Sophie the Questioner wrote:Hello Webmaster, Hello All
On a recently closed thread I read
It would seem that you all are offended by what the Bible says. That needs to be taken up in another thread as seeing this thread is now locked
While the debate was heated and did raise some challenging questions, I dont think I expressed being offended by the bible. (The torah is a very important text forming the first five books and included Genesis, I would be in error if I were offended by it, but to question or consider the text is perfectly valid, you dont learn if you dont ask) I do feel sometimes that it is reasonable to confront some of the more difficult questions, And I do have quite a few. And yes many of them are from a Jewish perspective in my case.
I would not consider that thread a debate.
Quick definitions (Debate)
noun: the formal presentation of and opposition to a stated proposition (usually followed by a vote)
noun: a discussion in which reasons are advanced for and against some proposition or proposal
verb: argue with one another (Example: "We debated the question of abortion")
verb: discuss the pros and cons of an issue
verb: think about carefully; weigh
verb: have an argument about something
Sophie the Questioner wrote:So I hope you have no objection to my starting this thread. and one question I would like to ask would be why there are so many contradictory things in the Torah, Now in the modern view, the acedemics tend to view the Torah as written by four authors or from four perspectives, (This goes against tradition of course)
There are the J-hist, narratives, where Gd is described as being direct. (the quoted parts of Genesis follow this narrative style) The Elohimist, The Preistly and the Deutoronimist narrative styles. Because of this meaning can be confused,
So this thread is going to be a debate on contradictions in the Torah?
Then we're gonna discuss how the books in the Torah which deal with different topics and even time are written by 4 different people which you list as J-hist, Elohimist, Preistly and the Deutoronimist narrative styles.
Last I heard from the worldly scholarly side was that they believed that the Torah was written entirely by the Priest to control the masses aka the Levitical Religion.
It should be also noted that the writings themselves identify the author as Moses.
Sophie the Questioner wrote:The Questions Kerry raised about the precise nature of the fall, or my questions about fatalism are inevitable.
If you don't believe the Word of God to be 100% true then talking about the orginal sin is of no use.
Sophie the Questioner wrote:Having said this, the second temple era Jews were aware of these narrative styles, The essenes even produced a more unified Torah (Temple scroll), and were comfortable held with the notion that the authorship belonged to Moses.
The 2nd temple was completed around 500 BC and was destoyed around 70 AD. I suppose you written documents from this time period to know that "the second temple era Jews were aware of these narrative styles"?
Sophie the Questioner wrote:I wonder if it would not be a bad idea to look at the narrative styles and resolve some of the questions by understanding them better. You see if anything after Jerome (Vulgate bible) and later still Tyndall (His bible was the basis for the KJV) emphasised further the narrative styles in the Pentetauch (The Torah), it will be difficult to pick out the meaning in translation.
There are much older sources to use then those.
Sophie the Questioner wrote:I notice you had quotes Strongs transliteration earlier, which makes an interesting place to start.
It's a morris LIT.
Sophie the Questioner wrote:Can you further explain your position when debating with Kerry with more reference to the transliteration. I am certain that the Jerome/Tyndall translations used by present day christians present a subtle difference in the meaning.
Shalom
Sophie.
Nope. Different topic different thread.
Actually this has already been debated on here and I tried playing the devil's advocate againist it but in the end couldn't deny the Truth.