Unlike John Hobbins with whom you seem to have a relationship of mutual insult, I don’t know your real identity, and I can’t distinguish what is meant to be humourous or sarcastic from what is meant to be serious.

If you want to just post insults to Christians, piss off and do it elsewhere. If there’s a serious point try making it in plain English.

if I knew who you were, I might read your comment differently.

The jury is still out for some on where I belong!! Of course, I don’t take much interest in where others think I belong.

My quibble is simply the easy equation with “Christian” and “Old Testament.” I suspect this can be chalked up to our disagreement on whether or not a Christian can read the Hebrew Bible. I certainly think I am doing so . . . . and in a way that is not confessionally biased (I know many say that, but those who know my work and know it well, I suspect, would attest to this very point . . . . in fact, if you read my current article while it was posted on my blog for a short time I suspect that view may be more patent). I guess I just don’t see myself taking confessional issues into account when I interpret. That doesn’t mean I don’t think the scholarship I do has implications for the life of faith, but at this early stage of my career I haven’t begun to spin those issues out. Primarily, I am a reader and interpreter of texts. My eclectic and diverse (and liberal) faith positions surely have a bearing on how I interpret, as they do for us all, but I simply struggle to see myself as one who is giving a Christian reading of the HB/OT. Again, it seems our disagreement resides mainly in a Christian’s ability to read the HB.

Christianity’s Obsolete Testament is properly based on that poorly kept set of random Hellenistic translations known as the “Septuagint.” While clearly of Jewish origin, as maintained by the Church they drifted considerably — the textual background of them is poor that the current scholarly NETS translation is forced to printing translations of the multiple versions of the surviving document. Fortunately for Christians, it is made abundantly clear that any laws that the Obsolete Testament might contain are pretty much suspended — so the Obsolete Testament can be treated as a quaint set of cute stories — right up there with Aesop.

In contrast Judaism’s Torah was given at Sinai from God and is binding for all time. It is read several times a week during morning prayer services in Hebrew. There’s not a lot of fighting about Bible translations in Judaism because the Jews have the Hebrew. And true, there are lesser documents as well, the Prophets, and the Writings, and, of course the traditions known as the Oral Torah.

(By the way, I loved your comment about “non-sacrificing” — while there, of course, no Temple, Jews still give sacrifices — as just one example, the famous burning of kosher bread [hafrashat challah] — a tradition most Christians will be unfamiliar with because they never actually made it to Numbers 15:17-21.)

Of course, perhaps fewer than one in a thousand Christians can read the Torah in Hebrew — and even for those who attempt it in one of the modern language translations — only a tiny fraction makes it all the way through the Torah with any degree of comprehension. Most start skimming the text somewhere in the middle of the book of Exodus.

And after all — what is the point? What does a Christian need to know of the Obsolete Testament? The portions of Isaiah that form the chorus of Handel’s Messiah? The Decalogue — the ten utterances — that most Christians can’t even recite? (E.g., in Christianity, not the “ten commandments”, but the “ten suggestions”.) The main Christian teaching from the Obsolete Testament — especially in the cruder quarters of Christiandom — is “the Messiah is coming.”

And the truth is — the ignoring of the Obsolete Testament by Christians is convenient for both religions. A careful reading of the Torah, Prophets, and Writings can be a bit embarrassing for Christians (although, the magic phrase “second coming” can address some — but not all — of those concerns.) And for Judaism, where it is forbidden for tamei (impure people — this includes all gentiles) to even touch a Torah scroll — many right-wing haredi feel that allowing gentiles to read the Torah was a mistake in the first place.

So I say — let Christians read their Obsolete Testament unburdened by any actual connections to Judaism. Indeed, that seems to be the practice now (and the practice that you advocate in your comment.)

(By the way, for the humor-impaired — this comment was meant to be sarcastic.)

I would challenge your all-too-easy claim that I am among a community of those who read the HB as the OT. There is not, in my view, any imperative that says one must read in this way. Indeed, if you read my post again, you will see that I am saying I read in a much different way . . . . NOT assuming a Christian order. That isn’t the order of my Hebrew Bible.

Either way, it is a muddy issue, but I think muddier than what the implications end up being. I am much more emphatic in my view that the Divine Name should not be pronounced than I am that one use the designation “Hebrew Bible” over “Old Testament.”

All the best!