Biblical Hebrew Forum

[MarianneLuban AT aol.com]

In a message dated 8/13/2004 4:39:12 PM Pacific Daylight Time, 
rosewalk AT concentric.net writes:


> Who's confused?  Not I.
> 
> It's those who cannot bring themselves to believe in the Divine 
> Origin of Torah, who are confused.
> 
> Shabbat Shalom - lighting candles (in NY) right now!

Nothing wrong with lighting Shabbat candles.  That is a lovely custom.  But 
this is a list for scholarly discourse--not fundamentalist insistences that 
all 
who do not believe "as we do" must be confused.   The Torah was written by 
humans.  Like every other ANE text.  Just because it contains great wisdom 
doesn't make it anything more than a product of a certain time--and a 
superstitious 
time at that.  The Torah is a tribute to a very long memory and a need to 
preserve it--a remarkable achievement of a people and quite unprecedented in 
its 
thoroughness.  Divine inspiration?  Well--whatever it is that inspires any 
great work.  When I listen to Puccini, I don't think of God.  I think of the 
capability for genius in the human race, a thing that is almost denegrated by 
attributing it to an ephemeral "higher power".

Please, fundamentalists--go in peace.  But do not try to divide this forum 
into "believers" and "unenlightened".