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  • From: Harold Holmyard <hholmyard AT ont.com>
  • To: b-hebrew AT lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: Re: [b-hebrew] Common Sense
  • Date: Tue, 24 Oct 2006 07:06:12 -0500

Shoshanna Walker wrote:

Yes 'chok' does refer to that word? which word? All three? You quoted three words. What is your authority?

HH: The Bible is my authority and the lexicons. The words I gave are relative synonyms, so it does not matter that I used three words. People are familiar with different translations. that's why I gave three choices. Lexicons suggest many more terms for the word than the ones I mentioned: HAL (portion, law, regulation, prescription, rule, prescribed task, limit), BDB (decree, statute, right, enactment, condition), DCH (legal instruction, prescription, convention, custom), and there are numerous others.

Nothing that I wrote is arbitrary, I am not citing my OPINION - unlike you. I am drawing from our Torah giants who knew/know Torah far better than either one of us.

HH: It is their opinion. Yes, what they wrote has historical value, but it is not guaranteed to be right and is subject to evaluation and even correction. It is God's written word that has divine authority, not oral tradition that was eventually written down. What people say can change. That is why God had his word written down as a permanent remembrance of his thought and intent. That is what has authority. All human teachings derive from it and only have real, spiritual authority as they exactly reflect it. We are not free to add to what the Lord caused to be written in the Law itself.

Everything they wrote and taught they derived
from the Torah.

HH: That's good, but I have read the ancient Jewish writings, and there is a lot in them that strikes me as human opinions and ideas based on the Law in only the loosest way. People often use God's word in a way that is unfaithful to its true meaning and intent, and such pronouncements may or may not reflect the ideas God intended.

They used particular, specific means of deriving
information from Torah, that were not arbitrary, they were very very careful, and even though you don't know what they are, and don't understand them, this certainly does not make their teaching 'arbitrary'.

HH: You are claiming that the OT "chukim" are arbitrary and incomprehensible, not me. I am saying that they would have had meaning to the people to whom they were originally given.

Which chukim can we understand?

HH: Many of them. Here are a few:

Ex. 30:21 they shall wash their hands and feet so that they will not die. This is to be a lasting ordinance for Aaron and his descendants for the generations to come.”

HH: This was for the Levites whenever they entered the Tent of Meeting, and the obvious intent was to remind them of their human uncleanness before God, their need for cleaning before a holy God.

Lev. 6:18 All the males among the children of Aaron shall eat of it. It shall be a statute for ever in your generations concerning the offerings of the LORD made by fire: every one that toucheth them shall be holy.

HH: The word "statute" can also be translated as "share" or "due," for God considered it proper for the priestly families to gain their food from their work of offering sacrifices on behalf of the people. Here the grain offerings are under consideration.

Deut. 4:6 Observe them carefully, for this will show your wisdom and understanding to the nations, who will hear about all these decrees and say, “Surely this great nation is a wise and understanding people.”
Deut. 4:7 What other nation is so great as to have their gods near them the way the LORD our God is near us whenever we pray to him?
Deut. 4:8 And what other nation is so great as to have such righteous decrees and laws as this body of laws I am setting before you today?

HH: Here the word is translated as "decrees" in verse 8, and it is obvious that the decrees are not arbitrary, imcomprehensible mysteries, because in that case the Gentile nations would not praise the laws. They were decrees that even made sense to Gentiles.


Which of the 613 mitzvot are chukim and
which are mishpatim?

HH: I suppose the ones that are identified as such.

Do you know what the 613 mitzvot are?

HH: Yes, they are a list of commandments the Jews have, taken from the Torah, that to them summarize their entire duty before God in terms of obedience in life.

Do you have a list of them and
where they are given in the written text, and an explanation of how they are to be observed? Do all of them truly make sense to you?

HH: Lists are readily available. I have looked at one in a Sunday School class. My authority and interest is God's word, not Jewish lists of mishpatim. Sorry. I am not under the law and do not consider modern Judaism to be a first need of mine to study. I may get to studying the list of 613 mishpatim again someday, but there is no particular listing like this in the Torah. It is just a human compilation and of no particular significance to me, as far as I can tell.


You would have to have all this information in order to make the claims that you do.

HH: Not really.


I gave you two other examples of chukim, explain how they make sense - what is the sense behind not wearing wool and linen together?

HH: God was establishing a holy nation. It had to be obedient to His will, yielding unreserved submission. So God made distinctions for the people to follow that would give them a separate identity among the nations. It would in a sense isolate them from other peoples but would protect them from being compromised by the ungodly thoughts and religions of other people.

HH: The Lord was showing that his authority extended to the most trivial areas of life. All that he commanded was part of a way of life he was developing. As far as the specifics, we no longer know what reason God may have had for choosing these two particular fabrics to keep separate, but it was in line with God's constant desire for separation of things that differ:

Lev. 19:19 ¶ “‘Keep my decrees. ¶ “‘Do not mate different kinds of animals. ¶

“‘Do not plant your field with two kinds of seed. ¶
“‘Do not wear clothing woven of two kinds of material.

HH: There was a need to make spiritual distinctions in life, and God gave the people practice by making physical distinctions. One was not mix Yahwism with Baalism, and this sort of ordinance taught the need and requirement of making such distinctions as God's holy people.


What
about cotton?

HH: Where does the Law mention cotton? My Bible encyclopedia lists Isa 19:9 and Esth 1:6 as verses that related to cotton. But neither relevant word for "cotton" appears in the Law, and in fact, there is disagreement about these two places, with some taking the word in Esther to indicate fine linen hangings.


Meat and milk?

HH: There was no flat milk and meat separation but only this (Deut 14:21):

Do not cook a young goat in its mother’s milk.

HH: I think there are a number of lessons here based on the idea of the family, and not exploiting the animals that serve you. One was not to be heartless, and there is something a bit perverse about killing the beloved calf of a cow and then cooking it in its mother's milk. We are to use animals for our needs but not heartlessly exploit them or degrade ourselves in the use of them.


The written law did not make a distinction between edot, chukim and mishpatim?


HH: No, it does not absolutely do that, as far as I can tell. Obviously, it uses the terms together, so they can have a different connotation. But it seems that often the different terms are different ways of looking at the same body of laws. They can be viewed as testimonies, as decrees, or as ordinances. Perhaps some function more as testimonies than others, or some have a more decreed nature than others.


So you think the Torah is arbitrary in its language, if, in your world, there is no distinction, why did it use 3 different words? Why did it call Parah Adumah a chok - twice?

HH: It did not do so to say that the statute was incomprehensible and to be accepted as mere fiat. I don't think the word is limited to that implication. Obviously, a legal decree must be accepted, whatever one thinks about it. So that connotation is not completely absent.

I don't believe that you are equipped with the knowledge to teach me or anyone Judaism.

HH: I am not trying to teach you Judaism. Why would you suppose that? Modern Judaism is a development of ancient pharisaism, and the Pharisees were not my heroes. I do not equate the Bible with Judaism, for I think that a considerable part of Judaism is human thinking, not divine thinking.

You didn't demonstrate, though you barely tried, that the mitzva of Parah Adumah can be understood by human intelligence because you didn't even RELATE correctly to the concept of Parah Aduma in the first place, even though I explained it. It is not a SIN offering - it has nothing to do with G-d's grace to forgive sin - or even to give anyone life each instant. It is a matter of spiritual DEFILEMENT. Do you know what that meant in the Torah for purposes of living in Torah society? To my religion in the times that we had a Beit HaMikdash? Do you not UNDERSTAND the difference between someone having sinned and someone having become impure, defiled?

HH: They are closely related; ceremonial defilement was supposed to point to the reality of human sinfulness.


Do you know what it means today? Do you know the different grades of defilement, do you know what various agents caused them, do you know how they affected people?

HH: I know what Scripture says and have studied commentaries on all these points.


Did you bother to read the text that I referenced, did you see that nowhere does it mention Parah Adumah is used to help man get forgiven from SIN?

HH: Defilement was a condition quite akin to sinfulness. If you don't see the parallel that I drew between this law and atonement by sacrifice, then you evidently do not want to acknowledge the connection between defilement and sinfulness.

For some reason you would like to believe that we forgot our Torah and our commandments and how to perform them, but you are simply wrong, and you cannot prove otherwise.

YOUR entire point of view that you impose on Judaism, not our Torah giants' points of view, is arbitrary - we have a rock-solid 2,000+ year old tradition of observance that has been preserved that was NOT arbitrary, and that will continue to be observed as completely as possible until Redemption, no matter who likes it or not.

As for your last question, I will not bother to answer it, because I explained it very clearly already.

Maybe it would serve you, if you want to understand it, to re-read my previous post, carefully and slowly.

HH: You are the one complaining because I say that the decrees would have made more sense to the ancient Israelites than they do to us today because we have lost some of the historical particulars. If you doubt that, then you are taking a faith position that is contrary to all observed reality because we are quite aware that we have lost much of ancient life.

Yours,
Harold Holmyard

Yours,
'

Shoshanna



Shoshanna Walker wrote:
No, chukim does not refer to the plural form of statutes, ordinances AND
decrees.

HH: Yes, it does refer to that word, and your
definition below is only a later understanding of
the import of the word. You can't prove that the
meaning of these biblical details has not been
lost. This entire point of view is arbitrary.

The Torah distinguishes between three types of Mitzvot (Deut. 4:45) - 1.
Edot = testimonies, they are the mitzvot that testify to G-d's miracles,
such as Shabbat, which testifies to Creation, or Matzah, which testifies
to the Exodus. 2. Mishpatim = ordinances, most of the mitzvot fall
into this category. They are laws that make sense, human intelligence
even can know how necessary they are for the benefit of society; they
represent laws that are valid even had they not been written in the
Torah, such as the prohibitions against robbery, murder, and incest.
Mishpatim are generally accepted laws which are found in the legal
systems of most human cultures and civilizations. 3. Chukim = decrees,
they are the mitzvot which cannot be understood by ordinary human
intellect, such as not mixing milk and meat, not wearing wool and linen
together, they are decrees of G-d, and it is not for anyone to question
it, and they set Israel apart from the rest of the nations.

HH: The written law of Moses does not make this
distinction, and it is simply arbitrary to assign
such a meaning to the word. Many times the
"chukim" can be understood.


The Red Heifer "purified the impure and made impure the pure." How does
something that has the ability to purify one person cause impurity in
another - this is not subject to human understanding.

HH: This is no more mysterious than animal
sacrifice itself. God condescends to credit people
with an atonement for sin that their actions can
in no way really earn. The blood of goats cannot
take away human sin. It was merely God's grace to
grant forgiveness on this basis.

And no, we did not "forget" anything - thanks to the Oral Torah, and the
mesorah which was accurately transmitted through people, all the names
of whom we know, through the generations. We "even" know that Parah
Adumah is in response to the sin of the golden calf.

HH: This is more arbitrariness, the assumption
that you have not forgotten anything. The Jewish
people have doubtless forgotten plenty of things.

This whole conversation is a result of someone saying that Judaism, or
Torah, is simply a way of life that makes sense. That is not at all
true, that is just trivializing it, robbing it of its depth and
complexities, and relationship with G-d.

HH: Are you complaining that someone says the way
of life in the Bible makes sense? Or are you
complaining because someone says it doesn't make
sense? And which are you? You seem to be the one
saying that it doesn't make sense. I don't see how
that gives more glory to God than saying it does
make sense but we have lost the details of some of
the meaning. And this assertion in no way removes
the mystery from the Bible or assumes that all
things are understandable without a divine
explanation.

Yours,
Harold Holmyard
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