volgadon

I should however mention that Gen 15 is more of a personal agreement, whereas in 17 it is made official.

How I wish the manual would name this the Covenant among the Carcasses! As the late dr. Yehudah Elitzur pointed out, the purpose of the animals cut into bits was to show Abraham that this was no figurative promise, that the lord meant what he said when he promised that ABRAHAM's seed would be like the sands or the stars and would inherit THIS land. Not followers of Abraham possesing the land in an abstract sense, but his actual progeny with actual land. How does a bunch of carcasses show that? The covenant was ratified the same way that men ratified agreements between themselves. In other words, the Lord spoke unto Abraham in a way that Abraham could understand. There was a Jewish tradition that Abraham thought beforehand that what the promise of the Lord meant by seed was converts, so he actively proselyted among the Canaanites. An interesting tidbit is that the traditional site of the Covenant was where (in all probability) Christ's transfiguration took place. That is, on Mt. Hermon. I've been to the shrine for the Covenant, utterly serene place, mountain woods with several deep pools, just wow. Another interesting take on the event is recorded in the Quraan. Another powerful lesson from chapter 15 is that faith precedes the miracle, that is one of the purposes of telling Abraham about the captivity in Egypt.

This promise/curse is part of how covenants and treaties were made.

Did you also visit the gardens in Acre? Summer of '07 I was on a mission in Russia, a former investigator and member of our English classes was a Baha'i.

Welcome! I lived for a couple of years just up the road from the Baha'i gardens in Haifa. One of the most gorgeous places in the world, and increidbly serene.

For those who may be wondering what we are on about, the Book of Jasher is a collection of Jewish legends relating to biblical history, first appearing in 1625. it was published in English in 1840 and became fairly popular among the LDS, even being reprinted in Salt-Lake during the 1880s. An easily accesible anthology of Jewish legends in English is Louis Ginzberg's Legends of the Jews. The portion dealing with Abraham is found here, but I also highly recommend consulting vol. V, the footnotes.

Only in the medieval Book of Jasher. I'm sure that is where many church leaders got the idea from.

I'll send you a file. We used to play at gematria in elementary school.

Way of life.

And if thekabalist does consider me unwelcome, let him tell me so. I will leave I won't speak to him again, but it would be nice if he tells me just why.

Thank you.

Who accused him of being dishonest? I did not accuse him of dishonesty, I did not accuse him of not being Jewish (I never ever thought that) and I certainly did not attempt to discredit him. I think some of his Hebrew is off, but that could happen to anyone. I make mistakes, everyone I know makes mistakes. So what if I don't think that the Zohar is really representative of the manner of prophecying among the Jews in 600 BC, I'm not trying to discredit thekabalist or claim that he isn't Jewish.

Freely granted. So you know where I'm coming from, I find aspersions on my character of that nature to be utterly and deeply offensive. It is a line I don't tolerate being crossed. My ancestors have been persecuted for centuries, as any Jews living in Europe had been. The majority of my father's family, those that remained in Europe were murdered in the Holocaust. For someone even to insinuate what you had insinuated makes my blood boil. What I'm trying to say is that I do find thekabalist's work interesting and useful, but some of the details seem a little off. It is about learning together isn't it? If I am saying something that is incorrect or mistaken, I would like to know instead of holding on to it. I'm sorry that I assumed that others would think likewise. And I do hope he posts more. I'm not his enemy, in no way shape or form am I his enemy.

Ok, I misread it. Sorry. I'm still a little rankled by Vanhin's post.

Does that make a difference? Neither is thekabalist.

I had already posted a little about that on this very thread, IIRC. As of a few months ago, I've been in the States, to go to school and such. If we don't count the two years on a mission, then yes, I've lived there my whole life. I was born there. I was born in Safed, grew up in Hatzor, moved to a small village near Tiberias. I grew up in a very traditional Jewish surrounding, I even attended religious classes after school. So my whole educational experience has been Jewish and Israeli. My environment has been Jewish. In my childhood I was as familiar with the names of Akiva, Hillel and Honi as I was with Lehi, Nephi and Alma, if not more. I grew up reading aggadot chazal. I've served in the army, I've been involved with Jewish youth groups in England, I've had rabbis for neighbours, as well as Yemenite moris. One of my favourite highschool teachers was a kabbalist from Safed. Judaism is my culture and my heritage.

And I would like to point out that I made a mistake over the word baal, thekabalist corrected me. That wasn't as if he was trying to disrrespect me, right? It was a correction of a wrong statement, pure and simple.

That is how it is in modern Hebrew, so someone was being sloppy with the transliteration.

I'm sorry Pam's gotcha didn't actually work.

No, I do mean machaloket. That is how the vowels are placed in that word as it appears in Avot. I'm confused. On the one hand Maya is saying that he is speculating, on the other there is yours, that presenting a different POV is not respectful. Would someone then care to explain HOW to do so? I've been critical of some of his input, it does not mean that I am trying to disresepct or insult him in any way. That one can disagree with a position or a conclusion and not extend that into personal hatred of someone else seems perfectly natural to me, especially growing up in a Jewish environment, which is what I've been trying to explain.

Yes, Vanhin, thank you for that post trying to paint me as a racist, a bigot, an anti-Semite. A most useful post.

Or we could have a mangal, the only thing better than an Israeli mangal is an Armenian one and I know how to do both. also, a nice steaming pot of plov cooked on the campfire.

You could ask him what a machaloket leshem shamayim is.

Thanks for consoling me about not being an expert, about being ignorant as a non-LDS from Utah, proximity and all that, but you just happen to be utterly wrong. My turn to console you. It isn't Judaism that baffles me. What baffles me is finding a statement like Maya's 5th, on a Jewish perspectives board, a concept rather alien to Judaism and Jewish culture.

Frankly, as someone raised in an almost entirely Jewish environment, I'm baffled by #5.