I like Asimov’s Guides, but if you’ve ever seen a real reference work, you’ll realize that he barely skims the top of the subject. Given that you can often find the Asimov works as remainders or in used book stores, they are worth picking up, but I wouldn’t make them my primary source of commentary.
I enjoy reading through them, absorbing his narrative, but if I need to look up a specific point, I have found I only have about a 1 in 4 chance that he will have addressed it.
Is that why this Chick tract contains a panel where one person asks “You religious?” and the other responds “No, I’m a Christian!”?
tracer- basically, it’s evangelical/fundie shorthand for “I’m not into a system of beliefs & rituals or organized religion or devoted to an institutional church but I have a personal relationship with my Lord and Savior Jesus Christ”
in my case, I’m both religious and a Christian L
RE Bibles- the Jewish Torah by Fox is Everett Fox’s THE FIVE BOOKS OF MOSES. I think he’s also done Samuel under the title SAMUEL, SAUL, DAVID. I’m highly anticipating his volumes of The Prophets and The Writings.
I second the HarperCollins Study Bible (NRSV w/ALL the Deutero-canonicals). My favorite translation for basic study is New King James, with the (New) Jerusalem Bible, the 1950’s Ronald Knox Catholic Bible, and the New International Version. The New Century Version is just too dumbed down, alas.
God could be insane, ya know.
And next time, use italics.
I’m sorry, I don’t understand. What would he have found in the Talmud regarding this?
Yet they so often congregate in enormous church complexes that even impress old Catholics like me. “Criminy, that’s bigger than the Vatican!” Americans have always liked institutionalized independence, I suppose.
One of the basic traditions in Judaism is that there are no extra words or letters in the Torah. Thus, if a commandment is repeated, there is a reason for the repetition; and this is used as the basis for the teaching of new laws.
One famous example is the “boiling a kid in it’s mother’s milk” prohibition. This prohibition is repeated three times in the Torah. The first comes to outlaw cooking such a mixture, the second comes to outlaw eating from it and the third comes to outlaw deriving any benefit (selling it, using it for fire fuel, feeding it to one’s animals, etc.) from such a mixture.
Zev Steinhardt
Thanks, Zev. Very interesting. One more question, if you have the time: these three repititions of the prohibition; are they more or less identical, or does the first literally outlaw cooking, the second eating and the third deriving benefit? If the former, how was the conclusion reached that these three actions were what was prohibited, and by whom?
Repetitions. I’m ashamed now.
The wording by all three is identical.
The derivation of the prohibitions that come from these repetitions is from our oral tradition. In short, we believe that an oral tradition accompanied the written Torah, explaining the laws contained therein. Without such a tradition, many of the commandments are incomprehensible. The written Torah simply does not have enough detail on how to perform them. A few classic examples include:
Writing a mezuzah.
Source: Duet 6:9 "And thou shalt write them [these words] upon the door-posts of thy house, and upon thy gates. " and 11:20 (same wording).
OK, which words? That paragraph? All of Deuteronomy? The entire Torah? Which part of the doors/gates shall you write them on? Do you take a pen and literally just write them on the gates, or can you attach a parchment with these words to your gates? Can they be written in any language, or must they be written in Hebrew?
Fasting on Yom Kippur
Source (Leviticus 23:27 “ye shall afflict your souls;” (and other places).
OK, we’re to “afflict our souls” on Yom Kippur. How does one do this? Should we beat ourselves with chains? Fast? Maybe jump into an oven? Maybe we should avoid washing? Or sleeping with a pillow (or maybe even deprive ourselves of sleep for the entire 24 hour period)? Maybe we should have to stand for long periods of time with no rest?
Slaughter of non-sacrificial meats
Consider Duet. 12:21: "If the place where the LORD your God chooses to put his Name is too far away from you, you may slaughter animals from the herds and flocks the LORD has given you, as I have commanded you, and in your own towns you may eat as much of them as you want. " (underlining mine)
You can search high and low in the Torah, but you will not find anyplace where God deliniates the laws of ritual slaughter. These laws (as well as the details of other laws - including those described above) are included in the oral tradition that accompanied the written Torah on Sinai.
Zev Steinhardt
We-e-e-e-ellll, we might walking up to the line of caricature, here.
There are people who view the word religion as encompassing the political aspects of organized belief, who sincerely choose to distance themselves from the organized religions/sects/denominations by eschewing the words religion and religious when describing themselves. We could have a whole separate discussion on whether they actually practice a religion from the perspective of anthropology, but they are sincere in their self-identification. They are somewhat at a disadvantage, in that the English language has no convenient (meaning short and widely recognized) term for their position. Faith expresses what they mean, but the common experience is to recognize faith in a religious context.
Now, I would agree that anyone who is a member of a group in its third or fourth generation who insists that they are not religious are simply fooling themselves. The very fact that they have created sufficient guidelines or boundaries of their expressed belief to maintain their community past the initial believers indicates that they have begun to practice religion. In support of FriarTed, I have encountered members of the Assembly of God* who have insisted that they were not religious. I have usually politely nodded and then gone round the corner to hold my sides while laughing at their claim. However, there are many smaller groups with similar beliefs for the whom the claim is probably true. When founded, groups such as the AoG probably intended to avoid religious practices. Unfortunately, they also wanted to raise their children to believe as they did and were unable to escape the terrible fate of becoming religious.
Jack Chick, for all that he is a loathesome little proponent of falsehood and hatred, would probably be quite accurate in describing himself as a non-religious believer. (It helps that he does not worship with anyone else, having broken rather forcefully with the various groups with whom he used to pray–some he quit; some booted him out.)
We have several posters who identify as Christian who also reject the notion that they are religious. I see no reason to not take them at their word. (I think that if Polycarp or I claimed to not be religious, we would have to throw in a very long explanation as to how we are defining the word for a single use in a single declaration to avoid being laughed off the MB, but there are other Christians who are not adherents of a large, multi-generational community of believers who might be able to make the claim and be perfectly correct.)
Hey Eonwe, how we doin’? Didn’t doze off in the “begats”, I hope…
Prolly not. The begats are in Chronicles, not Genesis.
I’m still looking for that Luther site. Perhaps I should just Google it.
tomndebb:
Genesis’s got (or is that “gat”) quite a few of them too.
Chaim Mattis Keller
I really don’t see where I near the line of caricature. I know people who call themselves Christians who are like those you describe, but I also know ones who belong to gargantuan (15,000 members and a Starbucks in the lobby) and politically active parishes. And many variations in between. Yet they would all agree with FriarTed that they are “not…devoted to an institutional church but I have a personal relationship with my Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.” In this case I understand “institutional church” to mostly mean Catholic, Episcopalian, Lutheran or some other national sect without a lot of theological autonomy at the parish level. However, having seen some of those enormous complexes, like Willow Creek, I am interested where they draw the line between theirs and an institutional church. I would think getting a visit from President Clinton while he was still in office so he could apologize for Monicagate would indicate that they had some serious clout.
Maybe they say “We’re not religious” to try and weasel out of the Establishment Clause of the 1st amendment. 
Huh. I didn’t realise that “Christian” usually meant “extreme Protestant”. It’s particularly weird to think of ever, ever describing myself a “Christian-not-religious” because of how damn liturgical I am. I even had specially blessed holy water at one time, fer cryin’ out loud!
Which, incidentally, I got into a fight with a housemate about, because she was one of those no-symbols-no-hymns types, and she thought I was fostering paganism by even entertaining the idea that material things could carry blessings…
Anyway, how is the reading coming, Eonwe?
Well, Lissla, you know how some people try to coöpt terms to serve their own ends.
Holy water anecdote–no evangelizing intended:
The first time I went to my present church they had the baptismal font parked in the aisle just as you pass from the narthex into the nave. The bowl is copper and clear varnished to prevent tarnishing. Rusty Catholic drop sees what looks like clear water in the bottom, says “I didn’t know Lutherans did holy water,” dipped, and crosses himself with fingers embarassingly dry. Since then, though, they’ve gotten so many exCatholics that they leave the water after a baptism instead of pouring it on the lawn. At least I’m not one of the genuflectors or people who cross themselves three times with their thumb at the start of the Gospel (for the rest of you, it’s tiny crosses at the forehead, lips, and heart).
I’d be joining Eonwe’s reading except the only Bible handy in my room is the Jerusalem Bible I have to take back to the library before I have to give myself a nasty phone call (I’m the librarian) and reading its commentaries just pisses me off.
So, does it really do 1d6+1 damage against undead creatures?
(For 25 gold pieces per vial, it had better!)