You must have looked up some Chabad site on the internet, while I was relating what a rabbi was sharing.
What irritates me, Borgia, is that there are several perspectives of the Amaleks–what it meant then, what was learned from it. The one thing no Jewish sect takes from it is what you insist upon–that God is to be condemned for the massacre. I deplore and reject any such notion–and I’ll bet your Chabad site does too.
As far as all the other perspectives, I find them equally interesting without feeling any need to insist upon a one and only. None of us who live today were there. The lessons learned from the event fascinate me.
I have this feeling you don’t understand. For example, if one loves and assists his fellowman (follows the commandments) God rejoices. However, if one hates and oppresses his fellowman, God rejoices when other people destroy those who are making life miserable for the oppressed.
Why do you always look for reasons to despise God? There must be something behind this?
Yes, I linked to it which you would have known had you actually bothered to read the source I posted earlier. Note that you suggested Chabad so I went to Chabad.org
We were discussing whether God commanded the slaughter of the children or not. You were claiming it was likely not God and could be the Hebrew government instead (or parable) and even mentioned Chabad. So I looked it up and didn’t see any mention of it being parable or the Hebrew government making the edict to slaughter instead of God.
I haven’t made ANY arguments whether Jews or any Christians condemned God for the edict to slaughter innocents and frankly, I’d be quite surprised if they did. I’m arguing whether God made the command and it seems the Jewish scholars and rabbis back me up.
In other words you aren’t interested in hearing from a few scholars and rabbis who have considered alternatives, and why. For personal reasons, you only want God to have made the command, no need to consider anything else. Shrug.
When someone wants to find fault with scripture, they will. And you end up with cycles of carefully culled scripture-poker: “My pair of Deuteronomy quotes beats your Ezekiel!”
The exercise is not to understand, but to find ways to tell a believer why he is wrong.
There is no fruit that comes from such a discussion. See MT 7:6.
Bishop Baron presents scripture with both truth and grace. Balanced, reasoned, researched, reverent. And, I might add, with Revelation. (And I capitalized “revelation” deliberately.) The man is gifted. A person can accept what he has to offer, or ignore it and choose to stick with his own opinions. Beyond that, I see little chance of merit coming from this discussion.
Like I said previously, I can only go by what you have provided and do far you have not provided a link to these scholars and rabbis who have considered alternatives. I’d be happy to read them if you did.
Ah. So if it is not on the Internet, it has no value. Going to Synagogue and listening to rabbis who do quote experts pales in comparison. Can’t help you there.
Consider this: According to Samuel, God tells Samuel to anoint Saul as king. Samuel blames the people for this change, saying the people wanted a king. According to Samuel, God tells him to tell Saul to massacre all the Amalekites. Saul spares the king. So, according to Samuel, God tells Samuel He regrets appointing Saul as king and so Samuel finds a new king.
A possibility I see here is a man, Samuel, wants to be king, but he is a priest so the next best thing is to be the kingmaker and the power behind the king–or the destroyer of the king if the king forgets Samuel is the one truly in charge. Why do I consider this?
The command to slaughter everyone and every animal.
Putting one person (a king) in charge. Easier to handle than a panel of Judges.
Hand picking that king.
When things don’t go as the priest (Samuel) wants, he deposes the king and selects another.
We have seen this type of scene (minus God) play out throughout history. That is why I find the story of the Amaleks worth pondering. Is God hand upon them all, or is it human machinations?
Samuel was the winner, the winner writes history.
The part I find captivating is the Hebrew theme(s) in this story. In oneself, root out doubt; root out evil. There is ‘Amalek’ without–but there is also ‘Amalek’ within. The Jews have never seemed to use this story as precedence to massacre another population. Instead they see it as they were hunted down and killed by Amalek, but they continued to trust in God and God’s justice. They see Justice in the reprisal of the death of Amalek women and children after the Amaleks slaughtered so many Jews. They see why it is vital to root out evil and to keep themselves apart from evil.
While Samuel may (or may not) have gotten events wrong, the Jewish people did not. God is with them.
It is my own experience of God and His infinite love that began my quest into the Old Testament and stories like the Amalekites. At the beginning it seemed one had to be right and the other wrong. With decades of study, I understand both are right–that it was simply I had so little understanding of the people, culture, history, and language of that day. It took years and years to come to this realization, but I know what started my journey, why I was vested.
The one question Borgia has declined to answer is why he is vested in the only possibility being that it was God’s command to slaughter children.
What is the magic decoder ring that lets us know when the Bible is to be taken literally and when it is to be taken metaphorically?
Did God actually write with his own handwriting the two stone tablets while Moses was on the mountain, for example?
Or is that just a story the priestly Levite sect told the Israelites hundreds and hundreds of years later in an effort to assign more authority to themselves as arbiters of the word of YHWH?
You see the issue, surely, of asserting the existence of an actual deity that was behind the beliefs that are the foundation of the Judeo-Christian system, but also asserting that some of those words that are listed as actual commands from God were actually allegories or stories made up by the priestly sect of the early Israelites, don’t you?
Is this your theory and yours alone or are you coming up with this via the rabbis and scholars you have talked to?
Odd that I can’t find mention of this theory online. It doesn’t seem to be shared by many, if any, published Jewish scholars.
I would say that reducing infants and children life to the price of Justice is not moral. Good thing we don’t go after the children of mass murderers today in order to find Justice. Killing the child would be considered a heinous act today, right?
Yes, and every online source I looked up saw God as giving the command and Saul being punished for not seeing it through.
Not to mention decoding when it pertains to us as an individual and when it does not.
Rabbis say that the Bible is meant to be studied, not read. There is little to be gained from reading an account through once or twice, jumping to a conclusion and moving on.
We should keep in mind that the Bible is not a science or history text, nor an Encyclopedia or news report. Much of it is laid out using the formulas found in literature. It grabs the reader’s attention to make its points.
But that is not all that Judeo/Christians believe the Bible is to be.
They believe it to be the Word of God, with an actual YHWH that stands behind its creation.
And like I said, problems arise when one makes an assumption that sometimes, commands of God in the Bible are actual commands of God, and that other times, it’s a “personal slant”.
While it makes sense that priests wrote the accounts and were known for educating the people, I doubt it was solely to assign more power to themselves. I am willing to bet the majority of them simply enjoyed being educators and examples of how living according to the Law brought about a more productive life to the people.
That being said, there are always those who gravitate to that which brings wealth and power. The Levites were no more exempt from that human frailty than any other tribe.
If you have read through this current discussion, then you will have already read my thoughts on the part Samuel may have played as a human without it being a direct command from God.
Rabbis note that Moses wrote down the Commandments as given to him by God.
The issue with this is there’s no objective way to know that what these rabbis believe is true.
Judeo/Christians believe that God exists OBJECTIVELY and he is THE One Deity.
If the Word which testifies of this cannot be trusted to accurately capture when it’s God speaking and when it’s a writer “putting words in God’s mouth” to teach a lesson…when all we can go on is “subjective beliefs” on that score…then we have got a problem.
Three times saying “I see, I consider, I find” and you are still confused?
I may join religious discussions online, but it’s not like I have an online blog, so it is not like you are going to find it online. As far as whether any “published Jewish scholar” has thought about this, I haven’t the slightest idea one way or the other. As I said three times, those are perspectives I have based upon my experiences and my studies. I have tried to be clear on what I have picked up on studies or in Synagogue, and which are my own thoughts.
