Wednesday, September 4, 2013

Fact-Checking -- Your OWN Ideas

Fact-checking Torah, like fact-checking any other urban legend, means going back to the source.  Besides finding the source, you have to read the source.

Besides reading the source, you have to think about the source and what it means.

What it means may be different from the urban legends you are used to.

There are lots of reasons for that, including that your urban legends use a fallacy called “quoting out of context” in a number of ways that turn into the urban legend instead of tracking the actual meaning of the source.

This thread started with my research that let me answer questions on an Internet discussion group.

The research turned into a mass of material that will take three years to post, at the rate of one post a week.

Here’s how you can deal with that.

I keep saying that to avoid urban legends, you have to go back to the source.  But the source is in Hebrew, and maybe you don’t read Hebrew. 

That’s why I give the link to the Hebrew language text below.  In three years, almost anybody who is willing to do the work can learn a foreign language to some extent. 

When you look at that text, you may decide it says too much about Hebrew and not enough about Torah to let you learn to read Torah.

When I finish the MENDEL BEILIS thread, I will start posting answers to this thread, FACT-CHECKING.  I will also start posting lessons on reading the Hebrew of Torah.  In three years, I should be able to teach you how to understand the first 100 verses at least, and you will be able to take it from there.

Why can’t I just teach you the letters and show you the link to an on-line dictionary?  Because it wouldn’t help. 

I’ve been studying languages and using their dictionaries for 40 years, and that won’t cut it.  There are dictionaries which say they are Bible-oriented dictionaries of Hebrew and English, but they are really dictionaries of a specific set of urban legends about the Hebrew parts of the Jewish Bible.  I’ll bring this up again when it becomes important.

For now, trust me when I say that teaching you the Hebrew alphabet and turning you loose with an on-line dictionary won’t help you.

Again, when you get upset with my contradicting your urban legends, you’re going to hit back by saying that making you learn Hebrew is me trying to brainwash or convert you. 

And I go back to what I said before.  I can’t hold a pistol to your head to make you read this thread.  If you do, you will be exposed to what I think.

You are free to label that as just another urban legend, but I want you to do something else.

It’s easy to start a blog.  I want you to start your own blog.  I want you to document what you think. 

You can keep referring back to my blog and what you disagreed with that I posted.

But that’s going to be self-defeating because other people will say, maybe they shouldn’t be reading your blog; maybe they should be reading my blog.

So if you’re going to blog your ideas, blog your own ideas. 

But if you’re going to blog your own ideas, blog YOUR OWN IDEAS.  Not the urban legends that you’ve been accepting all these years.

And to do that, you’re going to have to read the material and decide exactly what are YOUR OWN IDEAS.

Either way I win, because I will be blogging my ideas, and you will be reading the source.

 

If you don't have a Bible and don't read Hebrew, you can go here and get a copy in English.


You can learn about fallacies and how to find them here.


Hebrew language: (two parts)

            http://www.archive.org/details/hebrewgrammarwi01kaligoog

            http://www.archive.org/details/hebrewgrammarwi00kaligoog

Aramaic language (for Talmud):

http://www.archive.org/details/AramaicLanguagehebrewDialectOfTheBabylonianTalmudByMargolis

Jewish Bible read out loud (mostly in Hebrew):

http://www.mechon-mamre.org/p/pt/ptmp3prq.htm

Babylonian Talmud audio and text

             http://www.dafyomi.org/       

Jerusalem Talmud audio

             http://www.yerushalmionline.org/    

Texts:  

Tannakh, Talmuds, Midrash Halakhah    http://www.mechon-mamre.org/index.htm 

Midrash Aggadah                                     http://www.tsel.org/torah/midrashraba/index.html  

Talmud in PDF                                         http://www.hebrewbooks.com/                    

There are audio lectures at the following sites which use a medieval commentary, famous among Jews, by Rabbi Shelomo ben Yitschaq, AKA Rashi.

Beta.chabad.org – find Rabbi Yehoshua Gordon’s Torah video lessons

www.dafyomi.org – find R. David Grossman’s Torah audio lessons

© Patricia Heil, 2013-2018 All Rights Reserved

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