[Magdalen] Seeing the Gospels through a Jewish lens: An interview with Amy-Jill Levine - On Faith & Culture

[sally.davies at gmail.com]

Interesting, I would love to hear more about her readings of the Parables.
Her students are lucky!

As to Max, he may make the occasional logical, well founded point but I've
looked at a few other articles on that same blog, and Max appears to be a
classic Internet Troll. He is not there to enhance debate or even play
devil's advocate, but to shout down the conversation and act out in abusive
ways - even when other commenters really do try to present their evidence
etc.

The sad and somewhat puzzling thing is that trolls like Max almost always
succeed in preventing constructive debate, because there are always at
least one or two people who do attempt to engage them and reason with them,
or (worse) to retaliate in like manner.

And the format of most "comments" sections means that once you've ploughed
through a string of such messages, you're more likely to hit the X than to
persist in the hope of finding something more substantial, further down.

I've wasted more time than I should have - in years gone by - on political
blogs where there were "salaried" trolls who were paid to do the job! I'm
not saying Max is that sort but he's talented enough to make money if he
had a sponsor!

Sally D


On Fri, 08 May 2015 at 6:58 AM James Oppenheimer-Crawford <
oppenheimerjw at gmail.com> wrote:

> The christians really did no service to their cause.  Instead of reading
> the sense of what Max said, they focused on a triviality of whether you
> could call Paul a zealot or not, which was apart from the point being made.
>  but it worked well. These folks kept saying Max was ignorant but never did
> any of them actually present a basis for their allegation, and they
> presented no sources.
>
> Max was the straight-shooter, actually, but I suspect the others are so
> inoculated with the assumption of christian privilege that they felt no
> need to show why they said what they did.  The view of Paul is much like
> the current viewing of David as more a thug than a monarch. (Not quite sure
> how the humanity of Paul relates to Christianity) I think we can cut him
> some slack, since a lot of good christians "knew" (and many still "know")
> that Paul hated women, when all one had to do was read what the man wrote
> to refute that.
>
> I thought it was an unfortunate diversion from the discussion of how to
> view Jesus through competent Jewish eyes. I've heard the good professor
> speak, and she is very articulate and learned.  That is, she knows the
> needed facts, has them at her fingertips, and she also is able to make her
> position quite clear with minimum smoke and mirrors.
>
> While she does speak in public, she will not generally speak to laity, I am
> told. She has made some tapes for The Great Courses, however.
>
> James W. Oppenheimer-Crawford
> *"A life is like a garden. Perfect moments can be had, but not preserved,
> except in memory. LLAP**"  -- *Leonard Nimoy
>
> On Thu, May 7, 2015 at 10:12 PM, Jay Weigel <jay.weigel at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > I went on down into the comments, and OMG.....that Atheist Max gives me a
> > headache! He is out of his everlovin' mind. Claims, like so many of his
> > ilk, that reading the scriptures leads him to the "truth", but he's got
> > more twists and turns than a road in the Smokies. Oy vey......
> >
> > On Thursday, May 7, 2015, Lynn Ronkainen <houstonklr at gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> > > I commend this article to your attention... important information,
> wish I
> > > could still share these kind of articles with an EFM group.
> > >
> > >
> > >
> >
> http://jonathanmerritt.religionnews.com/2015/01/02/seeing-gospels-jewish-lens-interview-amy-jill-levine/
> > >
> > > Lynn
> > >
> >
>