26 Apr 2023

Ethics Project, Judaic Topics
This week in our regular cycle of Torah study we reach the part of the book of Leviticus known as the Holiness Code. In Lev 19:1-2 God tells Moses to say to the Israelite people, “You shall be holy for I, the Lord your God, am holy.” To the question, “How am I to be holy?” we are often pointed toward the meaning of the Hebrew root of the word that is translated as “holy,” that is, קדש, k...
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09 Apr 2023

Ethics Project
Having published the first major part of The Hidden Bones Apocalypse I am turning back for a while to my Golden Rule ethics project. I reviewed Jeffrey Wattles' book on The Golden Rule, as a first step back into that subject, and I was drawn to the early Christian texts on the subject that he cites. Four major treatments of the Rule were written in 17th century England. I decided to l...
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06 Feb 2023

Bones of Israel, Judaic Topics, PDF
The Rabbinic Solution to Linking Shavuot and Sinai Solving a Calendar Problem Rabbinic Solution to Linking Shavuot and Sinai.02.06.23 Introduction: The day on which the Israelites are commanded to observe the festival of Shavuot is one of only ten days marked in the Hebrew text of the bible with the unusual phrase בעצם היום הזה, b’etsem ha’yom ha’zeh. That phrase and the ten days t...
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24 Jan 2023

Judaic Topics
Parashat Va’era 2023: The Names of God   The Hebrew name of the book of Exodus, Sefer Shemot, or the book of Names, gets its title from the names of the sons of Jacob who came to Egypt at the invitation of Joseph. But another issue of names comes up in the first part of Exodus that seems more important. We have already been introduced to Jacob’s family and reciting their names a...
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07 Oct 2022

Ethics Project
I have not posted new "Ethics Project" material on this site for quite a while. I did return to the subject for a teaching prepared for Yom Kippur, which synthesizes the several approaches to a universal ethic. This is the one-page synthesis. Toward An Ethic of Respect And God created man in His image, in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them. (Gen 1:27) Y...
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04 Oct 2022

Uncategorized
This piece was written for an annual series of earth-related teachings published during the Hebrew month of Elul. Included in “Earth Etudes for Elul” 5782 “And the giants began to kill men and to devour them. And they began to sin against the birds and the beasts and creeping things and the fish, and to devour one another’s flesh. And they drank the blood. Then the earth brought ac...
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21 Jul 2021

Bones of Israel, PDF
The Hidden Bones Apocalypse was created by the insertion in the Hebrew Bible of an unusual phrase, which I've called "the marker phrase." The analysis linked here compares the instances of the marker phrase in the Hebrew Bible with the parallel texts in the Samaritan Pentateuch. The analysis shows that the marker phrase is found in the Samaritan Pentateuch in every location in which it a...
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03 Jun 2021

Bones of Israel, PDF
The attached pdf file contains the versions of the marker phrase translation found in the Latin Vulgate, the Aramaic Targumim, and in Luther's German bible. The Targumim use a consistent Aramaic rendering of the phrase. The Latin and German display the same kind of inconsistency found in English translations from the Hebrew. Translations of Marked Verses Found in Other Languages.06.03...
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