I need to speak with a learned or/and courageous Jew, and obtain his honorable response regarding the Christian Bible.

[Betho_br]

Christianity is in the unique position to have a religion that preceeds it as well as one that follows it.

I recommend you take advantage of this and pose the same question to a Muslim.

You gotta see the topic with empathy, step into the other guy's shoes... Muslims aren't in the Jesus crucifixion narrative; if they were, I'd ask them too, but they've already sorted it out among themselves without my asking!

 

[GoodAttention]

You gotta see the topic with empathy, step into the other guy's shoes... Muslims aren't in the Jesus crucifixion narrative; if they were, I'd ask them too, but they've already sorted it out among themselves without my asking!

All the best.

 

[John D. Brey]

The Torah Kelulah is the Kabbalistic teaching that the Torah has hidden, secret meanings. With all respect to my fellow Jews who are into the Kabbalah, I don't think the Torah has ANY hidden meanings. There are certain things that are harder to understand unless you have the background in Hebrew and the ancient culture of the Israelites. But that is not the Torah being mysterious. It's just you and me not being scholars. An ordinary Jew living say in 600 BCE would not experience these problems.

I don't know how seriously you take the written text of scripture, but I think I speak for anyone who studies it daily and has for decades when I say that how I read a given scripture now is a far cry from how I interpreted it twenty years ago. What I now know, was "hidden" from me when I read it decades ago.

I would go so far as to bet that I could convince you of some meanings in various verses that are hidden from you now, but which I could reveal to you because they've been revealed to me.

To say there's no hidden meaning seems to imply that everyone should read the text and interpret it the same way. There should be complete agreement concerning meaning if nothing is hidden; which, were that the case, would render much of the Talmud a case study in meaninglessness since the sages spend a lot of their time weighing out completely different understandings of the same text, uncovering multifarious hidden possibilities concerning the meaning of a text.

If nothing is hidden, you could read a biblical verse and understand it the same way as a Talmudic scholar who has been trying to uncover deeper meaning from the verse for fifty years.

Have you read the Talmud? Are the interpretations you read the Chachamim giving identical to what you read a verse to mean? Which is a trick question since it's not too frequent that two Talmudic Sages agree with the meaning the other has uncovered through his engagement with the text.




John

 

[Betho_br]

I don't know how seriously you take the written text of scripture, but I think I speak for anyone who studies it daily and has for decades when I say that how I read a give scripture now is a far cry from how I interpreted it twenty years ago. What I now know, was "hidden" from me when I read it decades ago.

I would go so far as to bet that I could convince you of some meanings in various verses that are hidden from you now, but which I could reveal to you because they've been revealed to me.

To say there's no hidden meaning seems to imply that everyone should read the text and interpret it the same way. There should be complete agreement concerning meaning if nothing is hidden; which, were that the case, would render much of the Talmud a case study in meaninglessness since the sages spend a lot of their time weighing out completely different understandings of the same text, uncovering multifarious hidden possibilities concerning the meaning of a text.

If nothing is hidden, you could read a biblical verse and understand it the same way as a Talmudic scholar who has been trying to uncover deeper meaning from the verse for fifty years.

Have you read the Talmud? Are the interpretations you read the Chachamim giving identical to what you read a verse to mean? Which is a trick question since it's not too frequent that two Talmudic Sages agree with the meaning the other has uncovered through his engagement with the text.




John

Yes, we should respect the schools of interpretation, but allegorical interpretation should not distort the literal meaning.

 

[John D. Brey]

Yes, we should respect the schools of interpretation, but allegorical interpretation should not distort the literal meaning.

What about the places where the literal text is literally allegorical?



John

 

[Betho_br]

What about the places where the literal text is literally allegorical?

John

So, let's interpret literally without distorting the allegory!

Imagine a pastor saying: 'Ah, here’s a lovely story where trees talk and debate who will be their king....

Obviously, this means we need to find a good gardener to prune those rebellious trees!

 

[John D. Brey]

So, let's interpret literally without distorting the allegory!

Imagine a pastor saying: 'Ah, here’s a lovely story where trees talk and debate who will be their king....

Obviously, this means we need to find a good gardener to prune those rebellious trees!

I had a verse like Psalms 2:6 in mind. In the literal Hebrew it says, "I have poured out my king upon my holy hill Zion." But that makes no sense in a Jewish context. Why would God be pouring out his king on the holy hill of Zion in a Jewish context? And the Jewish context was all there was until the first century of the current era. So the Jewish interpretation has to read the word that means "to pour out," i.e., נסכתי, some non-literal way in order for the verse to make sense.

Psalms 2:6 is a perfect example of where a literal interpretation can be literally too allegorical for orthodoxy to swallow.



John

 

[John D. Brey]

Have you read the Talmud? Are the interpretations you read the Chachamim giving identical to what you read a verse to mean? Which is a trick question since it's not too frequent that two Talmudic Sages agree with the meaning the other has uncovered through his engagement with the text.

I should rephrase that. What I should have implied is that although two Talmudic Sages may agree on a meaning of a given verse, they rarely, if ever, assume that the text has just one meaning; they spend their lives seeking seventy or more hidden meanings from every iota of scripture.



John

 

[Coder]

Rabbi Singer and Rabbi Skobac are helpful and highly knowledgeable about Jewish and Christian Scriptures.

 

[shunyadragon]

The Torah Kelulah is the Kabbalistic teaching that the Torah has hidden, secret meanings. With all respect to my fellow Jews who are into the Kabbalah, I don't think the Torah has ANY hidden meanings. There are certain things that are harder to understand unless you have the background in Hebrew and the ancient culture of the Israelites. But that is not the Torah being mysterious. It's just you and me not being scholars. An ordinary Jew living say in 600 BCE would not experience these problems.

I consider the Torah Kelulah as the Kabbalistic teaching that the Torah interesting, but agree I do not consider there to be such a conclusive revelation of anything that may be called "Secret Teaching."

 

[shunyadragon]

What about the places where the literal text is literally allegorical?

John

The scriptures of all religions have places that are intended to be allegorical. Non the less the authors, compilers and editors of the Bible consider it historically accurate, Some historical aspects may be interpreted allegorical, but the intent was to make an accurate historical account.