comes to the shawl fringes (think bleeding woman touching Jesus's…), there's a disagreement as to whether the fringes should always be white or should have the same colour as the garment. We solve this by only wearing white shawls, as then the fringes for sure need to be white.

@Adám so you can tell god "it was the teacher"?

2:01 AM

Yup.

(i recognize i may be a bit critical, do tell me if you are offended)

You can't offend me, but feel free to try!

@Adám on the first one, why didnt moses just write them down in the torah then? or the rest of the scriptures?

The Torah would have become unwieldy. And the rest of the scriptures weren't written by him.

@Seggan So much, in fact, that even if God intervenes and tells us otherwise, we ignore that.

yikes

@Adám yeah i realize "the rest of the scriptures" is based on a shaky foundation

i forgot that most of it is not gods commandments (to us)

2:05 AM

@Adám I guess I don't find it scary, per se. On many of the important questions, the church hashed out some good answers in the first few centuries after Jesus, which most Christians today adhere to. On a lot of other issues, we (Protestants, anyway) don't think it's necessary to all believe the same thing. Each denomination has its own beliefs and practices, but we (mostly) agree that the others are still following God, even if they do things a bit differently.

^

most of the major problems were codified in the letters of paul et al

@Adám Heh... reminds me of my Tae Kwon Do school. There were certain rules that you were expected to know, and even if the grandmaster told you to do otherwise, you didn't obey him because he was testing whether you remembered the rule.

@Adám so if i read it correctly, no prophets, true or false, are to be listened to?

We are to listen and heed them, and they can make further decrees too, but they cannot change the law.

understood

thank you

i have had many things clarified today

2:09 AM

Is it OK if I dump here a rather long story of such rejection of God's correction?

sure

(the minor prophets/exile?)

@DLosc I suppose it's also worth mentioning that this hasn't always been the attitude; especially around the time of the Protestant Reformation in Europe (1500s-1600s), the attitude of "we are the true church and everyone else is a heretic" was more common and led to quite a lot of bloodshed :(

some people still hold that attitude

my grandpa, for example, believes that most american christian practices are wrong

(old people amiright)

Babylonian Talmud 59a–b:
If one cut an earthenware oven widthwise into segments, and placed sand between each and every segment, Rabbi Eliezer deems it ritually pure. Because of the sand, its legal status is not that of a complete vessel, and therefore it is not susceptible to ritual impurity. And the Rabbis deem it ritually impure, as it is functionally a complete oven.
And this is known as the oven of akhnai. What is the relevance of akhnai, a snake, in this context? Rav Yehuda said that Shmuel said: It is characterized in that manner due to the fact that the Rabbis surrounded it with the…

whats halakha?

2:16 AM

Jewish law.

And "halakhic" means "legal".

mm

@Adám the ending is a bit confusing

What part? About the majority?

what "The Gemara relates"

Sorry, I forgot to remove that phrase. You can disregard it as it is only inserted for the student in a rabbinical school.

The story just continues with "Years after…"

mm

2:20 AM

And it is just saying that God then explicitly acknowledges a lack of say in matters of Jewish law.

@Adám The part about the majority is the only part I found confusing, since it seems like Exodus 23:2 says not to go along with a majority (if they're in the wrong).

@DLosc Ah, true, but it alludes to the general rule that we go by a majority when there are different opinions. It is therefore important that a judge doesn't simply follow the other judges, but rather speaks up.

Hm, okay.

Rydwolf Programs

@emanresuA oh oops that was a mistake in my script

huh, so is that why jesus' teaching would have been rejected?

even if he is god, he was kinda saying that the law is irrelavent

2:33 AM

Yes.

that clears up so much

thank you

@Seggan Not sure if that's an accurate summary of Jesus' teaching vis-a-vis the law, tho

i was generalising

he did say smth to the effect of "i have come to fulfill the law, not replace it". but we dont follow the law, so in effect it was overturned

Doesn't really matter. Any attempt at changing anything, even be it directly and undeniably from God, would be rejected.

@Seggan I was just typing up that quote :)

@Adám I think this is very interesting, and gets at a core difference between Judaism and Christianity. The Christian attitude is that ultimate authority rests with God rather than with the law. God made the rules; God can change them.

This is exemplified in the book of Acts (10:9-16) by Peter's vision:
About noon... Peter went up on the roof to pray. He became hungry and wanted something to eat; and while it was being prepared, he fell into a trance. He saw the heaven opened and something like a large sheet coming down, being lowered to the ground by its four corners. In it were all kinds of four-footed creatures and reptiles and birds of the air. Then he heard a voice saying, ‘Get up, Peter; kill and eat.’ But Peter said, ‘By no means, Lord; for I have never eaten anything that is profane or unclean.’ The voice said to …

2:36 AM

So, did he eat or not?

i would assume not

"This happened three times, and the thing was suddenly taken up to heaven."

But whence the permission to eat forbidden things, then?

@Adám He didn't, but immediately afterward some Gentiles showed up saying an angel had sent them, so Peter concluded that the vision meant he should go with them and tell them about Jesus. He ended up staying at their house and eating with them.

Ouch. He should have brought his own food. That's what I always do.

@Adám in a slightly later passage, there is a record of the jerusalem council. they were debating on whether to force gentile converts to follow the law. lemme get the things they forbade

2:39 AM

@DLosc I say "Peter concluded," but actually the text says: "While Peter was still thinking about the vision, the Spirit said to him, ‘Look, three men are searching for you. Now get up, go down, and go with them without hesitation; for I have sent them.’" So it's not that he came to that conclusion on his own.

@DLosc In fact, stories are even told of Jews putting God on trial in actual rabbinical courts (we have a whole court system to go along with the set of laws) for not keeping his own laws.

so you put god under the law?

Yup:
The trial lasted several nights. Witnesses were heard, evidence was gathered, conclusions were drawn, all of which issued finally in a unanimous verdict: the Lord God Almighty, Creator of Heaven and Earth, was found guilty of crimes against creation and humankind. And then, after what Wiesel describes as an "infinity of silence", the Talmudic scholar looked at the sky and said "It's time for evening prayers", and the members of the tribunal recited Maariv [evening prayer], the evening service.

@Adám That's an interesting thought. Would it be allowed to stay at a Gentile's house as long as you have your own food, or is the lodging also a problem?

@Adám After much discussion, Peter got up and addressed them: “Brothers, ... God, who knows the heart, ... accepted them ... He did not discriminate between us and them, for he purified their hearts by faith. ... When they finished, James spoke up ... It is my judgment, therefore, that we should not make it difficult for the Gentiles who are turning to God.

Instead we should ... [tell] them to abstain from food polluted by idols, from sexual immorality, from the meat of strangled animals and from blood.

2:42 AM

@DLosc That's fine.

@Seggan But then what happened to the rule against meat from strangled (probably a mistranslation) animals and blood (other than the "witnesses")?

huh?

> we should ... [tell] them to abstain from (…) meat of strangled animals and from blood.

i still dont get your question

the rules were sent by letter

Most Christians don't abstain from such meat and blood.

The usual phrase is "torn animals", as in torn by another animal rather than killed by proper ritual slaughter, but is usually used either for the wider category of any meat from an animal that died by other means than proper ritual slaughter, or for the even wider category of all forbidden meat.

@Adám you mean rare steaks? :P

as far as i understand, you cant exactly get that blood out

2:49 AM

No, but failure to slaughter as prescribed, which has both the effect of the animal acquiring the legal status of "torn", and fails to extract the blood properly.

i think its an application of "good enough" again (addendum to my earlier comment, not a reply)

that is something interesting to me, that Christians don't seem to have any dietary requirements, compared to Jews and Muslims

Proper slaughter involves instant and simultaneous severance of the major arteries and veins in the neck, causing the animal's heart to pump out most blood. Afterwards, the meat is cut and salted, so the salt draws out any remaining blood.

By the quote above, it would seem that many rules should be suspended for gentiles, to make it easier for them, but that the laws of ritual slaughter should be preserved.

strangulation has the side effect of not properly draining blood, correct

that is what this passage is referring to

But most Christians just ignore that?

2:53 AM

i dont see how we ignore it

are you referring to undercooked food?

No, meat from an animal that wasn't properly slaughtered.

Raw meat (other than liver) is kosher (assuming all the requirements are met).

@Adám the strangulation part is referring to the blood not draining properly

and note that it doesnt prescribe ritual slaughter, it simply forbids that type of slaughter (which was liable to leave in blood)

Right, but surely the modern way of killing larger animals, using a bolt pistol to the brain, is equivalent, as it doesn't drain any significant amount of blood.

but in the end, the meat that we buy at the store does not have any significant amount of blood in it

But many Christians will happily eat blood sausage and black pudding.

2:57 AM

i cannot speak for them

lemme find that other passage rq

:-)

i would also guess that the average Christian is not aware of this quote

@Adám The Greek word is πνικτός; BDAG says "in Ac[ts] it plainly means strangled, choked to death ... of animals killed without having the blood drained fr[om] them, whose flesh the Jews were forbidden to eat"; but it also says "Not in LXX nor in Hellenistic Jewish wr[itings]"; then it gives a long list of commentators who've written about the word, but doesn't summarize their conclusions.

while i'm here, i also have a question about judaism

@Adám mind if i finish tomorrow?

i found the passage but my parents are telling me to go to bed

3:01 AM

Honour your parents!

@JoKing Sure?

my father's parents were jewish, but both my father and I were/are atheists. Would I be correct that my father would have been considered a non-practicing Jew, while I am merely of Jewish descent?

From a Jewish law perspective, your father is entirely Jewish and you're not at all Jewish.

Jewish law doesn't have a concept of "non-practicing Jew", only the concept of a Jew doing things they are not allowed to do and omitting the performance of actions they are required to do.

4:04 AM

@Adám is there a better word than "non-practicing"? That's how I always heard it referred to

1 hour later…

5:04 AM

@JoKing I think "non-observant" is the norm.

5:22 AM

ah yes, that makes more sense

10 hours later…

2:56 PM

@Adám ok im back

so heres 1 corinthians 8:

So then, about eating food sacrificed to idols: We know that “An idol is nothing at all in the world” and that “There is no God but one.” ... But not everyone possesses this knowledge. Some people are still so accustomed to idols that when they eat sacrificial food they think of it as having been sacrificed to a god, and since their conscience is weak, it is defiled. But food does not bring us near to God; we are no worse if we do not eat, and no better if we do.
Be careful, however, that the exercise of your rights does not become a stumbling block to the weak. For if someone with a weak c…

so this essentially extends the rule given my the jerusalem council about not eating stuff sacrificed to idols

the rules are mostly to keep the gentiles from being a stumbling block to the jews back then. remember, most of the church was jewish then

OK, but that doesn't dispense with regular kosher rules, only the prohibition against eating idol-sanctified food. Those are entirely distinct rules.

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