[Michael Cantor]

And don't forget the people against the people who hunt the transgendered from airplanes. And the Gay and Lesbian and Undecided Alliance Against People Who Tell Them To Sit down and Shut Up Already Nobody Here Gives A Shit About What You Do Or Whom You Marry If You Would Only Stop Talking About It.

I am a Nation subscriber, and have been for many years, but think that article is batshit, and that acting as ideologically whacko as the religious right makes a just cause look idiotic. We are becoming a nation of smaller and smaller special interest groups, screaming in louder and louder voices.

[Laura Heidy-Halberstein]

Originally posted by Michael Cantor:

I am a Nation subscriber, and have been for many years, but think that article is batshit, and that acting as ideologically whacko as the religious right makes a just cause look idiotic.

So, Michael, does that mean you think YOU ARE BETTER THAN THEM?

[Diane Dees]

One's gender, race and sexual orientation do not make one part of "special interest groups." They make one who one is, but calling these vital indicators of identity "special interest" is a way to ignore equality, and it works pretty well for both major parties.

[Patti McCarty]

Adj. 1. trig - neat and smart in appearance; "a clean-cut and well-bred young man"

That's actually a pretty cool name, Kevin.

[Anne Bryant-Hamon]

Originally posted by Diane Dees:


And what cost the Democrats the election was vote-tampering.

Diane,

On that we certainly agree. If you can find a candidate you want to support, then by all means, do so. But, for the reasons you mentioned above, it is getting harder and harder all the time to believe that voting makes a difference. I don't have the power to change that. So I guess we're screwed. Oh, and even though I am not a vegetarian, I think you are onto something good with being one yourself. Only in the death realm would creatures have to consume one another to survive, hence the saying "A Dog Eat Dog World". And that is what this present world is - the realm of death.

Take care -
Anne

[Robert Meyer]

Dan:
Within those communities that are more traditional, Tanakh is the usual hebrew abbreviation used. Within the scholarly community, "Hebrew Bible" is used. When you hear Jews use "old testament," they're either quite assimilated on this count, or they simply do not understand the bias implicit in the term. So I do not speak for all Jews when I say this, but speaking for myself, I'd prefer to have discussions about the Hebrew Bible and the Greek Bible (again, from the scholarly terms,) rather than old testament and new testament, which terms assume a given theology.

Dan, I would even question the use of the term "Hebrew Bible" in favor of "Jewish Bible" on two points. There are later books that use Aramaic rather than the traditional langugage Hebrew. Then there are the Samaritans (also Hebrew, from the post-Solomon Northern Kingdom) that only use the Torah and Joshua. So really there are three subsets of pre-Christian scripture:

The "Samaritan Bible" (Torah and Joshua) which is included in...
The "Jewish Bible" (the regular Tanakh that everybody knows) which is included in...
The "Septuagint" (Greek translation of the Tanakh that adds books: I & II Maccabees, Wisdom of Solomon, Judith, etc.)

The "Old Testament" (for Roman Catholic & Greek Orthodox churches) = the "Septuagint"

The "Old Testament" (for Protestants) = the "Jewish Bible" (Tanakh)

There were a couple of reasons the "Septuagint" was the "Old Testament" of choice in the first few centuries of the Christian era. First, almost everyone spoke Greek, or a little Greek. Second, the format of the "Septuagint" was a "codex" (i.e., a "book" as we think of books today; pages bound together). At the time, the "Jewish Bible" was still always on a set of scrolls, requiring at least a couple of people using both arms to transport; while a codex, even with more data in it, fits easily into one hand.

Robert Meyer

[This message has been edited by Robert Meyer (edited September 14, 2008).]

[Anne Bryant-Hamon]

Originally posted by Mark Allinson:
No, he didn't mention transgendered individuals, surely not because he doesn't think they have rights, but perhaps because the trans-gender community is truly a mysterious thing to most of us.

Anne, this has me puzzled. Why should the transexual community be more mysterious than gay or lesbian folk?

I thought I already explained why, Mark, in that most of us have gay and lesbian friends, but I don't think we really understand the trans-gender community. Perhaps I'm just assuming that because I don't know any transgendered individuals nor have I really heard their voice being aired.
But I try to avoid listening to the far right, so perhaps they have also attacked transgendered people and I just don't know about it.

[Dan Halberstein]

Robert, I have no trouble saying "Jewish Bible" then. I was wondering who would come in and correct the correctness, since the scholarly convention is erroneous if used literally. Jewish bible and Christian bible work for me, for use on this forum, using Christian bible to denote the collection of gospels, letters, acts, and end-of-the-world texts we've come to know and love. Any Samaritans (and there are still a few,) those few Ethiopian Jews (so-called Falashas) who have not accepted later texts, and Karaites reading this forum should understand that while the term "Jewish Bible" does include the entire Tanakh, notwithstanding the opinions of some Ethiopian Jews and all Samaritans reading these pages, it does not necessarily treat in any way with acceptance or rejection of later rabbinic projects such as the Talmud, and so can be understood as the same texts as read by the Karaites reading this forum.

By "Karaites" I mean to include those Karaites who in fact read the Jewish texts, not Karaites who exist (or existed; I do not know their recent wanderings, if they are in fact doing so) in the Crimea, Russia, Ukaraine, and Turkey, and were/are not, in fact, in any way Judaic, but are in fact Christian. Since the latter read the Septuagint in some guise (they are Orthodox and Catholic I believe, not Protestant), the texts they identify as the Jewish bible, as you have pointed out -- whether or not they call them the Old Testament -- may not be the same texts Jews would call the Jewish bible (although Karaites who are Karaite by faith and not only by descent would read what we call the Jewish bible.)

By including Christian Karaites as readers of the Christian bible, I do not mean to imply that their forebears read the Jewish bible as rabbinic Jews, although the "Jewish" bible is shared among them. Similarly I do not mean to imply that the Karaim of Turkey who may have come by the name without intermixing with the local Karaite community (by way of simple confusion), are in fact descended from Karaites proper at all, if in fact that is not the case (in the possible case of some Kalayar Karaites.)

Of course, the difficulty becomes identifying that part of the Christian bible which is not taken from the Jewish bible, to denote what Christians call the "New Testament" among themselves, and doing so in a value-neutral way. For this reason I truly hope that these texts were all first committed to writing in the koine Greek, not the Aramaic, thereby simplifying identification of those texts.

However, if we have scholars here who know that is not the case, I am happy to call these books the Christian-written bible, or the Christian-only bible, or somesuch.

I think using the broad terms "Hebrew bible" and "Greek bible" appeals to the scholarly community not strictly for purposes of thoroughgoing accuracy, but because it is a value-neutral way to refer to the texts of the Jews and those originated by Christians. The approximate accuracy of calling the Jewish bible the Hebrew bible (ignoring Aramaic entirely) must be considered preferable to dragging up old arguments of whether or not Christianity is the "successor religion" to Judaism -- the same basic issue implicit in the terms "New testament" and "old testament."

So okay, Christian bible and Jewish bible it is, for my money. Or Hebrew bible/Greek bible if you like. Either way.

Just don't tell me Judaism is replaced by Christianity every time you talk about Jewish texts dabgummit.

D

[This message has been edited by Dan Halberstein (edited September 14, 2008).]

[Robert Meyer]

Yeah, I prefer the term "Jewish Bible" myself when talking about the Tanakh, and "Septuagint" in its particular case. It's more accurate and when the word "apocrypha" appears, then everyone knows we are talking about Enoch, Odes of Solomon, Gospel of Thomas, Acts of Peter, etc; stuff that has never been in anyone's canon.

Robert

[Robert Meyer]

In fact, my preferred terms would be "Jewish Scripture" and "Christian Scripture" because it would leave out the completeness issue (hinted at by the term "Bible") altogether.

Robert