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02-18-2013, 07:52 PM | #141 |
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where Gemara and Torah disagree Gemara is to be preferred according to the rabbanites
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02-18-2013, 07:56 PM | #142 |
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That is rather unfair oversimplification don't you think? The issue is not one of "disagreement" since the role of the Talmud is to elucidate and clarify the Torah itself. The Torah does not explain the details of how to implement commandments but the Talmud does. Otherwise the Torah itself would be several times larger than it is.
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02-18-2013, 08:02 PM | #143 |
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the Samaritans, Karaites and Falashas wouldn't dare do that. It's almost as bad as the "be nice to one another" exemption of the modern Christians. Either the Torah is divine or it is not. How can manmade opinion trump divine decree? Unless the rabbanites are simply conceding its all manmade, its all made up ...
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02-18-2013, 08:24 PM | #144 | |
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Have you gone through the vast numbers of texts of legal and intepretative exegesis produced by the Karaites? Of course they are faced with the sore thumb of how they can ever know that what they perform is actually the will of God or not since they have no system of determining whether a particular choice is divinely sanctioned or not. Whereas in Talmudic Judaism the practices authorized by the Sanhedrins, or the majority of the sages is considered divinely sanctioned being from an authoritative source in the chain of transmission which the Karaites reject. Thus, the Karaites could keep a particular commandment and never have the foggiest idea whether the way they were instructed by their particular analyst was agreeable to God or not.
The issue about "man-made" is based on a misunderstanding. For that matter it would apply both to Rabbanites and Karaites except that Judaism holds of a set of laws that go back to Sinai that are not written explicitly in the Torah, plus other oral teachings and a methodology of exegesis that goes back to Sinai. As a matter of fact Judaism teaches that all divine laws were initially transmitted orally since the beginning of mankind and at Sinai a portion was consigned to writing for a particular purpose. Quote:
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02-18-2013, 08:52 PM | #145 | |
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Samaritan temple discovered on Mount Gerizim [2001] Quote:
The [Samaritan] temple on Mount Gerizim Merrill’s Letter - Dating of Samaritan Temple on Mt. Gerizim, Biblical Archaeology Society Staff • [2012] Magen’s Response - Dating of Samaritan Temple on Mt. Gerizim, Biblical Archaeology Society Staff • [2012] There was a thread about this somewhere. |
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02-19-2013, 05:36 AM | #146 | ||
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I haven't seen a single reference from you. While the question of allowing you to continue to post is up to the moderators, there is no reason to take your posts seriously. For example, you state that the requirements for tefillin are vague in the Talmud which contradicts your statement that the exact requirements for tefillin are part of the oral law from Sinai. Perhaps your position can be defended (about any vagueness) but the lack of documentation is a disgrace. Dr. Cohn is the major expert on Tefillin in the world today. His views on the Greek origin are a little controversial, but if he is wrong where did they come from? As I mentioned previously Babylonia, Persia (may Chaldea) are candidates. There is no reason to think that they were around during first temple times. If you argue that they are from Moses and the wilderness, your task is even more demanding. In fact, you never actually come out and say that that is what you are arguing, presumably because it would be too absurd. You can say or imply that stuff in a synagogue and not be challenged but we are not in one here. You are responsible for this ridiculous sidebar. I made the simple comment (with suitable references) that tefillim could well be a Hellenistic innovation. This is quite ironic because it is considered perhaps the most distinctly Jewish thing. I'm sorry if that offends you but I made a relatively carefully researched observation and have a right to expect a reasonable argument in return. |
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02-19-2013, 06:10 AM | #147 |
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What is intentionally vague is the order of the placement of the required passages in the boxes. You can read up on it. I am often accused of not doing enough of my own research but I see the claim can be spread around.
As far as Cohn is concerned he is the foremost expert according to whom? I am amazed that discoveries like this are alleged to have somehow passed by all the world's rabbinic scholars for 1000 years. |
02-19-2013, 08:51 AM | #148 | |||
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Nice comment about Dr. Cohn, actually I deduced that from the fact that if one searches tefillin on JSTOR etc he is the guy that comes up most frequently. Yehudah B. Cohn Quote:
Here are the scholars at AskMoses Is wearing tefillin only a custom of orthodox Jews? This is from my friend Rabbi Tzvi Freeman, who is a bit of shmuck. Quote:
I posted this before: Tangled Up in Text: Tefillin and the Ancient World Dr Cohn gives a terminus ante quem of first or second century BCE putting it in the Hellenistic period starting at late fourth century BCE. He does not rule out a Persian origin (or even earlier - but doesn't consider that likely). The Qumran finds included 25 tefillin housrings showed fourteen of the housing contained four cells, two had three cells and the rest had one. The test goes on to discuss the inscriptions on the parchments, etc. Now maybe R. Freeman is right, used from the time of Moses, Ezra the Scribe lived at the same time as the Hasmoneans, etc. But oviously it is impossible to have a coherent discussion with someone like him on the topic. This isn't because he isn't intelligent (although in his case it's not clear) but because he comes from a mindset that he knows that Moses had the Torah dictated to him by God and an unbroken oral tradition. These views are undefendable in academia and frankly they should be banned here. It is fine to believe this, but any opinions based on this about the origin of tefillin, the author of Joshua, etc are just not worth debating. |
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02-19-2013, 09:29 AM | #149 |
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There could have been all kinds of groups who advocated any one of a variety of interpretations about the construction of the tefillin, the slots inside, the number of passages, etc. What does that prove?
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02-19-2013, 09:40 AM | #150 | ||
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