Pretty sure we are being punished for Adam and Eve sins.

No, just an appreciation that one usually doesn't learn to read cuneiform or hieroglyphs for your MA thesis, just to go selling cars right after.

The bolded is (depending on what you meant here in particular) certainly or just quite likely wrong. I'm pretty certain you both widely underestimate diversity (in genre, content, style) of OT writings, and overestimate it concerning other forms of antique literature.

Depends on how you define religious motivation. Most of my my friends/colleagues don't study the OT because it provides frequent religious relevations. It's simply an amazingly diverse and fascinating book - that's what captures them about it. Others find Shakespeares Oevre similarly fascinating and focus on that. Essentially the same thing.

Yes, and thats holding a gun to your head and saying, "unless you repent, I am going to blow your brains out".....

Quite the subtle analogy there. You're missing that from the biblical PoV there's sin involved. So at the very least it would be "unless you stop sinning..."

People are punished in the afterlife because they reject Christ.

I recommend repentance.

Ok so you agree with my analogy? In which case you cant hold that god is just or loving....

Well that in turn depends on how you would classify the genre. For me, the OT is simply one part, of one book, out of a bewildering range of religious literature. To focus on it is to me as narrow a choice as the comparison I used of choosing the first book of the Lord of the Rings trilogy out of all literature.

I define religious motivation as having any religious reason for studying the OT, as opposed to someone who has no religious beliefs at all and is studying it purely a work of literature. I think the former will vastly outweigh the latter.

Which goes to show that you really shouldn't talk about the OT. At all. Genre is a term with a fairly well established technical meaning:

Being about God is not a stylistic criterium; neither is "being religious (in whatever sense). Religious writings use some genres more often than others, but liking the OT with it's many diverse genres (among them: myth, etiology, lists, definitions, legal codes, novella, prayers, songs, poems, narratives, historiography, prophecy, drama, debate, monologue) to one part of a 3-part novel and suggesting that it's comparably stylistically narrow is really, really silly.

Err...

And didn't I just say that their interest in the OT is because it's fascinating literature? By your definition, no one religious person can study the OT without religious motivation? That seems rather question-begging.

Was this ignored for not being a wall of text and being too direct? Seems like walls of text are preferred as they allow for easier tangents and distractions from freet/NR.

The (christian) Bible was written by a myriad of authors. The Bible is not exactly one book, either-- it is 66 books. It is a collection of books, an assembly of hundreds of years of religious thought, historical recordings, mystical appreciations and midrashic interpretations, and it comprises various doctrines and teachings on man's psychological state, societal issues and existential crises.

There are scholars who don't even really believe in God, who have devoted their lives to studying the good book. It is almost a map of the human soul, even seen through a secular perspective.

I'm not sure why you feel the need to patronize those who have devoted their lives to the study of this literature. You devote a good chunk of time here opposing the ideas and concepts expressed in that very same literature!

It is obviously true that the bible does have tremendous historical and cultural import, and people of all religious persuasions can in principal find studying this to be of interest and value. As a PhD student myself in an esoteric field, I could not begrudge freteloo for this.

However, that study is very, very different from either layman apologetics, which is largely what occurs on this forum, or more "professional" apologetics. So when I identify a pattern (such as I identified in this thread where people take any statement that is abhorrent on its face and give a myriad different defenses of why it ought not be taken on its face) this is a comment on a pattern used by such lay people.

Now I still feel like I don't "understand" freteloo. He studies the OT but, iirc is not religious. Yet in the few threads I have seen he seems to repeatedly be taking a role effectively of apologizing for statements that seem incriminating on their face in terms of them just being mistranslations. It would seem that he has a vested interest in being an apologist as well, and has a preferred tactic for doing so. Especially given how his claims are usually pretty superficial of searching for an original passage and looking up alternate meanings of words and claiming that new translations are wrong.

I hold that God is just and loving.

Fret is Catholic.

Well never mind then, I have been under a false impression

ok. could you explain how someone who holds a gun to your head and threatens to destroy you is just and loving? I dont see how that fits with any definition I know.

I thought those were rather obviously incompatible with the self-concept of christianity, both as a revealed religion (finding its summit of revelation in Christ), and the concept of god not constantly interfering with natural order. If god talked "like the other beings", that should result in quite the cacophony.

But I agree that I should've been clearer in my wording: What better medium than text that maintains the basic tents of christianity?

Puh, thanks. I was genuinely worried.

Jupp, it's called Biblical Exegesis and is part of humanity faculties throughout Germany (and the world, I guess).

The reason why I usually just focus on translation is that I'm mostly not posting from a library. Also, to be quite honest, for whatever claims I make, I usually don'T need much more than a bit of tinkering in BibleWorks.
Well, three points.

1) As far as you're casting doubts on my translations with reference to "new translations", this is partly a veiled argument from authority. Inasfar as it is that, thanks, no takers.
2) I'm bummed that ascertaining the textual basis of the verses in question is a superficial approach to you; Sadly, a responsible approach to exegesis being what it is, I rather remain superficial in your eyes than actually become so.
3) Regarding you accusing me of merely claiming that some translation is wrong without any attempt to substantively counter my claims - that's ballsy.

• In this thread, my comments about translation were actually supported by the King James Version.
• In the Mt 5,28 passage, my reading is supported both by the revised Elberfelder and the Zürcher NT, two of the four major german NT translations, who are primarily used by exegets due to their primary interest in exact translation.

Apparently, you're oblivious to the fact that bible translations - even new ones - also take into account traditional accepted renderings and at times vote for tradition over precise textual accuracy.

(Zürcher: "The Zürich Bible (Zürcher Bibel, also Zwinglibibel) is a Bible translation historically based on the translation by Huldrych Zwingli. Recent editions have the stated aim of maximal philological exactitude."
Elberfelder: "It is certainly possible that we could have clothed some passage into a more beautiful German; only, without being slaves of the words, the thought always guided us that an as faithful rendering of the original text as possible outweighed any other consideration,...")

I don't care. Since I find no reason to believe the bible is anything other than a work of man, its ancient versions have no more legitimacy to me than its modern versions. I take it as obvious that most christians butcher modern versions of the text which they apply to their lives with horrible inconsistency, let alone ancient versions. What I object to is the process where by any barbaric passage from the bible is quoted, and christians swarm around with a myriad of different possible defenses to get away from the obvious barbarism of the passage. One possible such tactic or defense is what you do, namely you go to bibleworks and find more innocent sounding definitions of words to argue, effectively, that is only barbaric because it is mistranslated.

Oh I am very aware of this, indeed it is the basis for my criticism. Your approach seems to be - admittedly on limited data here - that when a contentious passage is posted, you spend a couple minutes on bibleworks to see if there are any alternate meanings of words and then inform us of them. Like when you talked about the use of desire for how a person desires a job that you found on bibleworks. It can't even be called exegesis, it is just taking expressions (usually with pretty obvious meanings) and saying "see! see! this word here might mean something else!". To call this a "responsible approach to exegesis" is to besmirch the field.

Again somewhat limited data set, but I highly suspect you are being dishonest here. I don't find your posting consistent with a neutral study of exegesis, as you often try to present, but of a consistent and unilateral attempt to defend the bible against attacks, where your preferred methodology to do so is to "tinker", as you say, on bibleworks until you can make an exegesis like claim that nullifies the particular attack.

Ok.

Did I miss something relevant or does your criticism of me actually looking at the original text and its context comes down to, basically: "You're doing it and my opinion is that I don't think you do it right/genuine/honestly!"

Yes. You missed the rest of the post.

So basically, fret has clarified things -- providing sources, interesting exegesis, sound argument and a logical line of thought, and uke-master is smarting.

Besides all of that, uke keeps calling the passage "barbaric." I find myself tickled -- as the rest of the 'uncivilized, primitive' folk of our sort are often perceived as barbaric by the Ivory-tower elitist snobs of liberal academia.

Yes I find a deity that literally punishes for four generations such an innocuous and human offense to be barbaric. And no, I think that is not close to a correct representation of fret's posts ITT and in others.

LOL

http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/sh...4&postcount=75

Well, let me just point you back to post #4 and #10 in this thread. I really think you are missing the point here: Fret has put the verse in a context that does not exactly fit yours. Instead of demonstrating how his remarks are unsound, you have just dubbed him dishonest in front of all and sundry.

You realize how that exchange with him is EXACTLY what I am talking about, right? Freteloo gave a bizarre example of how desire might mean something about desiring a job in the context of an expression he then agreed had obvious sexual connotations. As in that thread I am not asserting any correct meaning of ancient words, I am pointing out his attempts to deflect criticism of troublesome passages by dredging up alternate meanings of anything he doesn't like.

Granted in that thread you had an unbelievable 16 strawmans of my position so perhaps you never really had the best grasp of what was going on.