dauer wrote:Otis,
The Reform and Conservative movements as well as the Reconstructionist movement have made subtle changes to the Hebrew, like removing the prayer thanking God for not making us women. And references to the coming of the messiah may be changed to reflect a messianic age, or removed entirely. There are other changes too. But you're right, God language doesn't change.
The greatest difference in language can be seen if you check out the English translation by Zalman Shacter-Shalomi which he admits is the "extracted" meaning.
http://www.ohalah.org/rebzalman/thesiddur.pdf
On your point, I mostly agree with you except that part of the way we think about God has to do with relating this understanding back to the text, so that Maimonides' Maimonedean ideas can be found in the text through his Guide for the Perplexed and the Zohar finds the ideas of the Kabbalist there. Christianity sometimes finds Jesus there. The rabbis of the talmud didn't even take things as they are and said the bible is written in the language of man. Lots of figurative language. And I don't think they're entirely wrong, at least how everything was meant in its final versions.
Although it is true that most modern Jews or members of any other religion don't seem to be willing to take the journey to understanding the sources themselves. Many probably don't feel it's worthwhile anyway.
Wow, I never knew about the prayer thanking God for not making us women. I'll have to tell all my jewish female friends
Anyway, now that you mention it, the amidah is full of those messianic edits. But at least that part's fixed in the new reform sidur thats still in the works...
And yeah, the bible clearly isn't intended to be taken entirely literally, for example, there are two greatly conflicting stories of creation. I showed this to my christian friend at school and he was speachless. "They lied to us in sunday school!" was all he could get out. The same thing I felt when I learned that the story about the oil lasting eight nights was all a rabincal fairy tail.
pjnbarb wrote:Hey Otis ... Didn't you ever hear of people who go around trying to sell the Brooklyn Bridge? or swampland in Florida?
Nope. It might have been before my time, I'm 17.
Frank: Good point. A lot of the time people accept religious texts as truth. The idea that it might be made up by some psycho just flies right over their heads. A certain level of skepticism is healthy, and too much is better than too little. I like my sociology teacher's instruction on it: "Believe half of what you see and none of what you hear."
