From: Dr. Blake Nelson (bnelson301@yahoo.com)
Date: Sat Oct 25 2003 - 20:57:31 EDT
You appear to be talking past George's comments, which
has to do with Judaism before the exhile, not after.
I think this talking past is similar to the go around
about the Augustinian concept of Original Sin, and
there, as well as here, you rely on later developments
in Judaism as a rebuttal to a point about earlier
Judaism. In each case, I think you miss the point
about the doctrines not being essential or even
present in some earlier point in time of the
tradition.
Even if one accepts everything you say as true, you
are talking about the Judaic tradition later than
George is, and George appeared to make exactly that
caveat, quite clearly. So, even assuming you are
correct, the point you are making is about Judaism
after a particular point in time, not before and not
at the point in time George is making it. Therefore,
it seems silly to impute the concepts from later to
before when there is no basis for so doing.
You do this quite a bit, like citing the Gospel of
Thomas for support for what the earliest christians
thought -- well, I do not find, for example, using any
Nag Hammadi texts, the vast majority of which are
demonstrably apocryphal and written centuries after
(as well as being outside) the christian tradition
began at all persuasive about what christians writ
large believed at any point in time, and certainly not
*before* the documents were written.
I think this is yet another example of that.
To make it perhaps clearer, what a Yeshiva University
scholar may or may not say about Judaism currently is
utterly beside the point to pre exile Judaism. There
is a clear distinction between what people thought at
X point in time and what they may think now or at a Y
point in time later than X. To suggest otherwise
seems silly and/or dogmatic.
--- RFaussette@aol.com wrote:
> In a message dated 10/25/03 1:00:28 PM Eastern
> Daylight Time,
> gmurphy@raex.com writes:
> Please note what I said. Biological kinship is
> important for Judaism but
> its significance "should not be overstated." You do
> nothing to disprove this
> by citing
> evidence that it is important.
> rich:
> I did everything to disprove it when I quoted a
> yeshiva university scholar on
> his own religion to the effect that the purity of a
> kohen's blood determines
> the purity of his heritage to this day.
>
(SNIP)
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