As a member of the Sanhedrin...

[Lulav]

If I was as cynical with Moses as you are with Paul- we could say that when he claimed God told him to commit men, women and children to death he was really just establishing his own political position, and the same could go with the death penalties he dished out for things like picking up sticks etc. I could say a lot of very very negative things about Moses (could even question his existence!) and completely deconsruct, demolish and demythologize the writings "attributed to him". Moses would be a monster compared to Paul. He even smashed God's word to pieces. Check Num. 31:13-18, Ex 32:26-28 for clear examples. That's atrocity in my books.

Moses used violence to get his way with God's people (by God's orders- or?). Paul didn't. He used strong words on occassion.

But I have faith. I give Moses the benefit of the doubt. I accept the awful things Moses did as somehow part of God's plan.

You have faith in God and Moses excusing the worst attributed to them.....and yet little old Paul...you don't?

It is because you see Moses and Paul the very opposite that I do, and it is by your own bias.

You accuse Moses of committing abominations when he was only following commandments given him by G-d. Just because you don't understand the reason behind it doesn't give you the right to accuse G-d of the things you are obviously accusing him of. I went through this same thing as I've told you before but I started with knowing I was missing something, I was not seeing the whole picture, but I knew it was me, not G-d for I believed then as I do now that G-d is righteous is all he does and he can never be accused of any unrighteousness. That is where to begin, to say, 'it is me G-d, I am missing something here, I know you are righteous and everything you do is righteous so please show me what I am missing so I can understand and love you more'.

He showed me, in abundance, in a way that couldn't have come from anyone else. Then my eyes were opened and I could read everything in Torah and feel nothing but love for him.

I am sorry that you feel such hatred towards Moses, the servant of G-s, Humble and dealing with over a million Jews in the desert for 40 years, this man should be given a medal above all medals ! and to top it all off he was punished himself when he sinned by striking the rock and not even allowed to go into the promised land!

Tell me, if you debunk Moses, the Torah, what do you have left? What can you base your beliefs on? How do you know what you believe is correct when you have no standard to compare to?

Yeshua came to put people back on the right road, the right path, which is Torah. He came to save, not condemn. Do you agree with that?

Now do you see Yeshua doing this?

Hymenaeus and Alexander, whom I have handed over to Satan to be taught not to blaspheme.

This is such an oxymoron. You certainly don't turn someone over to learn NOT to blaspheme to someone who does constantly!



You mentioned Num. 31:13-18 and Exodus 32:26-28 , but these are examples of G-d having to act because he was trying to form a Holy nation. Idolatry was the worse offense. Both of these are about idolatry, if these was allowed to go unpunished it would be as Yeshua said, a house divided upon itself and it cannot stand.

Yet Paul did similar things for lesser reasons, did he not?

So when you are assembled and I am with you in spirit, and the power of our Lord Jesus is present, hand this man over to Satan for the destruction of the flesh

For sexual immorality.

But yet Paul said that meat sacrificed to idols was nothing, which goes dead against what the L-RD taught. There are so many verses in the Torah and Prophets speaking against idolatry and idols yet Paul says they are nothing and you can be in another gods temple and eat his offerings, if you do it in private that is. Now is this not the same thing that in Numbers the women had to be slaughtered for? Teaching Israel to go after other gods.

16“They were the ones who followed Balaam’s advice and enticed the Israelites to be unfaithful to the Lord in the Peor incident, so that a plague struck the Lord’s people.

Being unfaithful to G-d is a much more serious offense than sleeping with your step mother.

 

[ContraMundum]

Next time read carefully Lulav. I was giving a hypothetical example of what someone with a bias could do to Moses, I was not outlining my beliefs.

I was using the standard approach one must use with Anti-Missionary arguments- applying equal weights and measures. I applied "Lulav's Paul paradigm" equally to Moses. I did so to demonstrate the hypocrisy and weakness of your position on Paul- which is not allowed on this forum to begin with.

To repeat: If one is cynical with Paul, one can be equally as cynical with Moses...and Paul comes up looking rather gentlemanly. I made it clear that my faith means I give God the benefit of the doubt and accept the stories as God's sovereign plan (I accept both Moses and Paul despite any problems I have with understanding them or their story- clear enough?).

If you had read properly you would have saved yourself a lot of time typing. I won't respond to your comments because you clearly misunderstood.

 

[Danoh]

ContraMundum, I am ever fascinated with the mechanism of bias. Just fascinates me to no end how that we will read a bias into a thing, unaware that we have, and proceed from there to error based on said bias. And how that, should we, at some point, be made aware, that ours had been the error of bias both allowed in unawares and therefore unexamined, nevertheless, shortly after having come to awareness of our error, we soon forget how we ended up where we did, and by that, finding ourselves its victim once more. Worse, adding to same, the further bias that others are in disagreement with us because they are the ones victim of a bias.

Your post was crystal clear. Only bias going in would have missed what you were clearly attempting to point out the need to consider.

I hate to pick on her, but it bears an important lesson we would all do well to strive to ever keep at the forefront of our mind - having at some point become aware that her issue with Moses had been the result of having been approaching the issue from a false bias/false positive [as their is also such a thing as a sound bias) she just as quickly apparantly forgot its lesson, ending up by that, with not approaching the various issues Paul often also poses, when not approached from a same, "well, I'v been there before - what is it I am not seeing, whether or not it is there to see, before I conclude on the matter?"

Repeatedly that is the very pattern one observes both in oneself, and in others that results in what that great fictional detective, Sherlock Holmes, notes - "It is a capital mistake to theorize before one has data. Insensibly, one begins to twist facts to suit theories, instead of theories to suit facts."

In short, whenever an assertion makes, or does not make sense to us, is either actually due to the fact of how we make sense of things, or is it actually the case that it stands or falls on its own merit?

For, no matter how either side of these issues attempts to reason their case, the fact is that bias will be present. That being the case, the one bias all sides will have to agree on the issue of what will be the standard both governing as well as examining said bias throughout.