A welcome....

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kaufmannphillips
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Re: A welcome....

Post by kaufmannphillips » Fri Aug 27, 2010 11:20 am

kaufmannphillips wrote:
[MessianicJew] said: "If we look at Jeremiah 31:31-34 God is telling us that the Old Covenant (Mosaic Law) will be replaced by a New Covenant." You cannot establish this from Jeremiah 31:31-34 itself. And so you resort to your New Testament.

But do you really expect me to have the New Testament define my interpretation of Jewish scriptures?

steve7150 wrote:
But Emmet you did just that in your dialogue with me quoting Mark 12 & Luke 10 to show that "Love the Lord" is the greatest command.
No, Steve. When I referenced Mark and Luke in our discussion, it was not to define my interpretation of Jewish scripture. It was to engage your interpretation of Jewish scripture.

For my part, I find the parallel vignettes in Mark 12, Luke 10, and Matthew 22 to show a notable amount of variance. This sort of variance calls the varying details into suspicion, and it undercuts fine analysis of these vignettes. So as a scholar, I would be wary about resting too heavily on this evidence. And as a person of Jewish faith, I am disinclined to define any aspect of my theology by Christian scripture.

But you are a person of Christian faith, and presumably you hold the New Testament in high regard. And I am willing to use your book to challenge your theological notions.
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"The more something is repeated, the more it becomes an unexamined truth...." (Nicholas Thompson)
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kaufmannphillips
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Re: A welcome....

Post by kaufmannphillips » Fri Aug 27, 2010 12:20 pm

steve7150 wrote:
Getting back to the 10 Commandments you can read into the first 9 that there is a connection to the heart , but i think it has to be read into them since they as they are simply commands of outward obedience.
O RLY?

1 - I am HSHM your G-d, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery.

This word, of course, is not a command. But plainly it is a statement that is meant to impact the heart, recalling G-d’s preceding relations with the people, and banking on the nature of these relations.

2 - You will have no other gods before my face. You will not make for yourself a carved image, or any likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth. You will not bow down to them or serve them; for I, HSHM your G-d, am a jealous G-d, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children to the third and the fourth generation of those who hate me, but showing steadfast love to thousands of those who love me and keep my commandments.

Does this word apply simply to outward obedience? If one has other gods in one’s heart, is that not still before G-d’s face?

3 - You will not take the name of HSHM your G-d in vain, for HSHM will not hold him guiltless who takes his name in vain.

Does this word apply simply to outward obedience? Can’t one take the name in vain within one’s heart?

4 - Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy. Six days you may labor, and do all your work, but the seventh day is a Sabbath to HSHM your G-d. On it you will not do any work, you, or your son, or your daughter, your male servant, or your female servant, or your livestock, or the sojourner who is within your gates. 11 For in six days HSHM made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that is in them, and rested on the seventh day. Therefore HSHM blessed the Sabbath day and made it holy.

Does this word apply simply to outward obedience? Can’t one labor over one’s work within one’s heart?

5 - Honor your father and your mother, that your days may be long in the land that HSHM your G-d is giving you.

Does this word apply simply to outward obedience? Is one exempt from honoring one’s parents within one’s heart?

6 - You will not commit manslaughter.

Does this word apply simply to outward obedience? Can’t one run their personal health into the grave by the simple disposition of their heart?

7 - You will not commit adultery.

Does this word apply simply to outward obedience? Can’t one adulterate the rightful place of a spouse within one’s heart?

8 - You will not steal.

Does this word apply simply to outward obedience? Can’t one surreptitiously deprive another person of their rightful due within one’s heart?

9 - You will not bear false witness against your neighbor.

Does this word apply simply to outward obedience? Can’t one speak falsely to oneself about a neighbor, within one’s heart?
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"The more something is repeated, the more it becomes an unexamined truth...." (Nicholas Thompson)
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MessianicJew
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Re: A welcome....

Post by MessianicJew » Fri Aug 27, 2010 4:08 pm

Kaufmannphillips said: "But do you really expect me to have the New Testament define my interpretation of Jewish scriptures?"

No I don't, how about taking a look at Psalm 22. What are your thoughts?
Isaiah 52:6 "Therefore my people will know my name; therefore in that day they will know that it is I who foretold it. Yes, it is I".

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kaufmannphillips
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Re: A welcome....

Post by kaufmannphillips » Sun Aug 29, 2010 12:29 pm

Hi, Robert,
MessianicJew wrote:
...how about taking a look at Psalm 22. What are your thoughts?
The psalmist is dealing with a bad situation, and the psalm makes an appeal to G-d for deliverance. The superscription attributes this psalm to David, and there are multiple occasions in the life-story of David where this sort of psalm might fit - though the psalm could be artistic/formulaic, and would not necessarily have to rise out of a particular difficult circumstance.
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"The more something is repeated, the more it becomes an unexamined truth...." (Nicholas Thompson)
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steve7150
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Re: A welcome....

Post by steve7150 » Sun Aug 29, 2010 5:05 pm

O RLY?







Emmet,
You can see that a person's heart should be involved with obedience but i think one can mechanically follow these 9 commandments, so you claim that i see it through Christian eyes and i could say that you are presenting this in the best light of judaism and maybe both views have validity. Anyway it's been a pleasure as always.

MessianicJew
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Re: A welcome....

Post by MessianicJew » Wed Sep 01, 2010 2:47 pm

KaufmannPhillips wrote: "though the psalm could be artistic/formulaic, and would not necessarily have to rise out of a particular difficult circumstance."
I thank you for your reply, and I'm enjoying this discussion.

In your opinion, do you feel that Psalm 22 is a figuritive description or a literal description of A true Messiah and the things this Messiah is going through.
Isaiah 52:6 "Therefore my people will know my name; therefore in that day they will know that it is I who foretold it. Yes, it is I".

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kaufmannphillips
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Re: A welcome....

Post by kaufmannphillips » Fri Sep 03, 2010 3:24 pm

Hello again, Robert,
MessianicJew wrote:
In your opinion, do you feel that Psalm 22 is a figuritive description or a literal description of A true Messiah and the things this Messiah is going through.
The superscription states that this is a mizmor leDawid. So if one is inclined to treat the superscription as trustworthy, and if one is inclined to think of David as a true messiah (viz, somebody legitimately anointed), then one might imagine the psalm to literally and/or figuratively have something to do with the life-experience of a true messiah - Dawid ben Yishay.

But even if David wrote this psalm, or if somebody else wrote it for David, the psalm would not necessarily have been intended to correspond in every detail to the king's personal biography. The psalm might have been intended to be a work that the king could appreciate thematically, incorporating (perhaps) various elements that the king might have witnessed or heard about in other people's lives.

But the psalm itself makes no reference to messiahship. It is not necessary to construe the psalm as a literal or figurative description of any messianic figure.
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"The more something is repeated, the more it becomes an unexamined truth...." (Nicholas Thompson)
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MessianicJew
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Re: A welcome....

Post by MessianicJew » Thu Sep 09, 2010 2:48 pm

Good Afternoon, Kaufmannphillips, thank you for your answer to my question about Psalm 22.

I'd like to hear your interpertation of another scripture. Who or what is Isaiah refering to in Chapter 9 verses 1-7? I truly enjoy hearing from you My Friend.
Isaiah 52:6 "Therefore my people will know my name; therefore in that day they will know that it is I who foretold it. Yes, it is I".

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kaufmannphillips
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Re: A welcome....

Post by kaufmannphillips » Sun Sep 12, 2010 1:42 am

steve7150 wrote:
You can see that a person's heart should be involved with obedience but i think one can mechanically follow these 9 commandments,
But a person who follows commandments mechanically is not following them to their ultimate fulfillment. Perhaps you are acquainted with the concept of kavannah?

And I suppose you might admit that every Christian principle can be followed in half-measures by persons who don't understand better, or who don't attempt to do better.

steve7150 wrote:
so you claim that i see it through Christian eyes and i could say that you are presenting this in the best light of judaism and maybe both views have validity.
Your Christian tradition may have predisposed you to view Judaism in a worse light. It is very common for Christians to caricature and bad-mouth Jewish religion. Many will mock and belittle the commandments of the Torah - with some even going so far as to imagine that these commandments are not the word of G-d. But if one holds to a mainstream Christian view, then one will accept (however grudgingly) these commandments as the word of G-d himself.

And if the Christian bible is to be believed, these commandments were the G-d-given paradigm for Israel's faithful relationship with G-d. For centuries, people would have lived their entire lives with this paradigm as their way for experiencing and interrelating with G-d. Real people. Real lives. Would G-d have given these people drek to live by, and to experience him by, and to interrelate with him by?


Many Christians do not mentally treat the ancient Israelites and Jews as real people. Instead, these figures are abstractualized: characters in a sacred drama; pawns on a theological stage; and/or impoverished denizens of the past, humanized no more than the other faceless masses in history, who languished in such-and-such an obscure circumstance, and had stuff happen to them on this-or-that faded date. With the exception of phenomenal individuals like David, ancient Israelites and Jews do not mentally register as persons with the same dignity and full-blooded humanity as present-day believers.

But these persons were fully, vitally human. And presumably their souls were no less dear to G-d than those of heartland Baptists or of hipster house-churchers. Presumably, G-d wanted to dignify their lives, to spare them from degradation, to liberate them from falsehood, to be personally intimate with them, to lead them into true life. Nahshon the son of Amminadab. Bani the Gadite. Seraiah the son of Azariah. Real people. Real souls. Real lives.


Many Christians would imagine that G-d threw these people under the bus. He gave them burdens that they could not bear, substandard morals, and empty rituals that held no meaning except to point cryptically to a figure whom they never would meet in this lifetime, and whom they scarcely would imagine. And he let them toil and stumble in the shadows – generation after generation, untold numbers of lives from cradle to grave. A sad spiritual poverty, but eventually their pathetic existences could be cherry-picked by Christians for object lessons and flannel-graphs.

Whether in whole or in part, this is the sort of sense that many Christians make of Israelite and Jewish religion – a sense that revolves around Christian mythos and redounds to the aggrandizement of Christian religion. It is also a sense held by persons who (in all but an infinitesimal number of cases) have had no personal experience of a life that is immersed in Torah. These persons have never slept in a sukkah or taken up tzitzit. They have never humbled their souls in the context of Yom Kippur, nor have they dwelt within the bounded rhythms of shabbath or conjugal abstinence. When it comes to jurisprudence, business conduct, and family life, they have never inhabited the holistic paradigm of Torah for these matters – though they may have selectively drawn upon it, and/or conveniently proof-texted from it.

These Christians lack a real understanding of Judaism; they just have a mishmash of inklings and impressions – including many that come second-hand from sources antagonistic toward Jewish religion.


So I have little esteem for most Christian eyes on Jewish religion. Those eyes tend to be handicapped by substantial ignorance and parochial narcissism – a combination that does not recommend itself for reliable or respectable judgment.
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"The more something is repeated, the more it becomes an unexamined truth...." (Nicholas Thompson)
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steve7150
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Re: A welcome....

Post by steve7150 » Sun Sep 12, 2010 7:20 am

But these persons were fully, vitally human. And presumably their souls were no less dear to G-d than those of heartland Baptists or of hipster house-churchers. Presumably, G-d wanted to dignify their lives, to spare them from degradation, to liberate them from falsehood, to be personally intimate with them, to lead them into true life. Nahshon the son of Amminadab. Bani the Gadite. Seraiah the son of Azariah. Real people. Real souls. Real lives.


Many Christians would imagine that G-d threw these people under the bus. He gave them burdens that they could not bear, substandard morals, and empty rituals that held no meaning except to point cryptically to a figure whom they never would meet in this lifetime, and whom they scarcely would imagine. And he let them toil and stumble in the shadows – generation after generation, untold numbers of lives from cradle to grave. A sad spiritual poverty, but eventually their pathetic existences could be cherry-picked by Christians for object lessons and flannel-graphs.






You may be right Emmet, i don't know any Christians who openly espouse beliefs like this but i can't read anyone's hearts. Christians are not better people then others but i believe Christ is and through him we approach God and i think you believe through Torah , jews approach God. Jesus did say "salvation is through the jews" therefore IMHO judaism is part of Christianity, so if i were to scoff at Judaism i would be scoffing at Christianity. I believe all people are valuable to God as Jesus showed in his parables of the lost sheep , the lost coin and the lost son.
Ultimately i believe God desires to save all his children and death is not a barrier to God and i leave it to him to judge people because if i judge those jews you referred to then i will be judged in the same manner, God forbid.
Lastly i am around religious jews a lot and i know from personal experience that their opinions are no more kindly toward Christians then the Christian folks you described so we all have a lot of work to do. Happy Holy Days!

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