Posted on 07/16/2002 9:33:12 PM PDT by Alamo-Girl
The Talmud states in another place that Elisha over-reacted, and was punished. However, it is a Biblical commandment to follow the sages, and Elisha was the foremost prophet at the time, so they youths did deserve it.
I just wanted to point out an example of the "scholarship" of this essay...
Ari
I'm perfectly willing to take Genesis as an allegory but I've pretty much rejected evolution. A zealous lack of skepticism by its defenders is probably my main cause of suspicion.
The theory's supporters have definitively claimed many things to be absolute truth which were later found to be false. They just nod their heads and continue on unphased.
My view is that God made the universe. How He did it and how He caused life to come about, I don't know.
"And God said, let us make man in our image, in our likeness...."
These possessive pronouns that come through virtually all Biblical and Torah translations...as if there were some pact twixt God and humanity, in our being able to abstract information from our environment, and to derive meaning from it, even to affecting and altering it.
Note our being on the Moon, for example. And our presence via our machines and electromagnetic waves even into the interstellar medium. And our derivation of meaning from the receipt of radiation form across the deepest space and time....
As Roald Dahl said through Willy Wonka: "We are the music makers. And we are the dreamers of dreams."
"So, in this blessed book is taught the duty of human sacrifice -- the sacrifice of babes. In the 22d chapter is this command: "Thou shalt not delay to offer the first of thy ripe fruits and of thy liquors: the first- born of thy sons thou shalt give unto me.""
Hmm, let's see, if he bothered to read the rest of the Bible he would notice that child sacrific is strictly forbidden (Moloch worship), and that the firstborns are "exchanged" for the Levites. All subsequent firstborns were redeemed monetarily...
"The book of Judges is about the same, nothing but war and bloodshed; the horrible story of Jael and Sisera; of Gideon and his trumpets and pitchers; of Jephtha and his daughter, whom he murdered to please Jehovah. "
OK, Sisera raped Yael 7 different ways, when he fell asleep she put a tent peg through his temple. Any objections? Gideon made a surprise attack in the night; he broke the pots and blew the trumpets to make the enemy think he had a larger force than he did. Jeptha didn't kill his daughter, see Radak - she went up to the mountains for a couple months, the Talmud says that such a vow is invalid, the Bible forbids human sacrifice, and the other opinion which says she died (Rashi) means that she didn't get married and have kids - he is citing the Midrash which explains that a person who doesn't have kids is considered "dead".
The whole article is like this; the author was a total ignoramous.
Ari
Just the question I have been asking for some time. IMHO, a creation that doesn't need "tweaking" from time-to-time is a greater creation than one that does.
Not from me.
Ari
On flaming, if I'm flamed for an error I made, then I will learn something I didn't previously know. And if I'm flamed wrongfully, it's a blessing and I can rejoice. Flaming is a win-win for me!
The physicist John Wheeler once said something like, "...Not an equation, but a principle, so simple, that we'll all say to each other, 'Oh. How beautiful. How could we ever thought it otherwise?'"
This should be fun.
If anybody has any specific points that need to be addressed, pls do so quickly...
For what its worth, I only went to Yeshiva for 2.5 years (going to college this fall - Engineering Physics), so remember that I know only a fraction of those who could answer the harder stuff, but I don't see anybody else. My Rosh Yeshiva (dean) had an encyplodic grasp of the Tanach, Talmud, Zohar, with all their commentaries, as well as everything else, in addition to the sciences, literature, mathematics and the like. Standards have fallen.
Ari
First, I noticed "inerrant" doesn't seem to be much of a constraint when you are free to substitute different words and meanings as needed to arrive at whatever conclusion you wish to arrive at.
However, if God really said "make man in our image", and since man has three spatial dimensions and also a time dimension -- it implies God too had those characteristics, and therefore space and time DID pre-exist.
Of course, as I say, if you can redefine "image" to mean whatever you want it to mean, then the claim of "inerrancy" is a pretty cheap coin.
Ari
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