@id-to-post-anything wrote:
My*Mum
I am always very happy to explain our beliefs.
Firstly, we believe that one is not allowed to erase the name of G-d. If you write it in full, it can be erased. We leave out the O, so its not written in full and therefore erasing it is not really erasing His name. I think this is a really special concept, I trust that you use the word G-d though when speaking of Him? Just writing it not in its entirety, I can imagine that other beliefs may interpret that as denying His existence in the first place iykwim. But I really like the idea of not erasing His Name and thus not erasing Him from your life.
In terms of the actual Old Testament, what we have today is absolutely exactly what was originally written. We have no issues with translations as it has always, and still is, written only in the original Hebrew. Someone reading a widely availabe translation will always go back to the Hebrew if there is a discrepancy. Does this mean that all/most Jews read Hebrew? It is part of your education kind of thing? The young lady I knew, went to a local Public School, but went to Jewish School 2 afternoons a week as well as on Saturday, where she learned Hebrew, plus her mum (a school principal of another public school) did speak and read Hebrew and also taught her daughter. (This young lady's grandparents were affected by the Holocaust and from memory, her maternal grandparents were prisoners of war and did not survive)
When a new scroll is writtten, the Scribe has to copy it exactly from another scroll. He cannot do it off by heart etc. Letter by letter must be copied. Once a scroll is in use in the synagogue, if the reader sees a mistake or a letter has disintigrated or been damaged etc that scroll cannot be used until it is fixed. In this way, we have the absolute exact same text as the original. That is pretty amazing. It must take a long time to produce a new copy. I presume that some copies are mass produced and published though for use in the homes and by younger children who may not look after such a precious document as well as is needed, but in the Synagogue, are only hand written scrolls used?
I've just been summonsed and I have to go LOL, so this will be my last post for a while, but I hope that you do come back another time.
I am sort of on holidays atm, would you have time to go through those 5 Books of The Old Testament with me and help me to compare our perspectives? I don't have a Hebrew Bible though (mine is Latin LOL, but one of my children will have a "modern" Christian one written in English.
I'd be really interested in learning what your Scriptures have to say and how they are interpreted as compared to mine. (By mine I guess I do mean predominately Catholic/Christian, as that is the faith within which I was immersed.)
Some people can go their whole lives and never really live for a single minute.
