Dale,
Thanks for the link. I hope it's obvious that I'm in sympathy with your views, which you express well.
...Although I'm not much sympathetic to the implication (or is it my inference?) in "Hijacking" that the "old" Testament needs the new one to be completed, that Christianity is more evolved than Judaism. Am I reading you wrongly, and this on the first day of the new year?-- David W.
I reply:
David
My apologies. Of course I was guilty in that article of what you sensed. I did a Bart Simpspon ("doh!" as I realized how it had totally escaped me that you would pick up on that: I had not thought about how that statement in my article (I think this is the one to which you probably refer:"
"to view certain "questionable inpirations" as "under a higher principle", that put forth by Jesus."
would present itself to one of the Jewish faith. I see it clearly now, however, and want to clarify that immediately: and I need only "adjust" that same thought to the "higher" consciousness of say, the Hebrew Prophets and the justice themes found in the later stories. I guess my real intent was to address a "Christian" audience that is leaning toward "blaming Islam" rather than the distortion that the terrorists represent. Many of these people (the exclusivist Christians) need reminding that there are traditions within our canon (some of which happens to fall in the Old Testament side, and the most often quoted examples of the passages that depict a militaristic God) that we are hard pressed to "defend" --- and then there are what I call the "more mature" conceptions of the faith which certainly were in existence in pre-Chrstian Jewish theology as well, (and from whom Jesus drew for his own edification) and that are obviously of a different flavor than the "war stories" of the early conquests.
Thanks for your posing that question, and for pointing us over to AKMA (whom I had already blogrolled via your frequent dialogue with him).
Dale Lature
The next reply is here (posted the next day)
