LOL; that's a good story.
It gives me an opportunity to return to something I missed, and to which I meant to respond. This guy's presupposition was that, because you're Jewish, you naturally are ADL. You find no such necessity. I'd say the same as to affirming the Messiahship of Jesus. He was Jewish, every last one of the apostles was Jewish, the first Christian churches were Jewish; it simply does not follow that being one requires the other. Regardless of what you've been told.
Then this question, from what you said earlier: are you saying that you don't believe that 25/27ths of the NT was written by Jews? See, that would be a serious piece of revisionism.
Finally, you say this:
Yes, I view the Bible as more a matter of faith and less a matter of absolute divine revelation. I tend to see the text as divinely inspired but not always historically accurate down to the smallest detail.
Two brief thoughts:
- I have to say — not acidly, just honestly — I can make no sense of this.
- When I said earlier that I have yet to meet a non-Messianic Jew whose view of the inspiration, authority and truthfulness of the Torah is as high as mine, you said maybe I hadn't met a real, observant Jew yet (or words to that effect). You must see that you, in your "inspired but errant" position, are providing another example of what I was observing. I believe the Torah is the very word of God, verbally inspired, truthful in everything it affirms in every regard.
Wegam shalom leka,
Dan
This question of could one be Christian and Jewish sort of drifts into an area I'm trying not to go because the internal logic leads to the questioning of another faith which I intent to avoid. I would just say that I find areas of mutual exclusivity between my practice as a Jew and the tenets of the Christian faith and leave it at that.
I think a couple of these pull quotes you have were from other posters. Not that it matters, I'm happy to give you my take but I just did not recognize recognize the 25/27th ratio as somthing I had raised. Anyway, yeah I think the writers were Jews. I'm not sure what else they would be.
As far as my belief in divine inspiration I would say that I find some parts of the Bible (and again I'll limit this to the Hebrew Text) where I don't see the whole truth as revealed in the passage itself. For instance, "an eye for an eye" the Bible says. Well, what do you do if your eye gets poked out by a blind man? You can't get an eye from him! Can you cut off his hand or his tongue instead? Can you kill him? Can you repo his house? Bind his family into slavery for six years and a day? The text does not tell you. Therein lies a problem. The Jewish solution is a set of commentary that allows for later revelation.