--- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, boyboy_8 <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > Life is too short to cherry pick quotes from OT? Huh? It depends on > what interests you have.
You came to this group with a kvetch about TM based on arbitrary pronouncements made in the OT. It seems that if you are going to accept one "core belief" than you should be bound to follow all the core beliefs. Otherwise you are making your own moral distinctions on which of g-d's laws are moral and which are not. On the other hand, if you understand the OT to be the work of men, then you should understand it has shortcomings. After a few thousand years it has morphed through rewrites and additions. When written it certainly was subject to the social conditions of the people who wrote it. People who lived in fear of very difficult survival conditions. This colored their accounts. My central core belief system is not Gita or > Upanishads or any other Vedic/Hindu/Indian opus. It's the OT; so, I > refer to it over and over again. Mine neither. I find ancient texts interesting from a historical point of view. Aside from that they have little relevance in a world. The ancients did not know about basic things we take for granted effecting on our ethical viewpoint. Concepts like human equality, human rights, and individual freedom. These do not work in the paternalistic tribal world that brought us the five books of Moses. > > Lot did offer up his daughter, your memory is correct. The angels > that Abraham had come visit him were now in Sodom/Gomorrah and were > outside Lot's door when a group of locals wanted to "get to know > them". Lot was horrified (the Rabbinic commentary says that they > wanted to have their way with these strangers - sexually, if you can > believe this!) and so Lot just brings them into this house and slams > the door shut. The locals won't go away, so Lot offers his daughter > to them if they'd just leave the strangers alone. I do not understand > a word of this part of Genesis. So, I do not know what to say. > > It is true that the OT has many references to slavery between Hebrews. > Why it was allowed is hotly debated. Working out your karma? > Honestly, its a deep subject and I'm not sure this is the venue. Its only one example I point out. There are others. I am making the point that the rules imposed by the OT are so diverse and arcane that we are forced to select what is for our "core belief" and what to throw out. We have to make our own moral distinction. In other words, it sells itself as "The Law of Moses" but in the end it is your existential point of view that interprets the text. Its the "Law of Fred". I am saying drop the pretense that it anything but the "Law of Fred". > > If the OT tells us how to live morally and we are to take it all in as > a whole, then do you accept that in the Biblical days a Hebrew might > end up as a slave to another Hebrew? It's a tough one.... Fred, my lansman, its not so tough. You know in your modern heart of heart that slavery is really really a bad thing. You know that since the 17th century enlightenment we have risen above old testament fixed dogma. Human Rights and equality have their place in ethics based not on g-d's pronouncements but rational understanding of what it means to be a human living in relationship to other humans. And don't get me started on our duty to the earth around us. The ancients really didn't get our connection to our environment. The mentality that we are somehow separate from nature, thrown out of the garden, has gotten us into big trouble. Fred, you got to really look at those "core beliefs". Are you going to fall in step with your interpretation of a fixed authority? Or do you take the other path, weighing evidence, open debate, observing, and acting from an ethical standard through measured rationality? s. > > Regards, > > Fred > > [snip] >
