Pursuit of happiness in the decleration is more abstract than the imperative of stoning which is more explicit. Im sorry. As an believer i struggle with this and it shouldnt be met with irony but seriousness
@Harakat123 There is no need to struggle. Just study Jewish sources that discuss how this law was interpreted and you will find that no child was ever stoned to death. My point is that taking a law like this literally, without any knowledge of how it was actually applied, is as irrational as taking the pursuit of happiness literally. Whether Jewish or American, law is complex. To understand a law one must study cases and read the decisions of judges. Taking a law out of context is pointless.
The Scripture your talking about does not say God Say or Jesus says, what your missing is that the Bible is a History Book and it tells us about the laws they were living under, that law your talking about is a Man Made Law.. We have never lived under God laws which is the 10 commandments and one of his laws are thou shalt not kill, Never in history or even in our life time have we ever lived under God's 10 Commandments. Read that again and see if you see anywhere the name of Jesus or God..
@shyanndreamcatcher Matthew quotes Jesus as saying "Whoever then relaxes one of the least of these commandments and teaches men so, shall be called least in the kingdom of heaven". So who are you to say only the 10 Commandments are God's law?
And the Bible doesn't say "thou shalt not kill". That would be absurd considering all the killing that God allows in the Bible. The correct translation from the Hebrew is "thou shalt not murder". Murder is an illegal or immoral act of killing.
@voncello I really thought kill and murder means the same thing, I have been told that the KJV Bible was a good English translation from the Original Hebrew.
@shyanndreamcatcher The KJV version is completely rejected by Jews. It is a horrible version, virtually unreadable compared to the original. After all, who was King James? Was he a great Torah scholar? Was he an expert at Hebrew? Could he even read Hebrew? Probably not. Who were the folks he hired to make this version? None of it was made under the auspices of the great Jewish scholars who passed down the scrolls as well as the interpretative tradition. You will never see the KJV in a synagogue.
@shyanndreamcatcher Good point about the "royal family". Funny how so many people trust their version. For a good basic Bible with just a touch of rabbinic commentary to clarify things I like the Stone Edition Chumash published by Art Scroll. In my book I have a whole chapter on the problems with English translations of the Bible. Even in the first 10 sentences there are many mistakes and if you really look carefully at the language a lot of it makes no sense.
@voncello Also if you read Gen 6 the reason behind the flood, it says the Sons of God ( Fallen Angels) picked them out a human wife from the (daughters of men) and had Children that were Giants. It says we had Giants on the earth during that time of the flood and even after the flood. God had to clean the earth from this evil breeding with the fallen angels and humans. Also there is proof that giants were on earth, archeologist have found giant skeleton..
@voncello So a lot of the killings in the OT is the killings of these evil giants. They had to be killed. Like the story of David and Goliath.
1 Chronicles 20:6
King James Version (KJV) 6 And yet again there was war at Gath, where was a man of great stature, whose fingers and toes were four and twenty, six on each hand, and six on each foot and he also was the son of the giant.
@shyanndreamcatcher A lot of killing had to do with conquering the land of Israel. It was God who told Moses and later Joshua and others to engage in warfare for the land. The law also allows killing in self defense. Certainly the law allows the killing of animals. And even vegetarians kill plants. We all kill microorganisms every time we wash our hands. Most animals kill to eat. Killing is a part of life and cannot be banned. But murder is an illegal act of killing, and that is what is banned.
@shyanndreamcatcher Great. The trouble is that Jews don't read the Bible straight through. They believe that the Bible is like a website full of hyperlinks. Each word is a symbol that leads to paragraphs of commentary. So the best way to get an understanding of it is to buy a Bible that includes rabbinical commentary, such as those published by Art Scroll. If Christians would read through even a few chapters with such commentary they would see that the Bible is much more complex than it appears.
@voncello MANY people often confuse Moses Law with God's 10 Commandment law, but they are very different.
Moses' law was the temporary, ceremonial law of the Old Testament. It regulated the priesthood, sacrifices, rituals, meat and drink offerings, etc., all of which foreshadowed the cross. This law was added "till the seed should come," and that seed was Christ (Galatians 3:16, 19).
@voncello The ritual and ceremony of Moses' law pointed forward to Christ's sacrifice. When He died, this law came to an end, but the Ten Commandments (God's law) "stand fast for ever and ever." Psalm 111:7,8.
@voncello Please note that God's law has existed at least as long as sin has existed. The Bible says, "Where no law is, there is no transgression [or sin]." Romans 4:15. So God's Ten Commandment law existed from the beginning. Men broke that law. "Whosoever committeth sin transgresseth also the law: for sin is the transgression of the law." 1 John 3:4 Because of sin (or breaking God's law), Moses' law was given (or "added" Galatians 3:16, 19) till Christ should come and die.
@voncello Two separate laws involved: God's law and Moses' law...Called "the law of Moses"
LUKE 2:22 And when the days of her purification according to the law of Moses were accomplished, they brought him to Jerusalem, to present him to the Lord.
@voncello 10 Commandments-Called "the Law of the Lord"
ISA. 5:24 Therefore as the fire devoureth the stubble, and the flame consumeth the chaff, so their root shall be as rottenness, and their blossom shall go up as dust: because they have cast away the law of the LORD of hosts, and despised the word of the Holy One of Israel.
@voncello I would also like to Apologize, I ran across your video, and just from the start you sounded like you were mocking the Bible, saying what I been hearing from Atheist that God tells us to stone our children so why should they believe in a God like that, I didn't realize you were being sarcastic and I stop watching the rest of the video. I'm very sorry for that. I hope you can forgive me. I really thought you were an Atheist, making a video mocking the Bible.
@shyanndreamcatcher Hey no problem. And thanks for clarifying. It's funny but usually the people who comment on my videos think I'm a Christian fundamentalist! But actually I was raised Jewish and spent many of my adult years learning how Jews interpret the Bible. I wrote a book called "Beyond Faith" that discusses the evidence for the Bible and how the Jewish ideas differ from the Christian and Muslim. I defend the Jewish view against those who don't understand it including secularists.
@voncello What got me thinking is how you were using the Bible in your comments, I was like why he using the Bible? So, I then was thinking opps, I should play the video again and see? So I did, and what you are saying is right. I felt bad, I should have watched the whole video before..It's just I keep coming across Atheist using this as there main reason for not believing in the Bible. Just yesterday I had some atheist sending me messages about this subject. I am truly sorry
@SouthernR0cker4Life To the extent that they were looking for the quickest, least painful way, I suppose you could make the analogy. However, stoning in ancient Israel took place far less often than lethal injection in the U.S. today. And it was nothing like the stoning we see in the Arab world where they actually throw stones at people, causing a very painful, drawn out, terror stricken death.
@voncello No,I am rude at worst but, this is your only life and you are wasting it apologizing for a wicked king in a wicked book of fairey tales. But, you seem to think it is quite good to live your life in this way so, you are indeed repulsive. I don´t see why stoning any CHILD to death could be ok EVER! And it does say CHILD! And you seem to agree so, YOU ARE REPULSIVE.
The vision of God that thou does see, is my own hearts worst enemy.
@sstan1337 You either didn't watch my video or you didn't understand it. I made it clear that under this law NO CHILD was EVER killed! Even though the child in this case was a murderer. In fact this law PROTECTED children. So YOU ARE REPULSIVE for writing insulting comments based on misunderstanding or not even watching the video. And after what the Germans did to the Jews in WWII it is TRULY REPULSIVE to hear a German say that the Jewish vision of God is his "heart's worst enemy"! SHAME ON YOU!
@sstan1337 If you are a Canadian why did you write on your homepage that your country is Germany? And even if you lied about that, calling a Jew a Nazi sympathizer is about as mean spirited and disgusting as it gets.
You just admitted that you hadn't even watched my video when you made your first insulting comment. This says a lot about your character. Now you just as ignorantly say I don't know what I'm saying. You are just a hateful bigot who gets off on insulting strangers on the internet.
@voncello Just because I´m Canadian doesn´t mean I can´t move! You are the one who brought up the Jews! I didn´t have anything to do with it, I´m not old enough to have been in WWII and I´m not even German. Even if I was German I could be Jewish myself! You really are repulsive for pulling the shame on you I´m A Jew card. I never mentioned Judaism. I was talking about the Bible! You had to bring it up eh? I didn´t even know you were Jewish. You fucking coward. You have no right.
@sstan1337 Wow, now you are dropping the F bomb! I'm impressed!
You called the Jewish Bible "a wicked book". And now you say "I never mentioned Judaism. I was talking about the Bible". Well, DUH, who do you think wrote it? What my video shows is that this controversial passage that you find "repulsive", actually protects children in many ways and, in fact, never led to the killing of a child. But rather than have a reasonable dialogue you chose to insult me personally, and that's shameful.
@voncello The Jewish Bible? You mean the Torah? The Old Testement is a wicked book as is anyone who apologises for it. It does not protect children it brain washes them as you probably were. I don´care if you´re Jewish or if you are from outerspace! I know the 3 Abrahamic religions all stem from Abraham. They and you are repulsive!!! I will not change my mind and I don´t need your ethnicity rubbed under my nose because it does not impress me.
You are wasting the only life you are going to get.
@sstan1337 Yes, I call the "Old Testament" the Jewish Bible as that is a more accurate description. The so called new one is very old too. Anyway, the Torah, correctly understood, is arguably the greatest moral guide ever written. Of course any mean-spirited bigot can twist anything beautiful into something ugly. For the record I was not raised religious so there is no brain-washing with me. But you obviously have been brainwashed to hate something you don't understand. Why the hatred?
@sstan1337 Your attempt to paint the 3 "Abrahamic religions" with the same brush fails. The Torah is the original religion of Abraham. Christianity came 1500 years later and Islam 1000 years after that. They claim to be Abrahamic but the founders had no direct knowledge of him. They both contradict Judaism in many key areas. For instance, Abraham believed in one unified God. Christianity divides God into 3. Islam promotes the violent conversion of others. Abraham never called for violence.
@sstan1337 And the Bible certainly does protect children. The proof is in how strong Jewish families are. “In spite of Bolingbroke and Voltaire, I will insist that the Hebrews have done more to civilize men than any other nation." - President Samuel Adams. "The Jew is a pioneer of civilization. Ignorance was condemned in olden Palestine even more than it is today in civilized Europe." - Tolstoy. Prominent, educated Gentiles have praised the morality of Judaism. Maybe one day you'll understand.
@mrtadreamer True but with the legal hurdles you had to surmount (i.e. unanimous verdict of 23 judges, etc.) the death penalty was almost never carried out.
@elstroshitnonstop If you got arrested and had to go to court, would you hire a lawyer? I'm sure you would. And my question would be: Why? If the law is so easy to understand why do you need a lawyer to represent you? Why don't you just go up to the judge and tell him what the law means!
@voncello when i read a law, unlike you, i can understand that law to the degree of my knowledge of legal terms. some laws are very simple to understand and quote in my defense, but i would hire a lawyer because A) they would fully understand more complex laws containing specific legal terminology, and B) unlike me, they would have full knowledge of the legal system. you would be utterly illogical to claim that even a child would need that horrible piece of text explained to them
@voncello when i read a law, unlike you, i can understand that law to the degree of my knowledge of legal terms. some laws are very simple to understand and quote in my defense, but i would hire a lawyer because A) they would fully understand more complex laws containing specific legal terminology, and B) unlike me, they would have full knowledge of the legal system. you would be utterly illogical to claim that even a child would need that horrible piece of text explained to them
@voncello so, what you are saying is that the bible doesent mean what it says. Undetstood. One would think that the sky daddy creator of the universe would have made his book easier to undetstand. That would have saved BILLIONS of souls ftom being tortured for all eternity. Why didnt he think of that? Because he is fake, thats why. Religion is poison to the human race.
@ericandcelena Things you say indicate that you only know the Bible from the Christian perspective. Jews do not believe people need to be "saved". We are born innocent. There is also no hell with eternal torture in Judaism. These are medieval Christian concepts. The idea that God is a sky god is also not Jewish. It seems to me that your problem is not with the Bible but with the Christian interpretation. Jews also have problems with Christian interpretations. As you said education is key.
@voncello You choose to re interpret what it says, because you know what it really says is fucking disgusting, but you fear not worshiping the prick that the bible claims is god. Religion breeds hate, war, and ignorance. god is fake. Believe in your sky fairy fairy-tale if you want, but know that you are choosing ignorance over education.
@ericandcelena You are the one choosing ignorance over education. If you actually took a course on Judaism or studied one to one with a rabbi you would learn that the Bible was never meant to be read without a guide. It is like a webpage full of hyperlinks. Each sentence, even each word, is a link to pages and pages of additional information. This is the way the Bible has always been taught and learned among Jews. You are ignoring these facts and just spewing hateful insults that prove nothing.
@ericandcelena The denial is yours. If you understood my video the point is that what you are READING in a poor English translation of 3500 year old Hebrew is not even close to the original. Furthermore there was a tradition of explanations that were handed down by the same rabbis who handed down the Hebrew text. These laws were interpreted by courts and there are records of how the Jews actually understood their own laws. You call me a tool but who is the one hurling ignorant insults?
@voncello trust me the word stone had to have meant somthing why was stone in thare!?HHAHAA GOD IS GREEAAT BRING OUT THE STONES!!AHHAHAAA!*EVIL LAUGH*!AHHAHAA!
@2ECFIGHTING2 Well... look, even in the U.S. we have the death penalty. I'm not up on the exact methods we are using right now but in our recent history we hung people. put them in the electric chair (i.e. fried them), shot them with a firing squad, and used lethal injections. Most of these are not very humane. Some can be looked upon as torture. 3500 years ago the Bible recommended dropping people from a great height on to stones because it would cause an instant death with no suffering.
@voncello then...umm..IF US CITIZEN DISAPLINE FAILS TORTURE HIM AHAHAA!*EVIL LAUGH*(ya know in texus a 10 year old got death penalty a while ago last year!)man land of the freee is great!*sarcasm*
@2ECFIGHTING2 Texas is it's own world! If you watch my video carefully you'll see that this law only applied to a child who was a drunkard AND a glutton. The idea was that such a kid would probably end up committing a murder because he is always drunk (doesn't think straight) and his appetites know no boundaries. So if his parents hid the wine and the money he'd steal it from someone else and if that person tried to stop him he would kill them. It's not talking about your basic disobedient kid.
@voncello ok i under stand but lol i it say that if a gay man commites se* then STONE HIM!i tend to stay away from the bible...do you remember what god told mosus to do?i totaly agree with wat you said now.but can you disprove the gay thing?it say in the bible god does not like gays...(i might be gay lol umm if he dont like me can i get mad at him)
@2ECFIGHTING2 You'll see in my video that the ban was not on being gay. It was about priests using their position to have sex with young boys. A preist could not "lie with a man as with a woman" in a temple, as was the custom in many pagan religions.
Here's the link to the video: /watch?v=Bkgx9LebsFc
@voncello You look crazy. You sound crazy. Your explanation is completely idiotic. Would you consider stoning your friend...brother... cousin... son or daughter? People make mistakes. People go through phases in life. These laws are completely insane and obviously created by a primitive group of people.
@AndrewStewart7 Saying "you look crazy, you sound crazy" is not an intelligent way to start a conversation. It simply shows that you have a limited view of life. Furthermore you must have a limited ability to comprehend if you think my video promotes or endorses stoning. To the contrary my video shows that this law was constructed in such a way that it could not lead to stoning except in the case of a murder, and even then the death penalty was almost never given in Israel. See 9:00 to the end.
...okay...so all these people that have stoned this horrible child have just killed him...which is a capital crime...so do they all get stoned to death too? Even if no one ever did this, the suggestion itself is wrong. There is no moral righteousness here.
^this is my biggest problem with these kinds of laws; the are hypocritical. And yes I do not support the death penalty.
@PhilosoFighter2012 If a US court sentences someone to death for murder do those involved in the execution also get the death penalty? There is as much moral righteousness in US law as in biblical. But in this case the Talmud states that the way this law is written it could never be enforced unless the child actually committed a murder. And most murder convictions didn't lead to capitol punishment in Israel due to extenuating circumstances and the need for 23 judges to vote unanimously!
@voncello I already told you I do not support the death penalty for the reason that it is hypocritical. I don't agree with the US law one hundred and ten percent. Comparing one flawed system with another is not a very good justification. That would be like trying to justify slavery by pointing to another culture with slavery (maybe that is a little drastic but same principle). Did you read my message? It doesn't matter that they didn't enforce it. The fact that it was there is not right.
@PhilosoFighter2012 I can respect those who oppose the death penalty. There was a rabbi in the Talmud who said that had he been on the court no one would have ever been put to death. But I personally don't feel that the death penalty is immoral. My problem with it is that there can be mistakes or people can be put to death to keep them from speaking out. But you have to realize that in Israel back then they didn't have jails. So if someone was a murderer you could either kill him or let him go.
@PhilosoFighter2012 i would guess if a child is a glutton and a drunkard and will not listen no matter what.the child is a demon and or will kill someone and its most certain.i also think that killing someone to save someone else isn't a sin .im not sure but i think so
Religion is for scared people,people that unconsciously want to be controlled,close minded people with little or zero imagination,people that can believe that they have been saved from an illness while for some strange reason their almighty god doesn't save the starving children in africa.To believe that u have to be self centered and think u somehow deserve more than the straving children
@geiuy There are many religions and within each religion there are many branches and within those branches are many congregations and within those congregations are different leaders with different approaches. To say that "religion" is for scared people is a generalization. Some people are religious due to fears but some do it for companionship, some in order to help others, some find it intellectually stimulating, some find it relaxing, and some just like the music!
As I said "One example is found here in this video: Dr.Gerald Schroeder Genesis & The Big Bang Theory. It's in 5 parts on Youtube. He is a nuclear physicist and MIT professor with 2 doctorates in science. He explains using the theory of relativity that though 15 billion years have gone by since the big bang here, at the place of the big bang only 6 days have gone by! He also shows how every detail of Genesis falls into the correct "day" when the expansion of the universe is accounted for.
" But the Jewish Bible does indeed present many kinds of evidence to suggest at least that the author had knowledge unaccessible 3500 years ago." Could you tell me what this is please?
"But when it says THEN, THEN implies that something else happened, so, after this, the kid you know, ended up robbing, stealing and eventually he killed someone ..THEN all the men of the city shall stone him to death"
i've got to ask you, where did you get your information that the kid stole and killed someone?
It's definitely not in the bible, so why are you implying what people meant that many years ago?
@UNDEADMANBEARPIG Because it is in the Talmud. If you buy a Jewish Annotated Bible from a company like Art Scroll you will find quotes from rabbis in the Talmud explaining sentence by sentence how Jews read the Bible and understand it. One thing you'd learn is that there was always a trial before capital punishment could be done. So even with that bit of information we know that THEN implies at the very least a trial. Talmud states that death penalty was almost always avoided due to legalities.
You can't take a simple adverb(adj.noun.) like "Then" and imply that it has a bunch of meanings involving robbery and murder. If that's how the jews read the bible, i wonder how they read bedtime stories.
"The boy put his toy away, THEN he went to bed."
are you saying that this boy probably robbed people and even possibly killed someone during that time?!"
@UNDEADMANBEARPIG The Bible is among other things a legal document, especially the first five books. This part of the Bible is called the Torah in Hebrew. Torah literally means Law. Just as in American law, there are "terms or art" that mean something different in the law than in normal usage. The reason we need lawyers when we sign contracts is that they are experts in HOW the English is understood under the law. Same with the Bible. Rabbis learn HOW the Hebrew is meant to be understood.
that seems like a pretty big gap of information they seemed to exclude from the bible, seems like a pretty important thing to skip.
And since Talmud states that the death penalty was almost always avoided, it shows that nobody follows the bible for what it is, because it is outdated and you'd be a fool to follow it word for word
@UNDEADMANBEARPIG The Talmud was written 2,000 years ago! The rabbis of the Talmud claimed to be passing down information that originally came from Moses about 1000 years before. It is not that the Bible is outdated. The problem is that many people read it without the benefit of the Jewish tradition. The Jews (who wrote the Bible) insist that it can't possibly understood without the tradition. So a lot of non-Jews (Christians & Atheists) are unknowledgeable and fighting over misinterpretations.
@voncello So what you are saying is that your divinely inspired book requires some elaborate interpretation in order to acquire the true message? Wouldn't an omniscient being know that humans are fallible and make the message as clear as possible? You presume to know the thought and intent of an omniscient being and are using scare tactics to propagate your particular interpretation. Numbers 15:32-36 states that Yahweh ordered the death of a man because he was collecting sticks on the sabbath.
@FaithBane Why do you call it My divinely inspired book? Why be antagonistic? As to your question "Wouldn't an omniscient being know that humans are fallible and make the message as clear as possible?" - Who knows what an omniscient being would do? For one thing it would know a lot more than you do and in all likelihood would not act according to what you, a finite being with extremely limited knowledge, would except it to do. I do not presume anything. You presume you understand omniscience!
@voncello Ok, ok... Look at the traits attributed to this particular god (omniscience, omnibenevolence, and omnipotence). Any action performed by this being must satisfy all traits. If the god uses its power for evil, it wouldn't be omnibenevolent. If it is unable to correct a wrong, it is not omnipotent. If it cannot forsee future events, it is not omniscient. How can one presume to know something that is defined? I do not presume to know what it is, I know what it is.
@FaithBane You haven't proved a thing. Your first mistake is that you are talking about "a god" as opposed to God. God, by the Jewish definition is the force that created and sustains the universe. You have no proof that this force is "evil", "unable to correct a wrong" or "cannot forsee future events". Yet you insist based on some type of blind faith that you "know what it is". In my book Beyond Faith I argue that we move beyond believing in things that we cannot prove.
@voncello I never said that it was 'evil', 'unable to correct a wrong' or that it couldn't forsee future events. I said if that were the case, it would not meet the god criteria.
World English Dictionary
omniscient (ɒmˈnɪsɪənt)
— adj
1. having infinite knowledge or understanding
2. having very great or seemingly unlimited knowledge
@voncello The point of the comment was that if a verse did not satisfy the criteria, It could not be attributed to a divine being, then I showed one such verse.
@FaithBane As for Numbers 15 you are trying to tie that short episode to me using "scare tactics to propagate (my) particular interpretation". How does a 3500 year old law prove that I today am trying to use scare tactics to "propagate" anything? You have completely misunderstood my intentions and are reaching for unrelated bits of data to formulate your misguided point. In this video I am discussing a specific law from Deuteronomy 21 and how it is misinterpreted. You did the same with Numbers.
@voncello The scare tactics come from your tone of voice throughout the video. You are also guilty of appeal to ridicule, straw man, and other fallacies. The verse I gave you IS relavent, as it goes against your reasoning. Try to make that verse seem moral.
@FaithBane My "tone of voice"? So because you don't happen to like the tone of my voice you accuse me of being scary? I am explaining in a rather reasonable tone how Jews interpret the Jewish Bible. I was specifically referring to the verse on the "disobedient child" and I showed that in fact the verse is full of protections for children and implies a long legal process intended to help children and families. If you want to discuss Numbers we can but that is off the topic of this video.
@voncello I never said I didn't like it, I said that it implies fear tactics. Raising your voice when talking about the other side of the argument is also an appeal to ridicule. You are stating that the simple word "then" can change the entire tone of the verse. Have you any idea how many times the bible has been translated? The subtle underlying messages could have even been lost in the very first translation for all we know. The King James translation doesn't even contain the word "then".
@FaithBane I agree the translations are very faulty. In fact there is a chapter in my book called "Will the Real Bible Stand Up?" and in it I show how absolutely ridiculous the translations are. So much so that they cannot even be considered the real Bible. I, however, read the original Hebrew along with rabbinical commentary from the Talmud. This is considered the real Bible by Judaism. My video shows how the faulty translations lead to faulty understandings. My voice is expressive not scary.
@FaithBane I was making the larger point that stoning didn't occur in Israel willy-nilly. It would only happen at the end of a long series of legal proceedings and even then it occurred "less than once in 70 years" according to the Talmud. But in the case of this law the rabbis say it never was carried out because of details in the way the law is written.
@FaithBane When someone accuses the Bible of being immoral that is a confrontational stance. If I were to accuse the US Constitution of being immoral that would be similarly confrontational. So when expressing the mentality of the side that impugns the Bible I raised my voice to express this. I didn't mean to ridicule those people but to suggest that angry confrontation is not a way to achieve understanding. My goal is to foster understanding of how Jews see their own Bible and to create peace.
@voncello When going into the bible wondering whether or not it's true, they can see that it was written by primitives. When someone goes in assuming that it's true, they tend to rationalize and come up with ridiculous explainations for what they read. If what you wish to do is demonstrate the jewish understanding, why don't you state that? From what I saw in the video, you were just presenting one of the aforementioned rationalizations.
@FaithBane If you think that reading it in an English translation, which you already agreed is faulty, one can conclude anything, let alone that "it was written by primitives" you must possess some magical powers of insight. As to why I made the video, if you read what I wrote in the description it is clear that I wrote a book about moving Beyond Faith which asks people to "Move beyond the surface of the text to discover the true Bible!" Then I ask people to check out my site linked above.
@voncello Despite the fact that I was reading an english translation, it shares the same basic outline. One need not possess magic powers to determine whether or not something is primitive. Read Leviticus 14:2-52 and tell me that it was not written with a primitive understanding of the world.
@FaithBane This is a good example of a chapter that appears primitive but when understood appears futuristic. I read an English translation that made it appear like a primitive cure for a skin disease. But this is not what this chapter is about. It's actually about a physical ailment caused by a spiritual deficiency which only can occur when God's presence is directly apparent. All of the cures are symbolic of various things intended to teach moral behavior. You can't get this from the surface.
@FaithBane And the translation often is nothing even close to the basic outline. For example in English it says God separated light from darkness but the rabbis point out that darkness is the absence of light and is by nature separate! So on a basic physical level what it is really talking about is separating dark and light matter, i.e. forming stars and planets. There are also spiritual interpretations about separating the spiritual from the mundane. But again none of this is on the surface.
@voncello How do you know the true intent of the authors of the torah? That was written 3000+ years ago, and peoples' cognitive abilities have evolved since then. There are many verses similar to the example I gave you. Why would devinely inspired text require such interpretation?
@FaithBane Judaism teaches that God's law was never meant to be something written in a book. Rather it was something you lived with. The Torah says, "And you shall teach them diligently to your children, and you shall speak of them when you sit at home, and when you walk along the way, and when you lie down and when you rise up." It is in the act of interpreting and arguing about interpretation that your mind develops the ability to discern and see below the surface. It trains you to think!
@FaithBane Your question hits on one of the main differences between Judaism (the original biblical religion) and the later ones that sought to overthrow Judaism. Judaism is all about having an open mind, questioning, arguing. There is even a Torah passage where Abraham argues with God! But Christianity and Islam do not encourage questioning and arguing. Rather they seek obedience to a doctrine accepted by blind faith. Your very question shows how non-Jewish ideas have pushed the original away.
@voncello Ok, I understand, but in that case, why even bother use the book? If a religion is based on the thought and teachings of rabbis, why try to defend this ancient text? Despite your intentions, it really seems as though you are applying two standards to the torah.
@FaithBane The rabbis are not passing down their own ideas but ideas that are derived from the Torah. You and I are doing the same. This passage about the disobedient child has inspired pages of commentary just on this You Tube page. You can only imagine the amount of discussion it has inspired over the last 3500 years! The Torah is an incredible engine for thought. But Orthodox Jews believe that they are faithfully passing down a tradition that Moses taught to the Jews in the desert.
@voncello I have a respect for thinkers, but those who "seek obedience to a doctrine accepted by blind faith" (i.e. the majority of religious people) do not fit into this category for me. I respect your thought, but I question why people require a belief in a personified divine power which cannot be detected by any means. The magnificently elegant universe in which we live is the greatest thing we will ever know, and it's all around us, appealing to all of our senses.
@FaithBane I oppose those who seek obedience to a doctrine accepted by blind faith. That's why my book is called Beyond Faith. But I find many Atheists also come to their beliefs through blind faith. They come to conclusions about the Bible but they have never read it in Hebrew or even studied HOW the Jews interpret their own book! To me that is just ignorant. One wouldn't study Calculus without a math teacher and the Torah is just as complex. It has divine evidence but not on the surface.
@FaithBane "I question why people require a belief in a personified divine power which cannot be detected by any means". I agree. Most religions have no evidence to back up their dogma and it does seem a psychological need that brings folks to irrational faith. But the Jewish Bible does indeed present many kinds of evidence to suggest at least that the author had knowledge unaccessible 3500 years ago. One example is found here in this video: "Dr.Gerald Schroeder Genesis & The Big Bang Theory".
@voncello this video is comedy gold,you look so ridicouols trying to find an excuse for such an old cruel and stupid book.since you tried so hard to find an acceptable meaning to the "child killing" verse why don't u try to find another meaning for the verse on homosexuality,maybe it could be interpreted in another way.maybe after all your god doesn't condone homosexuality an it was just misinterpreted by human beings?
@geiuy I have a video on how people misinterpret the verse on Homosexuality called, "Does God Hate Gays?" If you watch it you'll see that you have misinterpreted that one as you have this one. I am not "trying to find an excuse" for anything. I am passing along the traditional Jewish explanations of these things from the Talmud which has been around for 2000 years! Folks like you are actually the ones "trying to find excuses" for your interpretations that are not accepted by the experts.
@UNDEADMANBEARPIG According to the Jews, who wrote the Jewish Bible, you can't understand it without the aid of a certified teacher (or at the very least a rabbinic anthology). Fact is the Bible doesn't mention all details of every law. There is a lot of background information that was passed down to explain the sketchy text. Same in American law, the Constitution is short but there are millions of pages that flesh it out. Israel also had courts and there are many legal decisions to study.
It’s just a critical view on your posts. If you want to find answers on the origin of morality, look for information about evolutionary psychology, the point of it is that we are social, nice and moral animals “by definition” (obviously with some exceptions), so the “laws of morality” aren’t any new laws imposed on us from above, they’re a mere reflection of what’s inside us already (hard-coded in neurons). At least that’s a true scientific theory, which can give you explanations and insight.
@smarttex What evidence is there for this "scientific theory"? We are part of a humanity that includes Ghandi but also Hitler, Mother Teresa but also Stalin. We have had virtually endless wars since the beginning of time. We have had several attempts to conquer the world from the Pharaohs to the Caesars to many groups even today. I see people step over homeless people every day. I see rapes, kidnappings, bombings, and murders on the news. Where is your proof that we are "nice and moral animals"?
@voncello Evidence is in fMRI, ECG, observation etc. Google on the topic. One of the evidences is that you seek for justifications of violent texts, eg your brain tells you that it's not OK to stone a child. There are genetic maniacs (lack a part of brain), but also “bred” ones, like Hitler-a Catholic antisemite, Teresa-a death angel, more interested in baptizing and letting die than curing. Stalin attended seminary and formed a religious state (communism has all the attributes of a religion)
@smarttex I do not think it is "OK to stone a child". If you understood this video you would realize that children were NEVER stoned under this law. Watch it again more carefully (with annotations enabled) and hopefully you will understand what I am saying.
@voncello There will always be good and evil people. Show me a person who said “oh, I read Torah today and decided not to rape my neighbor’s teenage daughter, now I see that it is wrong”, he wouldn't do it anyway, isn't it? And no religious text would cure any maniac capable of that. And as a Nobel-winning physicist S.Weinberg said “With or without religion, you would have good people doing good things and evil people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil things, that takes religion”
@smarttex "If I were an atheist... I should still believe that fate had ordained the Jews to be the most essential instrument for civilizing the nations. If I were an atheist... I should believe that chance had ordered the Jews to preserve and propagate to all mankind the doctrine of a supreme, intelligent, wise, almighty sovereign of the universe, which I believe to be the great essential principle of all morality, and consequently of all civilization."
@voncello Wait, I have just remembered about Lot's story in Genesis 19:8 and I think that Torah is not a good inspiration for NOT raping your neighbour's daughter. But I'm sure you would have a justification for that atrocity as well, as well as why it's in there :).
@smarttex If you're going to dismiss my answers to your comments before I answer then there is no point in continuing this. One of the basic principles of carrying on a reasonable conversation is to actually listen to your partner's answer before responding. You show a great deal of disrespect. If that is what you want to do please do it elsewhere. I take the time to respond to comments not to engage in a tit for tat but to respectfully listen to other points of view and have mine respected too.
What you are doing, you try to find justification for Torah very hard by being biased and using flawed arguments, at least that’s the impression I have after watching your videos. Regarding the scientific theories, you miss the point. One of the main features of sci-theories is that they are both explanatory (to known facts) and predictive(to yet undiscovered facts). Thus, the scientific theories don’t get overturned, but they get generalized and refined, if new or conflicting evidence comes in.
@smarttex I agree with what you said about science. I don't understand your problem is with my arguments. Please be specific to things I have said. Vague comments like "you try to find justification for Torah very hard by being biased and using flawed arguments" tells me nothing. What flawed argument? What bias? Frankly I don't think I have demonstrated any bias. All I demonstrate is a knowledge of the subject and an open mind.
@voncello Regarding science, your words are “over time most theories get overturned” (What I Believe, at 09:00). I am curious which theory the QM had overturned? BTW, black holes first were predicted by a theory and only afterwards observed. My point about your bias is that you assume that Torah is true and try to justify it, your biggest flaw is wishful thinking and leaps of logic, you want the listener to believe your assumptions, not very convincing.Next time imagine a skeptic in front of you
@smarttex I do not assume the Torah is true. Show me one place where I made that assumption. Rather you are the one assuming things about me. I do not take "leaps of logic" nor do I "want the listener to believe (my) assumptions". Instead of engaging me on specific points you just make general statements without out any evidence and try to demean me. This proves nothing and is a waste of time. If you have comments to make on things I have actually said make them, but please stop the attacks.
And all the assumptions you make, they don’t seem to be based on any factual information. I am not an expert in religions, but you refer to Talmud, which is a text compiled less than 2000 years ago, based on discussions and oral knowledge, which passed so many generations that it hardly can be used as evidence. I agree that the answer is in studying, but in scientific terms studying is trying to prove something wrong very hard and after you fail to do that, you say that probably it isn’t false.
@smarttex The Talmud is the official guide to what the Bible means. The Bible was written by Jews for a Jewish audience. There was a tradition handed down of what every single word meant. It wasn't a casual thing. Students would study with teachers for decades learning every nuance of every sentence. Passing this down correctly was a matter of life and death for these scribes. It only got written down when the Romans started killing off all the rabbis. Then they had to preserve it in print.
@voncello Oh, yes, indeed, the official guide to the all the nonsense in the text - you should have that in order to have reasonable people believing in that! According to Wiki, the reason was “a flurry of legal discourse and the old system of oral scholarship could not be maintained”. First part was compiled in 200, and persecutions probably didn’t start before 325 BC, when Christianity - the main source of antisemitism - had become the official religion of the Roman Empire.
@smarttex Rather than rely on wikis, why don't you actually study a text on Jewish history. The Siege of Jerusalem was in 70 CE. "Josephus claims that 1,100,000 people were killed during the siege... Men and women, old and young, insurgents and priests, those who fought and those who entreated mercy, were hewn down in indiscriminate carnage. The number of the slain exceeded that of the slayers. The legionaries had to clamber over heaps of dead to carry on the work of extermination."[
@smarttex I can edit it and tomorrow someone can erase what I wrote and write something else. That is the beauty but also the danger of wikis. I think they are good sources but only in combination with traditional sources like books. I don't "disagree". You just didn't study enough to know that there was this horrible attack by Rome on Israel in 70CE. It was at that time that the remaining rabbis started to meet and write down the oral tradition from Moses which became known as the Talmud.
@voncello Of course I knew about the siege of Jerusalem, but to be honest didn’t know its extent. But regarding the casualty figures, I have just found that they are quite contradictory. As to the reasons for the war, wiki is quite contradictory to what you say (wiki also uses Josephus). But I found no mention of these conflicts in the article on Talmud, so considered that they were not related. There is also a discussion section, so don’t be so pessimistic about the Wikipedia
Dear Aaron, I liked your playing very much - it’s probably the best cello rock on YouTube! But after watching your videos on religion(s) and being skeptical by nature, I feel that I still must act as an opponent, so I have mixed feelings :). I think that you fail by using flawed arguments and cheesy logic. IMHO the biggest “leap of logic” you make is by going from “disobedient” child to a “crack”, it just doesn’t follow from what you say.
@smarttex Thank you for the compliment on my cello playing. People have told me to not discuss religion as it could hurt my music career. But like John Lennon, I want to be an artist that has something to say. My point regarding "crack" is that in this case it says the child was a "glutton and a drunkard". Drinking was the strongest drug available to those people at that time. So updating it to today's context I said it would be like a kid today on crack who is totally out of control.
@voncello Not at all, I don’t think that it was a bad idea to discuss religion! And it doesn’t prevent me from enjoying your playing anyway. My point is that your discourse is what some scientists call “proof by waving one’s hands in the air” - not a proof at all, there's more wishful thinking than logic. You keep saying that your opponents are ignorant. But please take one topic, e.g. on “disobedient child”, and show thoroughly how these persons are wrong. But you fail at that.
@smarttex Your comment is contentious. You are setting yourself up not only as the judge and the jury but as the attorneys as well. Instead of asking me questions and waiting for an answer, you ask questions and immediately accuse me of "wishful thinking" "failing" etc. when I haven't even answered. Actually you are the one who is failing to allow for a reasonable give and take. If your mind is already made up why should I bother to respond?
@voncello It was a comment on what you have said already in your video, that’s the general picture that I had about it, I didn’t mean to “disrespect” you, it’s sorry that you felt so. The text that you comment on is utterly cruel, your wishful thinking IMHO consists in softening the whole picture, e.g. by saying that the elders were some kind of “grandparents” etc. I don’t think that there can possibly be any strong evidence for that. Maybe they were, maybe they weren’t.
@voncello It was a comment on what you have said already in your video, that’s the general picture that I had about it, I didn’t mean to “disrespect” you, it’s sorry that you felt so. The text that you comment on is utterly cruel, your wishful thinking IMHO consists in softening the whole picture, e.g. by saying that the elders were some kind of “grandparents” etc. I don’t think that there can possibly be any strong evidence for that. Maybe they were, maybe they weren’t.
@voncello Then, how do you infer at 7:40 from “a glutton and a drunkard” (as far as I understood, this comes from Talmud, written more than 15 centuries after the original law) that the child “has no control of his appetites and not just foods, with anything”, “nothing can stand in his way”, “will steal from his parents”, “will kill someone” etc. You demonize him. It’s a leap. I can imagine “a glutton and a drunkard”, who is just a badly spoiled child, not a killer.
@smarttex You think “a glutton and a drunkard” comes from the Talmud? I quoted it right out of the Torah at 0:57! Then 1500 years later the rabbis pass down in the Talmud what that means, which I explain at 6:48. At 8:03 I deal specifically with how the rabbis knew he would kill someone - because this law contains capital punishment which means a capital crime has to be committed. Careful study of the Talmud shows that the rabbis don't make things up, the clues are all there in the text!
@voncello Well, it doesn’t really matter where this line comes from. So, all the death threats, e.g. for trying to convert a Jew to another religion, adultery, bestiality, homosexuality, rape, prostitution is just empty chatter? And you really need to kill someone (hm, an animal that you have raped?) in order for these laws to function? Disobedience, gluttony etc. are some, but not the main reasons for breeding murderers, why does the law focus just on these topics?
@smarttex Why do American laws on murder not focus on free speech? These are just different areas of the law. The purpose of this particular passage is to get parents to intervene quickly and strongly if their child becomes a glutton or an alcoholic. The passage alludes to the fact that these behaviors in combination can lead to murder. Therefore it mentions the death penalty to show the seriousness of behaviors that might not seem that bad. You have to go passage by passage as in any law book.
@voncello I still find the arguments too far-fetched for the apparent objectives, but as I said before, we can go on forever and I feel that I've got your point quite clearly now.
@smarttex I know it seems strange by today's standards but this book was written not one or two centuries ago but 3500 years ago. Imagine life back then... no electricity, no cars, no machines, not even tools made of iron. It was the Bronze Age. I think a mistake many people make is they look at the Bible through modern eyes and have modern expectations. I'm sure 3500 years from now people will think the way our laws are written are bizarre too. I think one must get into the mindset of the time.
@voncello I always tried to interpret it in this way and to imagine that era, the problem is that many people, I guess mostly Christians, hold it to be the literal true and unchangeable word of God.
@smarttex Most Jews don't take it literally but Orthodox Jews do however they admit that understanding it is the hard part. This idea that you can just read it especially in translation and understand it is totally foreign to Judaism. It is something you must study your whole life - literally daily. The Talmud is studied on a 7 year cycle! That's how vast it is. Christians made up an interpretation out of thin air which Jews feel misleads people from the truth of what the Bible really says.
@voncello And a little bit later “’then’ implies that something else happened”-no, it doesn’t. These are some of the leaps of logic in your video. But after rewatching it I think that these were not really your leaps, but that of Talmud, since you were quoting it all the time. I really hope that no child was executed under the law, like you said, but it only means that the rabbis were not as mad as the man who wrote the law, so they interpreted it in their special, less cruel way.
@smarttex I understand your problem with my interpretation of "then" but who are you to say "it doesn't"? It may not, but how can you be sure? There's an egotistical smugness in acting like your opinion is the only valid opinion. "Then" can imply a passage of time, ex. "I got on a ship THEN we went to Africa". Surely we didn't get there in the blink of an eye! "Then" implies weeks of time voyaging across the sea. The law is exquisite. You'd do better to drop the attitude and start learning.
@voncello I don’t have a problem with that, but you do. All I say is that it not necessarily has this meaning. But you are the one who is proposing a contrived definition, so you must support it somehow. Now you are attacking me. I never said that my opinion is the only valid, all I say is that you must justify your choices.
@smarttex You didn't say it doesn't necessarily have this meaning. You said, "And a little bit later “’then’ implies that something else happened”-no, it doesn’t." I said before that it may or may not mean this. If you now agree with this then we agree. I base my argument on the fact that the Talmud says that a murder had to be implied in order to trigger the death penalty. In that case, clearly there had to be a trial, etc. Therefore much had to happen and only THEN could the punishment begin.
@voncello Sure, that’s what I still think. It doesn't imply it. It implies either this OR something else, thus my negation was correct. It is not the most intuitive interpretation of this word and I feel that you need to provide strong arguments for any counterintuitive interpretations. That’s what I meant. I followed your argument after this phrase and still it seems not very convincing (personally for me, which is subjective of course) and I don’t feel we need to continue on this topic.
so he should be killed alot aspetaly if the perants are the problem
smartass250 1 week ago
Pursuit of happiness in the decleration is more abstract than the imperative of stoning which is more explicit. Im sorry. As an believer i struggle with this and it shouldnt be met with irony but seriousness
Harakat123 2 weeks ago
@Harakat123 There is no need to struggle. Just study Jewish sources that discuss how this law was interpreted and you will find that no child was ever stoned to death. My point is that taking a law like this literally, without any knowledge of how it was actually applied, is as irrational as taking the pursuit of happiness literally. Whether Jewish or American, law is complex. To understand a law one must study cases and read the decisions of judges. Taking a law out of context is pointless.
voncello 2 weeks ago
The Scripture your talking about does not say God Say or Jesus says, what your missing is that the Bible is a History Book and it tells us about the laws they were living under, that law your talking about is a Man Made Law.. We have never lived under God laws which is the 10 commandments and one of his laws are thou shalt not kill, Never in history or even in our life time have we ever lived under God's 10 Commandments. Read that again and see if you see anywhere the name of Jesus or God..
shyanndreamcatcher 1 month ago
@shyanndreamcatcher Matthew quotes Jesus as saying "Whoever then relaxes one of the least of these commandments and teaches men so, shall be called least in the kingdom of heaven". So who are you to say only the 10 Commandments are God's law?
And the Bible doesn't say "thou shalt not kill". That would be absurd considering all the killing that God allows in the Bible. The correct translation from the Hebrew is "thou shalt not murder". Murder is an illegal or immoral act of killing.
voncello 1 month ago
@voncello Exodus 20:13 (King James Version)
13 Thou shalt not kill.
shyanndreamcatcher 1 month ago
@shyanndreamcatcher Exodus 20:13 (Original Hebrew)
13 Thou shalt not murder.
voncello 1 month ago
@voncello I really thought kill and murder means the same thing, I have been told that the KJV Bible was a good English translation from the Original Hebrew.
shyanndreamcatcher 1 month ago
@shyanndreamcatcher The KJV version is completely rejected by Jews. It is a horrible version, virtually unreadable compared to the original. After all, who was King James? Was he a great Torah scholar? Was he an expert at Hebrew? Could he even read Hebrew? Probably not. Who were the folks he hired to make this version? None of it was made under the auspices of the great Jewish scholars who passed down the scrolls as well as the interpretative tradition. You will never see the KJV in a synagogue.
voncello 1 month ago
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shyanndreamcatcher 1 month ago
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shyanndreamcatcher 1 month ago
@shyanndreamcatcher Good point about the "royal family". Funny how so many people trust their version. For a good basic Bible with just a touch of rabbinic commentary to clarify things I like the Stone Edition Chumash published by Art Scroll. In my book I have a whole chapter on the problems with English translations of the Bible. Even in the first 10 sentences there are many mistakes and if you really look carefully at the language a lot of it makes no sense.
voncello 1 month ago
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shyanndreamcatcher 1 month ago
@voncello Also if you read Gen 6 the reason behind the flood, it says the Sons of God ( Fallen Angels) picked them out a human wife from the (daughters of men) and had Children that were Giants. It says we had Giants on the earth during that time of the flood and even after the flood. God had to clean the earth from this evil breeding with the fallen angels and humans. Also there is proof that giants were on earth, archeologist have found giant skeleton..
shyanndreamcatcher 1 month ago
@voncello So a lot of the killings in the OT is the killings of these evil giants. They had to be killed. Like the story of David and Goliath.
1 Chronicles 20:6
King James Version (KJV) 6 And yet again there was war at Gath, where was a man of great stature, whose fingers and toes were four and twenty, six on each hand, and six on each foot and he also was the son of the giant.
shyanndreamcatcher 1 month ago
@shyanndreamcatcher A lot of killing had to do with conquering the land of Israel. It was God who told Moses and later Joshua and others to engage in warfare for the land. The law also allows killing in self defense. Certainly the law allows the killing of animals. And even vegetarians kill plants. We all kill microorganisms every time we wash our hands. Most animals kill to eat. Killing is a part of life and cannot be banned. But murder is an illegal act of killing, and that is what is banned.
voncello 1 month ago
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shyanndreamcatcher 1 month ago
@voncello I did learn a few things, not to jump to conclusions and look for the Bible your reading from. I am sorry..
shyanndreamcatcher 1 month ago
@shyanndreamcatcher Great. The trouble is that Jews don't read the Bible straight through. They believe that the Bible is like a website full of hyperlinks. Each word is a symbol that leads to paragraphs of commentary. So the best way to get an understanding of it is to buy a Bible that includes rabbinical commentary, such as those published by Art Scroll. If Christians would read through even a few chapters with such commentary they would see that the Bible is much more complex than it appears.
voncello 1 month ago
@voncello MANY people often confuse Moses Law with God's 10 Commandment law, but they are very different.
Moses' law was the temporary, ceremonial law of the Old Testament. It regulated the priesthood, sacrifices, rituals, meat and drink offerings, etc., all of which foreshadowed the cross. This law was added "till the seed should come," and that seed was Christ (Galatians 3:16, 19).
shyanndreamcatcher 1 month ago
@voncello The ritual and ceremony of Moses' law pointed forward to Christ's sacrifice. When He died, this law came to an end, but the Ten Commandments (God's law) "stand fast for ever and ever." Psalm 111:7,8.
shyanndreamcatcher 1 month ago
@voncello Please note that God's law has existed at least as long as sin has existed. The Bible says, "Where no law is, there is no transgression [or sin]." Romans 4:15. So God's Ten Commandment law existed from the beginning. Men broke that law. "Whosoever committeth sin transgresseth also the law: for sin is the transgression of the law." 1 John 3:4 Because of sin (or breaking God's law), Moses' law was given (or "added" Galatians 3:16, 19) till Christ should come and die.
shyanndreamcatcher 1 month ago
@voncello Two separate laws involved: God's law and Moses' law...Called "the law of Moses"
LUKE 2:22 And when the days of her purification according to the law of Moses were accomplished, they brought him to Jerusalem, to present him to the Lord.
shyanndreamcatcher 1 month ago
@voncello 10 Commandments-Called "the Law of the Lord"
ISA. 5:24 Therefore as the fire devoureth the stubble, and the flame consumeth the chaff, so their root shall be as rottenness, and their blossom shall go up as dust: because they have cast away the law of the LORD of hosts, and despised the word of the Holy One of Israel.
shyanndreamcatcher 1 month ago
@voncello I would also like to Apologize, I ran across your video, and just from the start you sounded like you were mocking the Bible, saying what I been hearing from Atheist that God tells us to stone our children so why should they believe in a God like that, I didn't realize you were being sarcastic and I stop watching the rest of the video. I'm very sorry for that. I hope you can forgive me. I really thought you were an Atheist, making a video mocking the Bible.
shyanndreamcatcher 1 month ago
@shyanndreamcatcher Hey no problem. And thanks for clarifying. It's funny but usually the people who comment on my videos think I'm a Christian fundamentalist! But actually I was raised Jewish and spent many of my adult years learning how Jews interpret the Bible. I wrote a book called "Beyond Faith" that discusses the evidence for the Bible and how the Jewish ideas differ from the Christian and Muslim. I defend the Jewish view against those who don't understand it including secularists.
voncello 1 month ago
@voncello What got me thinking is how you were using the Bible in your comments, I was like why he using the Bible? So, I then was thinking opps, I should play the video again and see? So I did, and what you are saying is right. I felt bad, I should have watched the whole video before..It's just I keep coming across Atheist using this as there main reason for not believing in the Bible. Just yesterday I had some atheist sending me messages about this subject. I am truly sorry
shyanndreamcatcher 1 month ago
It's like today's Lethal Injection......am I right?
SouthernR0cker4Life 2 months ago in playlist More videos from voncello
@SouthernR0cker4Life To the extent that they were looking for the quickest, least painful way, I suppose you could make the analogy. However, stoning in ancient Israel took place far less often than lethal injection in the U.S. today. And it was nothing like the stoning we see in the Arab world where they actually throw stones at people, causing a very painful, drawn out, terror stricken death.
voncello 2 months ago
You are a repulsive person.
sstan1337 3 months ago
@sstan1337 You are the person who writes nasty posts on You Tube to people he doesn't know. So, if anyone is repulsive, it's you.
voncello 3 months ago
@voncello No,I am rude at worst but, this is your only life and you are wasting it apologizing for a wicked king in a wicked book of fairey tales. But, you seem to think it is quite good to live your life in this way so, you are indeed repulsive. I don´t see why stoning any CHILD to death could be ok EVER! And it does say CHILD! And you seem to agree so, YOU ARE REPULSIVE.
The vision of God that thou does see, is my own hearts worst enemy.
sstan1337 3 months ago
@sstan1337 You either didn't watch my video or you didn't understand it. I made it clear that under this law NO CHILD was EVER killed! Even though the child in this case was a murderer. In fact this law PROTECTED children. So YOU ARE REPULSIVE for writing insulting comments based on misunderstanding or not even watching the video. And after what the Germans did to the Jews in WWII it is TRULY REPULSIVE to hear a German say that the Jewish vision of God is his "heart's worst enemy"! SHAME ON YOU!
voncello 3 months ago
@voncello I´m Canadian dummy. You´re a repulsive bronze aged minded apologist, sort of like a nazi sympathizer.
I watched your video, you don´t know what you are saying. Go soak your head.
sstan1337 3 months ago
@sstan1337 If you are a Canadian why did you write on your homepage that your country is Germany? And even if you lied about that, calling a Jew a Nazi sympathizer is about as mean spirited and disgusting as it gets.
You just admitted that you hadn't even watched my video when you made your first insulting comment. This says a lot about your character. Now you just as ignorantly say I don't know what I'm saying. You are just a hateful bigot who gets off on insulting strangers on the internet.
voncello 3 months ago
@voncello Just because I´m Canadian doesn´t mean I can´t move! You are the one who brought up the Jews! I didn´t have anything to do with it, I´m not old enough to have been in WWII and I´m not even German. Even if I was German I could be Jewish myself! You really are repulsive for pulling the shame on you I´m A Jew card. I never mentioned Judaism. I was talking about the Bible! You had to bring it up eh? I didn´t even know you were Jewish. You fucking coward. You have no right.
sstan1337 3 months ago
@sstan1337 Wow, now you are dropping the F bomb! I'm impressed!
You called the Jewish Bible "a wicked book". And now you say "I never mentioned Judaism. I was talking about the Bible". Well, DUH, who do you think wrote it? What my video shows is that this controversial passage that you find "repulsive", actually protects children in many ways and, in fact, never led to the killing of a child. But rather than have a reasonable dialogue you chose to insult me personally, and that's shameful.
voncello 3 months ago
@voncello The Jewish Bible? You mean the Torah? The Old Testement is a wicked book as is anyone who apologises for it. It does not protect children it brain washes them as you probably were. I don´care if you´re Jewish or if you are from outerspace! I know the 3 Abrahamic religions all stem from Abraham. They and you are repulsive!!! I will not change my mind and I don´t need your ethnicity rubbed under my nose because it does not impress me.
You are wasting the only life you are going to get.
sstan1337 3 months ago
@sstan1337 Yes, I call the "Old Testament" the Jewish Bible as that is a more accurate description. The so called new one is very old too. Anyway, the Torah, correctly understood, is arguably the greatest moral guide ever written. Of course any mean-spirited bigot can twist anything beautiful into something ugly. For the record I was not raised religious so there is no brain-washing with me. But you obviously have been brainwashed to hate something you don't understand. Why the hatred?
voncello 3 months ago
@sstan1337 Your attempt to paint the 3 "Abrahamic religions" with the same brush fails. The Torah is the original religion of Abraham. Christianity came 1500 years later and Islam 1000 years after that. They claim to be Abrahamic but the founders had no direct knowledge of him. They both contradict Judaism in many key areas. For instance, Abraham believed in one unified God. Christianity divides God into 3. Islam promotes the violent conversion of others. Abraham never called for violence.
voncello 3 months ago
@sstan1337 And the Bible certainly does protect children. The proof is in how strong Jewish families are. “In spite of Bolingbroke and Voltaire, I will insist that the Hebrews have done more to civilize men than any other nation." - President Samuel Adams. "The Jew is a pioneer of civilization. Ignorance was condemned in olden Palestine even more than it is today in civilized Europe." - Tolstoy. Prominent, educated Gentiles have praised the morality of Judaism. Maybe one day you'll understand.
voncello 3 months ago
Stoning is a last resort for hopeless incorrigibleness. A clear threat to society in Jewish law.
mrtadreamer 5 months ago
@mrtadreamer True but with the legal hurdles you had to surmount (i.e. unanimous verdict of 23 judges, etc.) the death penalty was almost never carried out.
voncello 5 months ago
@mrtadreamer I wouldn't know since i wasn't there.
mrtadreamer 5 months ago
yes it says that, dont need anyone to explain it to me. it says that and the bible is immoral.
elstroshitnonstop 5 months ago
@elstroshitnonstop If you got arrested and had to go to court, would you hire a lawyer? I'm sure you would. And my question would be: Why? If the law is so easy to understand why do you need a lawyer to represent you? Why don't you just go up to the judge and tell him what the law means!
voncello 5 months ago
@voncello when i read a law, unlike you, i can understand that law to the degree of my knowledge of legal terms. some laws are very simple to understand and quote in my defense, but i would hire a lawyer because A) they would fully understand more complex laws containing specific legal terminology, and B) unlike me, they would have full knowledge of the legal system. you would be utterly illogical to claim that even a child would need that horrible piece of text explained to them
elstroshitnonstop 5 months ago
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@voncello when i read a law, unlike you, i can understand that law to the degree of my knowledge of legal terms. some laws are very simple to understand and quote in my defense, but i would hire a lawyer because A) they would fully understand more complex laws containing specific legal terminology, and B) unlike me, they would have full knowledge of the legal system. you would be utterly illogical to claim that even a child would need that horrible piece of text explained to them
elstroshitnonstop 5 months ago
@voncello so, what you are saying is that the bible doesent mean what it says. Undetstood. One would think that the sky daddy creator of the universe would have made his book easier to undetstand. That would have saved BILLIONS of souls ftom being tortured for all eternity. Why didnt he think of that? Because he is fake, thats why. Religion is poison to the human race.
ericandcelena 6 months ago
@ericandcelena Things you say indicate that you only know the Bible from the Christian perspective. Jews do not believe people need to be "saved". We are born innocent. There is also no hell with eternal torture in Judaism. These are medieval Christian concepts. The idea that God is a sky god is also not Jewish. It seems to me that your problem is not with the Bible but with the Christian interpretation. Jews also have problems with Christian interpretations. As you said education is key.
voncello 6 months ago
@voncello You choose to re interpret what it says, because you know what it really says is fucking disgusting, but you fear not worshiping the prick that the bible claims is god. Religion breeds hate, war, and ignorance. god is fake. Believe in your sky fairy fairy-tale if you want, but know that you are choosing ignorance over education.
ericandcelena 6 months ago
@ericandcelena You are the one choosing ignorance over education. If you actually took a course on Judaism or studied one to one with a rabbi you would learn that the Bible was never meant to be read without a guide. It is like a webpage full of hyperlinks. Each sentence, even each word, is a link to pages and pages of additional information. This is the way the Bible has always been taught and learned among Jews. You are ignoring these facts and just spewing hateful insults that prove nothing.
voncello 6 months ago
Wow man! You READ it, and still deny it. Christians, ignoring the evil in the bible, self induced ignorance, for over 2000 years. What a tool!
ericandcelena 6 months ago
@ericandcelena The denial is yours. If you understood my video the point is that what you are READING in a poor English translation of 3500 year old Hebrew is not even close to the original. Furthermore there was a tradition of explanations that were handed down by the same rabbis who handed down the Hebrew text. These laws were interpreted by courts and there are records of how the Jews actually understood their own laws. You call me a tool but who is the one hurling ignorant insults?
voncello 6 months ago
but if disapline fails STONE HIM!!!AHAHHAAAA!
2ECFIGHTING2 7 months ago
@2ECFIGHTING2 You don't understand the video. Do you have your annotations on? Look at the annotation at 10:43.
voncello 7 months ago
@voncello trust me the word stone had to have meant somthing why was stone in thare!?HHAHAA GOD IS GREEAAT BRING OUT THE STONES!!AHHAHAAA!*EVIL LAUGH*!AHHAHAA!
2ECFIGHTING2 7 months ago
@2ECFIGHTING2 Well... look, even in the U.S. we have the death penalty. I'm not up on the exact methods we are using right now but in our recent history we hung people. put them in the electric chair (i.e. fried them), shot them with a firing squad, and used lethal injections. Most of these are not very humane. Some can be looked upon as torture. 3500 years ago the Bible recommended dropping people from a great height on to stones because it would cause an instant death with no suffering.
voncello 7 months ago
@voncello then...umm..IF US CITIZEN DISAPLINE FAILS TORTURE HIM AHAHAA!*EVIL LAUGH*(ya know in texus a 10 year old got death penalty a while ago last year!)man land of the freee is great!*sarcasm*
2ECFIGHTING2 7 months ago
@2ECFIGHTING2 Texas is it's own world! If you watch my video carefully you'll see that this law only applied to a child who was a drunkard AND a glutton. The idea was that such a kid would probably end up committing a murder because he is always drunk (doesn't think straight) and his appetites know no boundaries. So if his parents hid the wine and the money he'd steal it from someone else and if that person tried to stop him he would kill them. It's not talking about your basic disobedient kid.
voncello 7 months ago
@voncello ok i under stand but lol i it say that if a gay man commites se* then STONE HIM!i tend to stay away from the bible...do you remember what god told mosus to do?i totaly agree with wat you said now.but can you disprove the gay thing?it say in the bible god does not like gays...(i might be gay lol umm if he dont like me can i get mad at him)
2ECFIGHTING2 7 months ago
@2ECFIGHTING2 Check out my video "Does God Hate Gays"!
voncello 7 months ago
@voncello ok but ive seen churches have gay protest...false interprataion?
2ECFIGHTING2 7 months ago
@2ECFIGHTING2 You'll see in my video that the ban was not on being gay. It was about priests using their position to have sex with young boys. A preist could not "lie with a man as with a woman" in a temple, as was the custom in many pagan religions.
Here's the link to the video: /watch?v=Bkgx9LebsFc
voncello 7 months ago
im 13 no children obey their parents thank you you are not a kid how would you know how old are you 40?how would you remember?
2ECFIGHTING2 7 months ago
awesome vid i totally agree!!!!!!!!!
BLOODYMOON62 9 months ago
@BLOODYMOON62 Thanks! Always good to see some positive feedback amongst all the negative.
voncello 9 months ago
@voncello You look crazy. You sound crazy. Your explanation is completely idiotic. Would you consider stoning your friend...brother... cousin... son or daughter? People make mistakes. People go through phases in life. These laws are completely insane and obviously created by a primitive group of people.
AndrewStewart7 9 months ago
@AndrewStewart7 Saying "you look crazy, you sound crazy" is not an intelligent way to start a conversation. It simply shows that you have a limited view of life. Furthermore you must have a limited ability to comprehend if you think my video promotes or endorses stoning. To the contrary my video shows that this law was constructed in such a way that it could not lead to stoning except in the case of a murder, and even then the death penalty was almost never given in Israel. See 9:00 to the end.
voncello 9 months ago
...okay...so all these people that have stoned this horrible child have just killed him...which is a capital crime...so do they all get stoned to death too? Even if no one ever did this, the suggestion itself is wrong. There is no moral righteousness here.
^this is my biggest problem with these kinds of laws; the are hypocritical. And yes I do not support the death penalty.
PhilosoFighter2012 10 months ago
@PhilosoFighter2012 If a US court sentences someone to death for murder do those involved in the execution also get the death penalty? There is as much moral righteousness in US law as in biblical. But in this case the Talmud states that the way this law is written it could never be enforced unless the child actually committed a murder. And most murder convictions didn't lead to capitol punishment in Israel due to extenuating circumstances and the need for 23 judges to vote unanimously!
voncello 10 months ago
@voncello I already told you I do not support the death penalty for the reason that it is hypocritical. I don't agree with the US law one hundred and ten percent. Comparing one flawed system with another is not a very good justification. That would be like trying to justify slavery by pointing to another culture with slavery (maybe that is a little drastic but same principle). Did you read my message? It doesn't matter that they didn't enforce it. The fact that it was there is not right.
PhilosoFighter2012 10 months ago
@PhilosoFighter2012 I can respect those who oppose the death penalty. There was a rabbi in the Talmud who said that had he been on the court no one would have ever been put to death. But I personally don't feel that the death penalty is immoral. My problem with it is that there can be mistakes or people can be put to death to keep them from speaking out. But you have to realize that in Israel back then they didn't have jails. So if someone was a murderer you could either kill him or let him go.
voncello 10 months ago
@PhilosoFighter2012 i would guess if a child is a glutton and a drunkard and will not listen no matter what.the child is a demon and or will kill someone and its most certain.i also think that killing someone to save someone else isn't a sin .im not sure but i think so
BLOODYMOON62 9 months ago
Religion is for scared people,people that unconsciously want to be controlled,close minded people with little or zero imagination,people that can believe that they have been saved from an illness while for some strange reason their almighty god doesn't save the starving children in africa.To believe that u have to be self centered and think u somehow deserve more than the straving children
geiuy 1 year ago
@geiuy There are many religions and within each religion there are many branches and within those branches are many congregations and within those congregations are different leaders with different approaches. To say that "religion" is for scared people is a generalization. Some people are religious due to fears but some do it for companionship, some in order to help others, some find it intellectually stimulating, some find it relaxing, and some just like the music!
voncello 1 year ago
As I said "One example is found here in this video: Dr.Gerald Schroeder Genesis & The Big Bang Theory. It's in 5 parts on Youtube. He is a nuclear physicist and MIT professor with 2 doctorates in science. He explains using the theory of relativity that though 15 billion years have gone by since the big bang here, at the place of the big bang only 6 days have gone by! He also shows how every detail of Genesis falls into the correct "day" when the expansion of the universe is accounted for.
voncello 1 year ago
" But the Jewish Bible does indeed present many kinds of evidence to suggest at least that the author had knowledge unaccessible 3500 years ago." Could you tell me what this is please?
FaithBane 1 year ago
8:05 - 9:12
"But when it says THEN, THEN implies that something else happened, so, after this, the kid you know, ended up robbing, stealing and eventually he killed someone ..THEN all the men of the city shall stone him to death"
i've got to ask you, where did you get your information that the kid stole and killed someone?
It's definitely not in the bible, so why are you implying what people meant that many years ago?
UNDEADMANBEARPIG 1 year ago
@UNDEADMANBEARPIG Because it is in the Talmud. If you buy a Jewish Annotated Bible from a company like Art Scroll you will find quotes from rabbis in the Talmud explaining sentence by sentence how Jews read the Bible and understand it. One thing you'd learn is that there was always a trial before capital punishment could be done. So even with that bit of information we know that THEN implies at the very least a trial. Talmud states that death penalty was almost always avoided due to legalities.
voncello 1 year ago
@voncello
You can't take a simple adverb(adj.noun.) like "Then" and imply that it has a bunch of meanings involving robbery and murder. If that's how the jews read the bible, i wonder how they read bedtime stories.
"The boy put his toy away, THEN he went to bed."
are you saying that this boy probably robbed people and even possibly killed someone during that time?!"
UNDEADMANBEARPIG 1 year ago
@UNDEADMANBEARPIG The Bible is among other things a legal document, especially the first five books. This part of the Bible is called the Torah in Hebrew. Torah literally means Law. Just as in American law, there are "terms or art" that mean something different in the law than in normal usage. The reason we need lawyers when we sign contracts is that they are experts in HOW the English is understood under the law. Same with the Bible. Rabbis learn HOW the Hebrew is meant to be understood.
voncello 1 year ago
@voncello
And if then implies "AT THE VERY LEAST" a trial,
that seems like a pretty big gap of information they seemed to exclude from the bible, seems like a pretty important thing to skip.
And since Talmud states that the death penalty was almost always avoided, it shows that nobody follows the bible for what it is, because it is outdated and you'd be a fool to follow it word for word
UNDEADMANBEARPIG 1 year ago
@UNDEADMANBEARPIG The Talmud was written 2,000 years ago! The rabbis of the Talmud claimed to be passing down information that originally came from Moses about 1000 years before. It is not that the Bible is outdated. The problem is that many people read it without the benefit of the Jewish tradition. The Jews (who wrote the Bible) insist that it can't possibly understood without the tradition. So a lot of non-Jews (Christians & Atheists) are unknowledgeable and fighting over misinterpretations.
voncello 1 year ago
@voncello So what you are saying is that your divinely inspired book requires some elaborate interpretation in order to acquire the true message? Wouldn't an omniscient being know that humans are fallible and make the message as clear as possible? You presume to know the thought and intent of an omniscient being and are using scare tactics to propagate your particular interpretation. Numbers 15:32-36 states that Yahweh ordered the death of a man because he was collecting sticks on the sabbath.
FaithBane 1 year ago
@FaithBane Why do you call it My divinely inspired book? Why be antagonistic? As to your question "Wouldn't an omniscient being know that humans are fallible and make the message as clear as possible?" - Who knows what an omniscient being would do? For one thing it would know a lot more than you do and in all likelihood would not act according to what you, a finite being with extremely limited knowledge, would except it to do. I do not presume anything. You presume you understand omniscience!
voncello 1 year ago
@voncello Ok, ok... Look at the traits attributed to this particular god (omniscience, omnibenevolence, and omnipotence). Any action performed by this being must satisfy all traits. If the god uses its power for evil, it wouldn't be omnibenevolent. If it is unable to correct a wrong, it is not omnipotent. If it cannot forsee future events, it is not omniscient. How can one presume to know something that is defined? I do not presume to know what it is, I know what it is.
FaithBane 1 year ago
@FaithBane You haven't proved a thing. Your first mistake is that you are talking about "a god" as opposed to God. God, by the Jewish definition is the force that created and sustains the universe. You have no proof that this force is "evil", "unable to correct a wrong" or "cannot forsee future events". Yet you insist based on some type of blind faith that you "know what it is". In my book Beyond Faith I argue that we move beyond believing in things that we cannot prove.
voncello 1 year ago
@voncello I never said that it was 'evil', 'unable to correct a wrong' or that it couldn't forsee future events. I said if that were the case, it would not meet the god criteria.
World English Dictionary
omniscient (ɒmˈnɪsɪənt)
— adj
1. having infinite knowledge or understanding
2. having very great or seemingly unlimited knowledge
There, now you know too:)
FaithBane 1 year ago
@FaithBane If it were the case? Well, since you can't prove it one way or the other what's the point of the comment?
voncello 1 year ago
@voncello The point of the comment was that if a verse did not satisfy the criteria, It could not be attributed to a divine being, then I showed one such verse.
FaithBane 1 year ago
@FaithBane What verse do you think "could not be attributed to a divine being"?
voncello 1 year ago
@FaithBane As for Numbers 15 you are trying to tie that short episode to me using "scare tactics to propagate (my) particular interpretation". How does a 3500 year old law prove that I today am trying to use scare tactics to "propagate" anything? You have completely misunderstood my intentions and are reaching for unrelated bits of data to formulate your misguided point. In this video I am discussing a specific law from Deuteronomy 21 and how it is misinterpreted. You did the same with Numbers.
voncello 1 year ago
@voncello The scare tactics come from your tone of voice throughout the video. You are also guilty of appeal to ridicule, straw man, and other fallacies. The verse I gave you IS relavent, as it goes against your reasoning. Try to make that verse seem moral.
FaithBane 1 year ago
@FaithBane My "tone of voice"? So because you don't happen to like the tone of my voice you accuse me of being scary? I am explaining in a rather reasonable tone how Jews interpret the Jewish Bible. I was specifically referring to the verse on the "disobedient child" and I showed that in fact the verse is full of protections for children and implies a long legal process intended to help children and families. If you want to discuss Numbers we can but that is off the topic of this video.
voncello 1 year ago
@voncello I never said I didn't like it, I said that it implies fear tactics. Raising your voice when talking about the other side of the argument is also an appeal to ridicule. You are stating that the simple word "then" can change the entire tone of the verse. Have you any idea how many times the bible has been translated? The subtle underlying messages could have even been lost in the very first translation for all we know. The King James translation doesn't even contain the word "then".
FaithBane 1 year ago
@FaithBane I agree the translations are very faulty. In fact there is a chapter in my book called "Will the Real Bible Stand Up?" and in it I show how absolutely ridiculous the translations are. So much so that they cannot even be considered the real Bible. I, however, read the original Hebrew along with rabbinical commentary from the Talmud. This is considered the real Bible by Judaism. My video shows how the faulty translations lead to faulty understandings. My voice is expressive not scary.
voncello 1 year ago
@voncello If you agree that the translations are faulty, why would you hold on to such a subtle word as "then"?
FaithBane 1 year ago
@FaithBane I was making the larger point that stoning didn't occur in Israel willy-nilly. It would only happen at the end of a long series of legal proceedings and even then it occurred "less than once in 70 years" according to the Talmud. But in the case of this law the rabbis say it never was carried out because of details in the way the law is written.
voncello 1 year ago
@FaithBane When someone accuses the Bible of being immoral that is a confrontational stance. If I were to accuse the US Constitution of being immoral that would be similarly confrontational. So when expressing the mentality of the side that impugns the Bible I raised my voice to express this. I didn't mean to ridicule those people but to suggest that angry confrontation is not a way to achieve understanding. My goal is to foster understanding of how Jews see their own Bible and to create peace.
voncello 1 year ago
@voncello When going into the bible wondering whether or not it's true, they can see that it was written by primitives. When someone goes in assuming that it's true, they tend to rationalize and come up with ridiculous explainations for what they read. If what you wish to do is demonstrate the jewish understanding, why don't you state that? From what I saw in the video, you were just presenting one of the aforementioned rationalizations.
FaithBane 1 year ago
@FaithBane If you think that reading it in an English translation, which you already agreed is faulty, one can conclude anything, let alone that "it was written by primitives" you must possess some magical powers of insight. As to why I made the video, if you read what I wrote in the description it is clear that I wrote a book about moving Beyond Faith which asks people to "Move beyond the surface of the text to discover the true Bible!" Then I ask people to check out my site linked above.
voncello 1 year ago
@voncello Despite the fact that I was reading an english translation, it shares the same basic outline. One need not possess magic powers to determine whether or not something is primitive. Read Leviticus 14:2-52 and tell me that it was not written with a primitive understanding of the world.
FaithBane 1 year ago
@FaithBane This is a good example of a chapter that appears primitive but when understood appears futuristic. I read an English translation that made it appear like a primitive cure for a skin disease. But this is not what this chapter is about. It's actually about a physical ailment caused by a spiritual deficiency which only can occur when God's presence is directly apparent. All of the cures are symbolic of various things intended to teach moral behavior. You can't get this from the surface.
voncello 1 year ago
@FaithBane And the translation often is nothing even close to the basic outline. For example in English it says God separated light from darkness but the rabbis point out that darkness is the absence of light and is by nature separate! So on a basic physical level what it is really talking about is separating dark and light matter, i.e. forming stars and planets. There are also spiritual interpretations about separating the spiritual from the mundane. But again none of this is on the surface.
voncello 1 year ago
@voncello How do you know the true intent of the authors of the torah? That was written 3000+ years ago, and peoples' cognitive abilities have evolved since then. There are many verses similar to the example I gave you. Why would devinely inspired text require such interpretation?
FaithBane 1 year ago
@FaithBane Judaism teaches that God's law was never meant to be something written in a book. Rather it was something you lived with. The Torah says, "And you shall teach them diligently to your children, and you shall speak of them when you sit at home, and when you walk along the way, and when you lie down and when you rise up." It is in the act of interpreting and arguing about interpretation that your mind develops the ability to discern and see below the surface. It trains you to think!
voncello 1 year ago
@FaithBane Your question hits on one of the main differences between Judaism (the original biblical religion) and the later ones that sought to overthrow Judaism. Judaism is all about having an open mind, questioning, arguing. There is even a Torah passage where Abraham argues with God! But Christianity and Islam do not encourage questioning and arguing. Rather they seek obedience to a doctrine accepted by blind faith. Your very question shows how non-Jewish ideas have pushed the original away.
voncello 1 year ago
@voncello Ok, I understand, but in that case, why even bother use the book? If a religion is based on the thought and teachings of rabbis, why try to defend this ancient text? Despite your intentions, it really seems as though you are applying two standards to the torah.
FaithBane 1 year ago
@FaithBane The rabbis are not passing down their own ideas but ideas that are derived from the Torah. You and I are doing the same. This passage about the disobedient child has inspired pages of commentary just on this You Tube page. You can only imagine the amount of discussion it has inspired over the last 3500 years! The Torah is an incredible engine for thought. But Orthodox Jews believe that they are faithfully passing down a tradition that Moses taught to the Jews in the desert.
voncello 1 year ago
@voncello I have a respect for thinkers, but those who "seek obedience to a doctrine accepted by blind faith" (i.e. the majority of religious people) do not fit into this category for me. I respect your thought, but I question why people require a belief in a personified divine power which cannot be detected by any means. The magnificently elegant universe in which we live is the greatest thing we will ever know, and it's all around us, appealing to all of our senses.
FaithBane 1 year ago
@FaithBane I oppose those who seek obedience to a doctrine accepted by blind faith. That's why my book is called Beyond Faith. But I find many Atheists also come to their beliefs through blind faith. They come to conclusions about the Bible but they have never read it in Hebrew or even studied HOW the Jews interpret their own book! To me that is just ignorant. One wouldn't study Calculus without a math teacher and the Torah is just as complex. It has divine evidence but not on the surface.
voncello 1 year ago
@FaithBane "I question why people require a belief in a personified divine power which cannot be detected by any means". I agree. Most religions have no evidence to back up their dogma and it does seem a psychological need that brings folks to irrational faith. But the Jewish Bible does indeed present many kinds of evidence to suggest at least that the author had knowledge unaccessible 3500 years ago. One example is found here in this video: "Dr.Gerald Schroeder Genesis & The Big Bang Theory".
voncello 1 year ago
@voncello this video is comedy gold,you look so ridicouols trying to find an excuse for such an old cruel and stupid book.since you tried so hard to find an acceptable meaning to the "child killing" verse why don't u try to find another meaning for the verse on homosexuality,maybe it could be interpreted in another way.maybe after all your god doesn't condone homosexuality an it was just misinterpreted by human beings?
geiuy 1 year ago
@geiuy I have a video on how people misinterpret the verse on Homosexuality called, "Does God Hate Gays?" If you watch it you'll see that you have misinterpreted that one as you have this one. I am not "trying to find an excuse" for anything. I am passing along the traditional Jewish explanations of these things from the Talmud which has been around for 2000 years! Folks like you are actually the ones "trying to find excuses" for your interpretations that are not accepted by the experts.
voncello 1 year ago
lmfao so long story short,
you would stone your kids if they did not listen to you or the mother? IF you had already disciplined him?
and obviously the kid won't go voluntarily, you're about to stone him to death for chirsts sake!
"You'll learn that capital punishment, was only given for capital crimes, ONLY for murder"
now why wouldn't they mention something that important in the bible, were they not wise enough to forsee an argument like this?
UNDEADMANBEARPIG 1 year ago
@UNDEADMANBEARPIG According to the Jews, who wrote the Jewish Bible, you can't understand it without the aid of a certified teacher (or at the very least a rabbinic anthology). Fact is the Bible doesn't mention all details of every law. There is a lot of background information that was passed down to explain the sketchy text. Same in American law, the Constitution is short but there are millions of pages that flesh it out. Israel also had courts and there are many legal decisions to study.
voncello 1 year ago
I'm just wondering why all the comments that I can see on this particular page do not in anyway have to do this with the title of this video..
blaziermissy 1 year ago
@blaziermissy Yours too!
voncello 1 year ago
From Beyond Faith:
"Sevens are used in many other interesting ways. For example, the ineffable
name of God is found 1,820 times in the Torah (160 x 7). Ivan Panin,
mathematician from Harvard, replaced the letters of the first sentence of the
Torah with their corresponding numbers and found 50 combinations based on
7. He considered this an amazing feat, finding it to have a random probability
ratio of 1:33,000,000,000,000!"
If it wasn't random, how could the Torah's author know how to do that?
voncello 1 year ago
It’s just a critical view on your posts. If you want to find answers on the origin of morality, look for information about evolutionary psychology, the point of it is that we are social, nice and moral animals “by definition” (obviously with some exceptions), so the “laws of morality” aren’t any new laws imposed on us from above, they’re a mere reflection of what’s inside us already (hard-coded in neurons). At least that’s a true scientific theory, which can give you explanations and insight.
smarttex 1 year ago
@smarttex What evidence is there for this "scientific theory"? We are part of a humanity that includes Ghandi but also Hitler, Mother Teresa but also Stalin. We have had virtually endless wars since the beginning of time. We have had several attempts to conquer the world from the Pharaohs to the Caesars to many groups even today. I see people step over homeless people every day. I see rapes, kidnappings, bombings, and murders on the news. Where is your proof that we are "nice and moral animals"?
voncello 1 year ago
@voncello Evidence is in fMRI, ECG, observation etc. Google on the topic. One of the evidences is that you seek for justifications of violent texts, eg your brain tells you that it's not OK to stone a child. There are genetic maniacs (lack a part of brain), but also “bred” ones, like Hitler-a Catholic antisemite, Teresa-a death angel, more interested in baptizing and letting die than curing. Stalin attended seminary and formed a religious state (communism has all the attributes of a religion)
smarttex 1 year ago
@smarttex I do not think it is "OK to stone a child". If you understood this video you would realize that children were NEVER stoned under this law. Watch it again more carefully (with annotations enabled) and hopefully you will understand what I am saying.
voncello 1 year ago
@voncello There will always be good and evil people. Show me a person who said “oh, I read Torah today and decided not to rape my neighbor’s teenage daughter, now I see that it is wrong”, he wouldn't do it anyway, isn't it? And no religious text would cure any maniac capable of that. And as a Nobel-winning physicist S.Weinberg said “With or without religion, you would have good people doing good things and evil people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil things, that takes religion”
smarttex 1 year ago
@smarttex "If I were an atheist... I should still believe that fate had ordained the Jews to be the most essential instrument for civilizing the nations. If I were an atheist... I should believe that chance had ordered the Jews to preserve and propagate to all mankind the doctrine of a supreme, intelligent, wise, almighty sovereign of the universe, which I believe to be the great essential principle of all morality, and consequently of all civilization."
John Adams (2nd president of the US)
voncello 1 year ago
@voncello Wait, I have just remembered about Lot's story in Genesis 19:8 and I think that Torah is not a good inspiration for NOT raping your neighbour's daughter. But I'm sure you would have a justification for that atrocity as well, as well as why it's in there :).
smarttex 1 year ago
@smarttex If you're going to dismiss my answers to your comments before I answer then there is no point in continuing this. One of the basic principles of carrying on a reasonable conversation is to actually listen to your partner's answer before responding. You show a great deal of disrespect. If that is what you want to do please do it elsewhere. I take the time to respond to comments not to engage in a tit for tat but to respectfully listen to other points of view and have mine respected too.
voncello 1 year ago
What you are doing, you try to find justification for Torah very hard by being biased and using flawed arguments, at least that’s the impression I have after watching your videos. Regarding the scientific theories, you miss the point. One of the main features of sci-theories is that they are both explanatory (to known facts) and predictive(to yet undiscovered facts). Thus, the scientific theories don’t get overturned, but they get generalized and refined, if new or conflicting evidence comes in.
smarttex 1 year ago
@smarttex I agree with what you said about science. I don't understand your problem is with my arguments. Please be specific to things I have said. Vague comments like "you try to find justification for Torah very hard by being biased and using flawed arguments" tells me nothing. What flawed argument? What bias? Frankly I don't think I have demonstrated any bias. All I demonstrate is a knowledge of the subject and an open mind.
voncello 1 year ago
@voncello Regarding science, your words are “over time most theories get overturned” (What I Believe, at 09:00). I am curious which theory the QM had overturned? BTW, black holes first were predicted by a theory and only afterwards observed. My point about your bias is that you assume that Torah is true and try to justify it, your biggest flaw is wishful thinking and leaps of logic, you want the listener to believe your assumptions, not very convincing.Next time imagine a skeptic in front of you
smarttex 1 year ago
@smarttex I do not assume the Torah is true. Show me one place where I made that assumption. Rather you are the one assuming things about me. I do not take "leaps of logic" nor do I "want the listener to believe (my) assumptions". Instead of engaging me on specific points you just make general statements without out any evidence and try to demean me. This proves nothing and is a waste of time. If you have comments to make on things I have actually said make them, but please stop the attacks.
voncello 1 year ago
And all the assumptions you make, they don’t seem to be based on any factual information. I am not an expert in religions, but you refer to Talmud, which is a text compiled less than 2000 years ago, based on discussions and oral knowledge, which passed so many generations that it hardly can be used as evidence. I agree that the answer is in studying, but in scientific terms studying is trying to prove something wrong very hard and after you fail to do that, you say that probably it isn’t false.
smarttex 1 year ago
@smarttex The Talmud is the official guide to what the Bible means. The Bible was written by Jews for a Jewish audience. There was a tradition handed down of what every single word meant. It wasn't a casual thing. Students would study with teachers for decades learning every nuance of every sentence. Passing this down correctly was a matter of life and death for these scribes. It only got written down when the Romans started killing off all the rabbis. Then they had to preserve it in print.
voncello 1 year ago
@voncello Oh, yes, indeed, the official guide to the all the nonsense in the text - you should have that in order to have reasonable people believing in that! According to Wiki, the reason was “a flurry of legal discourse and the old system of oral scholarship could not be maintained”. First part was compiled in 200, and persecutions probably didn’t start before 325 BC, when Christianity - the main source of antisemitism - had become the official religion of the Roman Empire.
smarttex 1 year ago
@smarttex Rather than rely on wikis, why don't you actually study a text on Jewish history. The Siege of Jerusalem was in 70 CE. "Josephus claims that 1,100,000 people were killed during the siege... Men and women, old and young, insurgents and priests, those who fought and those who entreated mercy, were hewn down in indiscriminate carnage. The number of the slain exceeded that of the slayers. The legionaries had to clamber over heaps of dead to carry on the work of extermination."[
voncello 1 year ago
@voncello Go ahead and edit the article if you disagree.
smarttex 1 year ago
@smarttex I can edit it and tomorrow someone can erase what I wrote and write something else. That is the beauty but also the danger of wikis. I think they are good sources but only in combination with traditional sources like books. I don't "disagree". You just didn't study enough to know that there was this horrible attack by Rome on Israel in 70CE. It was at that time that the remaining rabbis started to meet and write down the oral tradition from Moses which became known as the Talmud.
voncello 1 year ago
@voncello Of course I knew about the siege of Jerusalem, but to be honest didn’t know its extent. But regarding the casualty figures, I have just found that they are quite contradictory. As to the reasons for the war, wiki is quite contradictory to what you say (wiki also uses Josephus). But I found no mention of these conflicts in the article on Talmud, so considered that they were not related. There is also a discussion section, so don’t be so pessimistic about the Wikipedia
smarttex 1 year ago
Dear Aaron, I liked your playing very much - it’s probably the best cello rock on YouTube! But after watching your videos on religion(s) and being skeptical by nature, I feel that I still must act as an opponent, so I have mixed feelings :). I think that you fail by using flawed arguments and cheesy logic. IMHO the biggest “leap of logic” you make is by going from “disobedient” child to a “crack”, it just doesn’t follow from what you say.
smarttex 1 year ago
@smarttex Thank you for the compliment on my cello playing. People have told me to not discuss religion as it could hurt my music career. But like John Lennon, I want to be an artist that has something to say. My point regarding "crack" is that in this case it says the child was a "glutton and a drunkard". Drinking was the strongest drug available to those people at that time. So updating it to today's context I said it would be like a kid today on crack who is totally out of control.
voncello 1 year ago
@voncello Not at all, I don’t think that it was a bad idea to discuss religion! And it doesn’t prevent me from enjoying your playing anyway. My point is that your discourse is what some scientists call “proof by waving one’s hands in the air” - not a proof at all, there's more wishful thinking than logic. You keep saying that your opponents are ignorant. But please take one topic, e.g. on “disobedient child”, and show thoroughly how these persons are wrong. But you fail at that.
smarttex 1 year ago
@smarttex Your comment is contentious. You are setting yourself up not only as the judge and the jury but as the attorneys as well. Instead of asking me questions and waiting for an answer, you ask questions and immediately accuse me of "wishful thinking" "failing" etc. when I haven't even answered. Actually you are the one who is failing to allow for a reasonable give and take. If your mind is already made up why should I bother to respond?
voncello 1 year ago
@voncello It was a comment on what you have said already in your video, that’s the general picture that I had about it, I didn’t mean to “disrespect” you, it’s sorry that you felt so. The text that you comment on is utterly cruel, your wishful thinking IMHO consists in softening the whole picture, e.g. by saying that the elders were some kind of “grandparents” etc. I don’t think that there can possibly be any strong evidence for that. Maybe they were, maybe they weren’t.
smarttex 1 year ago
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@voncello It was a comment on what you have said already in your video, that’s the general picture that I had about it, I didn’t mean to “disrespect” you, it’s sorry that you felt so. The text that you comment on is utterly cruel, your wishful thinking IMHO consists in softening the whole picture, e.g. by saying that the elders were some kind of “grandparents” etc. I don’t think that there can possibly be any strong evidence for that. Maybe they were, maybe they weren’t.
smarttex 1 year ago
@voncello Then, how do you infer at 7:40 from “a glutton and a drunkard” (as far as I understood, this comes from Talmud, written more than 15 centuries after the original law) that the child “has no control of his appetites and not just foods, with anything”, “nothing can stand in his way”, “will steal from his parents”, “will kill someone” etc. You demonize him. It’s a leap. I can imagine “a glutton and a drunkard”, who is just a badly spoiled child, not a killer.
smarttex 1 year ago
@smarttex You think “a glutton and a drunkard” comes from the Talmud? I quoted it right out of the Torah at 0:57! Then 1500 years later the rabbis pass down in the Talmud what that means, which I explain at 6:48. At 8:03 I deal specifically with how the rabbis knew he would kill someone - because this law contains capital punishment which means a capital crime has to be committed. Careful study of the Talmud shows that the rabbis don't make things up, the clues are all there in the text!
voncello 1 year ago
@voncello Well, it doesn’t really matter where this line comes from. So, all the death threats, e.g. for trying to convert a Jew to another religion, adultery, bestiality, homosexuality, rape, prostitution is just empty chatter? And you really need to kill someone (hm, an animal that you have raped?) in order for these laws to function? Disobedience, gluttony etc. are some, but not the main reasons for breeding murderers, why does the law focus just on these topics?
smarttex 1 year ago
@smarttex Why do American laws on murder not focus on free speech? These are just different areas of the law. The purpose of this particular passage is to get parents to intervene quickly and strongly if their child becomes a glutton or an alcoholic. The passage alludes to the fact that these behaviors in combination can lead to murder. Therefore it mentions the death penalty to show the seriousness of behaviors that might not seem that bad. You have to go passage by passage as in any law book.
voncello 1 year ago
@voncello I still find the arguments too far-fetched for the apparent objectives, but as I said before, we can go on forever and I feel that I've got your point quite clearly now.
smarttex 1 year ago
@smarttex I know it seems strange by today's standards but this book was written not one or two centuries ago but 3500 years ago. Imagine life back then... no electricity, no cars, no machines, not even tools made of iron. It was the Bronze Age. I think a mistake many people make is they look at the Bible through modern eyes and have modern expectations. I'm sure 3500 years from now people will think the way our laws are written are bizarre too. I think one must get into the mindset of the time.
voncello 1 year ago
@voncello I always tried to interpret it in this way and to imagine that era, the problem is that many people, I guess mostly Christians, hold it to be the literal true and unchangeable word of God.
smarttex 1 year ago
@smarttex Most Jews don't take it literally but Orthodox Jews do however they admit that understanding it is the hard part. This idea that you can just read it especially in translation and understand it is totally foreign to Judaism. It is something you must study your whole life - literally daily. The Talmud is studied on a 7 year cycle! That's how vast it is. Christians made up an interpretation out of thin air which Jews feel misleads people from the truth of what the Bible really says.
voncello 1 year ago
@voncello And a little bit later “’then’ implies that something else happened”-no, it doesn’t. These are some of the leaps of logic in your video. But after rewatching it I think that these were not really your leaps, but that of Talmud, since you were quoting it all the time. I really hope that no child was executed under the law, like you said, but it only means that the rabbis were not as mad as the man who wrote the law, so they interpreted it in their special, less cruel way.
smarttex 1 year ago
@smarttex I understand your problem with my interpretation of "then" but who are you to say "it doesn't"? It may not, but how can you be sure? There's an egotistical smugness in acting like your opinion is the only valid opinion. "Then" can imply a passage of time, ex. "I got on a ship THEN we went to Africa". Surely we didn't get there in the blink of an eye! "Then" implies weeks of time voyaging across the sea. The law is exquisite. You'd do better to drop the attitude and start learning.
voncello 1 year ago
@voncello I don’t have a problem with that, but you do. All I say is that it not necessarily has this meaning. But you are the one who is proposing a contrived definition, so you must support it somehow. Now you are attacking me. I never said that my opinion is the only valid, all I say is that you must justify your choices.
smarttex 1 year ago
@smarttex You didn't say it doesn't necessarily have this meaning. You said, "And a little bit later “’then’ implies that something else happened”-no, it doesn’t." I said before that it may or may not mean this. If you now agree with this then we agree. I base my argument on the fact that the Talmud says that a murder had to be implied in order to trigger the death penalty. In that case, clearly there had to be a trial, etc. Therefore much had to happen and only THEN could the punishment begin.
voncello 1 year ago
@voncello Sure, that’s what I still think. It doesn't imply it. It implies either this OR something else, thus my negation was correct. It is not the most intuitive interpretation of this word and I feel that you need to provide strong arguments for any counterintuitive interpretations. That’s what I meant. I followed your argument after this phrase and still it seems not very convincing (personally for me, which is subjective of course) and I don’t feel we need to continue on this topic.
smarttex