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But frankly, the different factions of Jews (Conservative, Orthodox, Reform, etc.) appear to me to have come about because there were various levels of commitment people were willing to give to all of these rules, too. People still felt an identity as a Jew but didn't always agree on how much ritual they had to go through as part of it .....

Sort of. The Reform movement was the first one to identify itself as such, in the 1800's. It placed ethical behavior above ritual observance, which is a theme that goes back 2500 years; they cited Isaiah 58 in particular.

The Conservative movement was a reaction to the Reform movement. Basically, the Conservative movement acknowledged the need for greater emphasis on ethical behavior that the Reform movement was advocating for, but didn't reject the obligation to follow Jewish law like the Reform movement did. Like Orthodoxy, the Conservative movement follows the specifics of Jewish law, but it has a committee of rabbis that are more willing to change the current law (often based on minority opinions from decisions that were made 1500 years ago) than Orthodox rabbis generally are.

1. Slashdot does not support unicode so pasting Hebrew or Greek text would not work very well.
2. Slashdotters, on the aggregate, are lazy; following links is extra work.
3. The vast majority of Slashdotters are English-speakers.

That said, the translation from Leviticus looks pretty accurate to my eyes when I compare it to the Hebrew text.
http://www.mechon-mamre.org/p/...

Cannot comment about the Timothy passage since I do not know Greek.

> That said there's considerable evidence that the stories in the Bible and Koran are meant as parables and not to be taken literally.

Of course, starting with the fact that the text explicitly says so. Jesus said very few would understand his stories, though many more would THINK they understood. Some old testament is an interleaving of actual oral history as understood at the time with parable-like lessons of wisdom. You mention Sodom, which was destroyed by a "rain of fire". Archeological evidence indicates that some kind of extreme heat, much beyond the heat house fires, did destroy some settlements in the area - perhaps a meteor. (Google desert glass).

> That God punishes the faithful for the sins of the unfaithful, ... We see this in Sodom & Gomorrah and the Floods.

The biblical story of Sodom & Gomorrah has God saying he would NOT destroy the city if any good people were there, then the angels tell the one good man, Lot, to flee from the city and don't look back. His wife turned back and was "turned into a pillar of salt" (covered by ash?)
http://www.mechon-mamre.org/p/...

SIX days and on the seventh day he rested. Get it right:

http://www.mechon-mamre.org/p/pt/pt0102.htm
"And on the seventh day God finished His work which He had made; and He rested on the seventh day from all His work which He had made."

Why? Are you afraid that you'll get the attention of The Lord of hosts? If so, you're probably not the one who should be worrying!

Do you have any reference for that? Which word in the original implies simultaneity?

In regards to your second point - the word for "god" (lowercase g) is the same word in both chapters - . However, Genesis 1 uses the word alone, whereas Genesis 2 uses it in conjunction with the name of the god in question - . A comparison of transliterations might be "In the beginning, the god created the heavens and the earth" (Gen1) "This is the account of the heavens and the earth when they were created, when the god Yahweh made the earth and the heavens." (Gen2). They're both using the same word, just Genesis 2 is a little bit more explicit. The term for "god" in Hebrew was like a title. Referring to someone either by their title ("Yes, Officer, I do know I was speeding") or by their name ("Yes, John, I do know I was speeding"), or by the two in conjunction ("Yes, Officer John, I do know I was speeding") are all equally valid, and all refer to the same person.

Genesis 1 and 2 are obviously different accounts (they're both describing the same event, after all) but that doesn't necessarily mean they're contradictory.

Chapter 1
Chapter 2

Also, for what it's worth, I don't agree with the arguments for a literal interpretation of Genesis (few outside the US do), but I do believe in Biblical inerrancy.

Do you have any reference for that? Which word in the original implies simultaneity?

In regards to your second point - the word for "god" (lowercase g) is the same word in both chapters - . However, Genesis 1 uses the word alone, whereas Genesis 2 uses it in conjunction with the name of the god in question - . A comparison of transliterations might be "In the beginning, the god created the heavens and the earth" (Gen1) "This is the account of the heavens and the earth when they were created, when the god Yahweh made the earth and the heavens." (Gen2). They're both using the same word, just Genesis 2 is a little bit more explicit. The term for "god" in Hebrew was like a title. Referring to someone either by their title ("Yes, Officer, I do know I was speeding") or by their name ("Yes, John, I do know I was speeding"), or by the two in conjunction ("Yes, Officer John, I do know I was speeding") are all equally valid, and all refer to the same person.

Genesis 1 and 2 are obviously different accounts (they're both describing the same event, after all) but that doesn't necessarily mean they're contradictory.

Chapter 1
Chapter 2

Also, for what it's worth, I don't agree with the arguments for a literal interpretation of Genesis (few outside the US do), but I do believe in Biblical inerrancy.

No, it is not.

Yes, it is.

The Commandment is probably closer to "Thou Shalt Not Murder Fellow Jews"...

Anything else you'd like to entirely make up on the spot, while you're at it?

Here's a slew of English translations, all rendering it as "kill" or "murder":

http://bible.cc/exodus/20-13.htm

Here it is in the original Hebrew, with no qualification of "fellow Jews" or anything else for that matter:

http://www.mechon-mamre.org/p/pt/pt0220.htm

...this clearly only refers to other members of the Judaic tradition, as God later commands genocide...

Or, your inference is entirely erroneous. Outside of stating it is "clearly" meaning what it clearly is not, your other term of characterization is disingenuous as well. "Genocide" is a term implying a great deal that isn't present in your example. Most would consider a counterattack against a culture which had previously been an extreme aggressor to be an act of "war", not "genocide"--as "genocide" is used to imply an "innocent", victimized group. The Amalekites were nothing of the sort.

More information here:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amalek

You may wish to note the particular mitigating ethical factors given by historical Rabbis, none of which are necessary to demonstrate your characterization is without merit.

Being that "mass-murder" is definitely an instance of the category of "murder", and rather than using the verbal construction "genocide" to misrepresent the historical facts, we use the appropriate term of "war", my statement, and its proper qualification, stand.

"Does not mass murder" is not part of the dictionary definition of Christianity or any other religion I know about, so claiming it is is a classic No True Scotsman fallacy.
It's one of the Ten Commandments.

No, it is not. The Commandment is probably closer to "Thou Shalt Not Murder Fellow Jews" -- often translated as "Thou shalt not kill", but within the Christian tradition (which includes all the books of the Old Testament, rather than just the first 5 books of the Jewish Torah) this clearly only refers to other members of the Judaic tradition, as God later commands genocide (e.g. 1 Samuel, Chapter 15) and has Saul removed as King of the Israelites in favor of David when Saul refuses to actually commit a complete genocide.

So... yeah, the God of the Ten Commandments era is totally down with mass murder. Jesus might have been against it, but you went back too far. Want to try again?

Because Genesis 1:21 says that God created the sea-monsters tannin, and everyone translator since Luther has tried to translate that word as whale/fish/dragon/waterspout/crocodile/greatSeaCreature or anything else other than the plain meaning of sea monster. Obviously now they have decided to embrace the sea monster and equate it with plesiosaur, instead of reading the text as it plainly is - a polemic against all foreign gods whether they are the sun, moon, stars, monsters, darkness, chaos, weather, fertility.

Perhaps you should re-read it again. Take a look at Genesis chapter five. It is the genealogy from Adam to Noah. If you look up the meaning of each name in that progression you will see that there is a hidden message for the world. It was a kind of "spoiler" encoded in the names. Keep in mind that Genesis (first book of Moses) was written many centuries before christianity came on the scene. Also keep in mind that the Jewish people living in the first century Judea were looking for a messiah who would drive out the romans and rule as an earthly king.

Genesis Chapter 5 names and their meaning:

Adam = man

Seth = appointed

Enosh = Mortal

Kenan = sorrow

Mahalalel = the Blessed God

Jared = shall come down

Enoch = teaching

Methuselah = his death shall bring

Lamech = The despairing

Noah - Rest, or comfort

It describes a messiah who is both man and the blessed god coming down to teach and die to bring forth rest/relief/comfort for a fallen humanity.

See:

http://www.mechon-mamre.org/p/pt/pt0105.htm#1

The Hebrew Bible full of sexuality and punishment for sexuality.

But in your example, daughters of Lot got their father drunk and slept with him because there were no other men around.

http://www.mechon-mamre.org/p/pt/pt0119.htm#30

And Lot went up out of Zoar, and dwelt in the mountain, and his two daughters with him; for he feared to dwell in Zoar; and he dwelt in a cave, he and his two daughters.

And the first-born said unto the younger: 'Our father is old, and there is not a man in the earth to come in unto us after the manner of all the earth.

Come, let us make our father drink wine, and we will lie with him, that we may preserve seed of our father.'

Really? Do you know what the authors of Isaiah really knew or thought about cosmology?

I know that the leading Clerics in Saudi Arabia didn't accept the Earth was a sphere until a Muslim flew on the Shuttle in the 1980s. They thought it probably was a sphere, but there was doubt in their minds because a Muslim hadn't witnessed it.

Reading Isaiah in Hebrew and looking at the translation straight to English is better, I shouldn't have dumbed it down to the Christian translations

http://www.mechon-mamre.org/p/pt/pt1040.htm

GP is correct, Elohim isn't always plural. The above verse is not a counter-example. slashdot won't let me post Hebrew words, but you can see verse 26 here:

    http://www.mechon-mamre.org/p/pt/pt0101.htm

In Hebrew, nouns and verbs agree on singular vs. plural. The subject of "elohim" takes the verb "va-yo-mer", which is singular; the plural would have been "va-yo-m'ru". So basic Hebrew grammar means that the word "elohim" is acting in the singular even though the word looks like a plural. The same thing happens in most other places that the word "elohim" appears, including in the verses before and after this one -- singular verbs.

The verb "na'a'seh", which is usually translated "let us make man", starts a new clause. To whom does "us" refer? That's a classic question, and one which is somewhat controversial, but grammatically does not imply that "elohim" is plural. Think of the analogous English sentence "Jack said 'we are running low on milk'" -- "Jack" is singular, even though "Jack" is speaking in the plural. Some of the options: (1) god is talking to creation; (2) god is talking to the angels; (3) god is using some sort of honorific "we", with modern analogs in the royal we and the editorial we; or (4) in a trinitarian view, god is addressing the other parts of the trinity.

Note that the word "elohim" has other meanings, including "gods" of other varieties (as in "you shall not have other gods before my face" from Exodus 20:2), angels, and judges.

However, GP missed Rael's point. Rael's claim is that the "elohim" aliens were misunderstood by humans, who thought they were god. Rael is explicitly trying to draw that parallel, so doesn't want to use an original term. See http://rael.org/rael_content/rael_summary.php .

Ok. How about: Scientology heavily restricts access to their "holy works" even to members and maintains strict copyright control over them to the point of threatening lawsuits against people who post copies of their "holy works."

Now let's try substituting Christianity or Judaism. Here's a translation of the Jewish bible: http://www.mechon-mamre.org/e/et/et0101.htm (Copyright is claimed over the HTML, but it's still given out pretty freely.) Here's a Christian version of the same thing: http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Matthew+1&version=NIV

I don't see any lawsuits demanding that these online bibles be taken down because someone church owns the copyrights on them. If anything, the churches/temples would *want* you to read their holy books. Walk into any Jewish bookstore and ask for a set of Art Scroll texts (that publisher is highly regarded) and you won't be asked to prove your "Judaism level" (as if there were such a thing). You won't even be required to be Jewish. You could then take those books and show them to a dozen people and no temple would file suit or come knocking at your door to seize your "forbidden knowledge."

In the original text, the bible actually mentions 7 "periods" (not days). Periods was incorrectly translated into days. The periods mentioned could be any length of time (thousands, millions, billions).

Take a look at the original Hebrew version.

And God called the light Day, and the darkness He called Night. And there was evening and there was morning, one day.

The Hebrew word they used is 'yom,' which in almost every context means 'day,' so despite any debate over how there could be days (mornings and evenings) without the sun ("the greater light to rule the day"), to claim they did not mention "days" is incorrect. They said "days," the question is, what do they mean by it? I'm hard-pressed to think of a "period" other than a day which goes from "evening" to "morning" and back.

This is about your signature, not the post directly. I checked out your referral to the Bible Gateway and they don't have an English version of the Hebrew Bible. Since there are significant differences in the translations into English from the original Hebrew between the Jewish, Catholic, and Protestant versions (not to mention some of the differences recognized by Islam, which also considers these books to be holy), why not an English version of the Hebrew Bible? The JPS 1917 translation is available for free at http://www.mechon-mamre.org/e/et/et0.htm

The problem with the ideals of the founding fathers was that there was always a 'but.' Everybody could theoretically vote in those days, but some people would make sure you didn't understand some passage in the Bible if you happened to be a black person, even if you were clever and actually did understand. Talking of the Bible, all men are considered equal before God. But somebody argued that the story of Ham -- who, because he saw his father naked http://www.mechon-mamre.org/p/pt/pt0109.htm#20, was cursed to be "the servant of servants" -- implicitly meant that black people were to be slaves according to the Bible.

And the story goes on; right ideals, wrong enforcement thereof.


P.S.: After having read my post about twice, I gotta admit that some ideals weren't that right, such as the one that stated that a plot of land was yours after you had worked the soil hard to produce vegetables and whatnot.

So the Kabbalah predates the Torah?

I have noticed that the people who know exactly what it is that God wants them to do, it always seems to coincide with their own desires

I want a clear quote that mentions genetic engineering specifically, not just your interpretation of some obscure passage.

Genesis 1:24
And God said, Let the earth bring forth the living creature after his kind, cattle, and creeping thing, and beast of the earth after his kind: and it was so.

Genesis 1:24 (Masoretic Text) click here

Interesting. The second translation is a relatively accurate translation (I referenced the on-line linear translation at http://www.mechon-mamre.org/p/pt/pt0107.htm to compare the original hebrew (and their translation), to the second one you referenced.

You're right about the idea that the flood is described as "And the waters prevailed exceedingly upon the earth; and all the high mountains that were under the whole heaven were covered." (Genesis 7:19)

I will add however that the previous poster is also right that the word used in the original hebrew to describe what is covered is Eretz, which is usually translated as "Land" (for instance "Eretz Yisroel" i.e. "the Land of Israel). The verse COULD be interpreted as referring to the land, literally the ground/earth, I could see the extension to translating that as "the Earth" (capital "E"), however the idea of it being tied to a relatively localized event does not seem in contradiction to the original text.

G-d knows who you are, and soon you must die.

Happy is the man that hath not walked in the counsel of the wicked, ....

However, because of a combination of ignorance, confusion, and political intent, occurances of "God's anointed one" in the old testament are properly translated, while occurances in the new testament are translated as "Christ".

Um, you're missing something big here - the Old Testament was written in Hebrew, and the New Testament in Greek. "Christ" is a Greek word which never appeared in the Old Testament. The Hebrews used a word which translates to "Messiah" for references to the Savior, but uses a different word to describe Cyrus. Cyrus was never referred to as "Christ". The only "Christ" in the Bible was Jesus. Be careful when mixing languages, you'll trip yourself up.

As far as the "Jesus" thing goes, Attic Greek did have a "y" sound - IIRC annotated "i" in most modern translations. Iesu was the Romanized phonetic translation of the Greek, from whence the Franks drew "Jesu" through a consonant shift (a natural occurance in language) over 1000 years. This, when introduced into English during the reign of Charlemagne (1066+) in Britain, became the current Jesus.

It doesn't matter if I call God "God" or "Allah" or "YHWH" - the intent is the same. Jesus knows when I'm talking to him regardless of what name I use. Don't get hung up on stuff like that.

All English-character spellings are merely phonetic interpretations. Kind of like how "Yahweh" and "Jehovah" are both correct.

I'd like to correct some of the parent's mistakes

> In Arabic, 123 would be read as "three and twenty and one hundred". This means that it is written from right to left, just like the rest of the language.

According to what I remember from my Arabic lessons in school, only the units and the tens are reversed. Thus "1945" would be read as "thousand, nine-hundred, five and forty".

I'll verify it with one a native Arabic speaker at work tomorrow (one of the peculiarities of living and working in Canada).

> while biblical Hebrew does use the decimal system more or less, it counts like the arabs (starting from the units, and advancing upwards).

Actually, both upwards and downwards systems were used.

> The writing notation resembles the roman one, and was not decimal.

Two systems were in use: either spelling out the numbers and a numerological system, where each letter has a numberical value (1-9, 10-90, 100-400) and the order does not matter (unless the number is larger than a thousand). However, the numerological system is a later one.

I'd like to correct some of the parent's mistakes

> In Arabic, 123 would be read as "three and twenty and one hundred". This means that it is written from right to left, just like the rest of the language.

According to what I remember from my Arabic lessons in school, only the units and the tens are reversed. Thus "1945" would be read as "thousand, nine-hundred, five and forty".

I'll verify it with one a native Arabic speaker at work tomorrow (one of the peculiarities of living and working in Canada).

> while biblical Hebrew does use the decimal system more or less, it counts like the arabs (starting from the units, and advancing upwards).

Actually, both upwards and downwards systems were used.

> The writing notation resembles the roman one, and was not decimal.

Two systems were in use: either spelling out the numbers and a numerological system, where each letter has a numberical value (1-9, 10-90, 100-400) and the order does not matter (unless the number is larger than a thousand). However, the numerological system is a later one.