And sometimes it is best to let people sit on the sidelines if they want to. Perhaps from the outside, Judaism appears to be something of a gotcha religion, too, but only because people expect you to argue with them to come to the truth.

Rabbi Hirschfield, my deepest thanks on your opinion on this matter. And thanks for writing a well written piece that people with little understanding of ancient Jewish law can understand its meaning.
I really hated how the author of the blog entry addressed the issue. My own view of the Hebrew law that he used was in the case a pregnant mother was attacked in a fight, and the punishment if the baby was lost or both were lost. That this verse was not a “free pass” for baby butchery. I can see where my Jewish friends agree and disagree with my Christian friends and myself on the matter.
“Truly wonderful, the mind of a child is.” ~ Jedi Master Yoda, SW II: AotC

You got to love it when a Jewish blogger tells a Pagan blogger he should not make statements about Christian interpretations of the Bible.
Given that most Pagans in this country, myself among them, were once Christians and even studied the Bible, by Rabbi Hirschfield’s logic we might have more justification to comment than he. The force of his argument appears to be that only believers can address the claims of their religion, even when they seek to impose its conclusions on others? Interfaith becomes relations among billiard balls, each impervious to the outside, as we bounce off one another as external circumstances allow.
But those are rhetorical points, fun to make but not really addressing the deeper issues. Here are some that do.
Rabbi Hirschfield claims I “cherry pick” traditions. As I stated, I was surprised, genuinely surprised, that there was nothing explicit on the subject in the Bible, and that there was an explicit passage indicating that causing the deth of a fetus by violence was clearly NOT murder. I had anticipated making a weaker claim in a manuscript on which I am working, one similar to Hirschfield’s – that the Bible is not clear. That would justify a blog on too much certainty in interpretation being arrogance – Rabbi Hirschfield’s comment against me, ironically. But it is pretty clear, and I believe some of the self-righteous confidence on the matter might diminish were this passage better known.
Like my upset Christian commentators, Rabbi Hirschfield does not address the rather detailed passage I cited. Instead he offers another, vastly shorter and more ambiguous, from Jeremiah as a counter example. THIS is interpretation? In my blog we have already discussed passages such as that. Briefly, if at any point along the line AFTER conception a fetus becomes a human being the passage does not support the hard core Christian right position. There are secular and spiritual interpretations that support this position. Therefore that passage is ambiguous in a way the one I cited is not.
I am intrigued that so many so-called interpreters of the Bible never address the passages that seem not to support their claims. That is not interpretation, it is assertion. I am not accusing Rabbi Hirschfield of this, he was trying to make a different point, that ambiguity is ubiquitous, one to which I normally am sympathetic.
But not in this case.
He tells us “After all, a book which is an infinite gift of an infinite God, should invite infinite interpretation.” A book with infinite interpretations does not say much, or it says everything and gives us no standards to decide between them. A book with a range of interpretations can say things of interest and principles of disciplined interpretation can help us uncover genuine value we would otherwise miss. That is missing in the abortion debate, and sloppy and arrogant interpretations have been used to justify murdering doctors and nurses, and caused unnecessary deaths among women and probably children.
Finally, Rabbi Hirschfield writes “When any of us reduce the abortion debate to what our reading of the Bible ‘proves’ or how the people who read it differently from us are ‘obviously’ wrong about the intent of scripture, we are no better than those who treat us that way.” But I did not attempt to reduce the abortion debate to that. Not being a Christian, how could I? I arrived at my position quite differently. To the limited degree I addressed this larger debate I indicated the issues were complex and painful, including for me personally, and ultimately the woman’s concern more than anyone else’s.

By reading this sounds like your putting Christians and Jews down.
Obviously you got the words all twisted,It is you who don’t understand the bible.Study the ten commandments Exodus 20:1-26!
Exodus 20:13 “YOU SHALL NOT MURDER. IN OTHER WORDS ABORTION IS MURDER!
Comment to Rabbi Hirschfield.

Gus diZerega,
It sounds like Rabbi Hirschfield has hit a raw nerve in you. He was being charitable in saying that you were cherry picking one tradition. In fact, you conveniently ignored the different translations that suggest the miscarriage is that of a baby who survives, as Steven Waldman put up on his blog.
Further you ignore the wealth of passages, only some of which I give below that suggest that God knows us by name before birth, before making us in our mother’s womb, and that even when we were in our mother’s womb, he called us to our mission.
Indeed, cherry picking a line from the context and trajectory of the entire body of Revelation is as dangerous as it is anti-intellectual.
As a Roman Catholic, I am in complete disagreement with the Jewish position outlined by Rabbi Hirschfield, but I do not question his motives or his competence. He has proven himself, in my humble estimation, to have pastoral, and intellectual integrity that is beyond reproach. So he offered you one passage from Jeremiah and you were not impressed. Here are several, though not an exhaustive list of, passages from the Jewish scriptures and a few from the Christian scriptures that recount a conversation between two first century Jewish women. It won’t all fit in one post, so I’ll do it in two.
Genesis 1:27
“God created man in his image; in the divine image he created him; male and female he created them.” (The presumption goes to creation occurring in the womb.)
Deuteronomy 24:16
“Fathers shall not be put to death for their children, nor children put to death for their fathers; each is to die for his own sin.” (The scriptural answer to allowing abortions in the case of rape or incest)
Job 10:8-12
“Your hands shaped me and made me. Will you now turn and destroy me? Remember that you molded me like clay. Will you now turn me to dust again? Did you not pour me out like milk and curdle me like cheese, clothe me with skin and flesh and knit me together with bones and sinews? You gave me life and showed me kindness, and in your providence watched over my spirit.”
Job 33:4
“The Spirit of God has made me; the breath of the Almighty gives me life.”

More,
Job 31:15
“Did not he who made me in the womb make them? Did not the same one form us both within our mothers?”
Psalm 139:13-16
“ For you created my inmost being; you knit me together in my mother’s womb. I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made; your works are wonderful, I know that full well. My frame was not hidden from you when I was made in the secret place. When I was woven together in the depths of the earth, your eyes saw my unformed body. All the days ordained for me were written in your book before one of them came to be.”
Isaiah 44:2
“This is what the Lord says — he who made you, who formed you in the womb, and who will help you”
Isaiah 44:24
“This is what the Lord says — your Redeemer, who formed you in the womb”
Isaiah 49:1.5
“Listen to me, you islands; hear this you distant nations: Before I was born the Lord called me; from my birth he has made mention of my name. And now the Lord says — he who formed me in the womb to be his servant . . .”
Isaiah 45:9-10
“Woe to him who quarrels with his Maker, to him who is but a potsherd among the potsherds on the ground. Does the clay say to the potter, “What are you making?” Does your work say, “He has no hands?” Woe to him who says to his father, “What have you begotten?” or to his mother, “What have you brought to birth?”
Psalm 119:73
“Your hands made me and formed me; give me understanding to learn your commands.”
Jeremiah 1:4-5
“The word of the LORD came to me thus: Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, before you were born I dedicated you, a prophet to the nations I appointed you.”
Wisdom 7:1-2
“I too am a mortal man, the same as all the rest, and a descendant of the first man formed on earth. And in my mother’s womb I was molded into flesh in a ten-months’ period-body and blood, from the seed of man, and the pleasure that accompanies marriage.”
Luke 1:31
“You will be with child and give birth to a son, and you are to give him the name Jesus.”
Luke 1:39-44
“During those days Mary set out and traveled to the hill country in haste to a town of Judah, where she entered the house of Zechariah and greeted Elizabeth. When Elizabeth heard Mary’s greeting, the infant leaped in her womb, and Elizabeth, filled with the Holy Spirit, cried out in a loud voice and said, “Most blessed are you among women, and blessed is the fruit of your womb.
And how does this happen to me, that the mother of my Lord should come to me? For at the moment the sound of your greeting reached my ears, the infant in my womb leaped for joy.”
Matthew 1:20
“But after he had considered this, an angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream and said,
‘Joseph son of David, do not be afraid to take Mary home as your wife, because what is conceived in her is from the Holy Ghost.’”
Ephesians 2:10
“For we are God’s workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.”

Edelina,
I gather you are a Xian. Do NOT dare tell Jews how to read our bible. We have 4,000 years behind us in understanding Torah. You are not reading the Jewish bible with Jewish understanding, and therefore your opinions, to Jews, are completely irrelevant and to be ignored.
Frankly, when it comes to Judaism, if a Xian says the sky is blue, I’ll believe it’s green.

Rabbi Hirschfield,
I don’t know if you’ve had occasion to see the Catholic take on the moral identity and status of the human embryo and fetus, but here is one of our key documents, ratified by Pope Paul VI.
As I told Gus, I don’t at all agree with the position you mapped out, but I also don’t question tour motives. Your comments in your post, per usual, were spot on.
SACRED CONGREGATION FOR THE DOCTRINE OF THE FAITH
DECLARATION ON PROCURED ABORTION
http://www.vatican.va/roman_curia/congregations/cfaith/documents/rc_con_cfaith_doc_19741118_declaration-abortion_en.html
God Bless.

To the one who self-identifies with the derogative handle ‘Jewboy’,
Why the hostility toward the Christian. If you believe that you have a 2,000 year head-start on us, I can accept that. I also accept that you have a different scriptural hermeneutic. As one of those whom my Pope, John Paul II, has reverently called “our elder brothers in faith’, please, with the patience of an elder sibling, follow Rabbi Hirschfield’s example and explain to us your understanding of those Scriptures that we too hold sacred.
God Bless.

Gerard,
Who are you to call my handle “derogative”? How can I possibly be derogatory for a Jew to call himself by that nickname? It’s who I am.
Why the hostility? Only 2,000 years of the worst hate by Xians towards Jews. Only 2,000 years of Xians telling Jews how to read and understand our own holy writings. That ship has sailed. Xians can NEVER do that and get away with it again.
As for the theology, I hold to the Orthodox understanding of Tanakh, and I agree with everything the rabbi has posted here.

“Jewboy”
I was raised by my family with the understanding that “Jewboy” was about the ugliest racial epithet that one could hurl at a member of your faith. We’re not all anti-Semites. Even addressing you as such on this post is one of the most distasteful things I can recall having done. I can assure you that I had my mouth washed out with brown soap for far less an utterance!
“As for the theology, I hold to the Orthodox understanding of Tanakh, and I agree with everything the rabbi has posted here.”
Thank you for the clarification. About the 2,000 years of hate from quarters within my faith community, my Pope, John Paul II worked his entire papacy at rebuilding relations between our faiths. The Jewish Virtual Library does a great service of cataloging his many efforts, especially his profound apology,
http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/anti-semitism/johnpaul.html
While 2,000 years of persecution is a long time, I must believe that many of your persecuted forebears prayed for the day when their descendants could not only live in peace, but in mutual respect with the descendants of their tormentors.
That day is upon us. We are living in consequential times, when there is more genuine good will being extended from my Church to your Community than ever in history. Please don’t slap away the hand extended in good faith.
Again, thank you for taking the time to respond.

I humbly offer my mother’s position on the subject of abortion; “A fetus is a fetus until it graduates from medical school.”

Gerard,
Then feel free to call me JB.
When I was a kid, my friends and I called each other that all the time. It can be said jokingly, because there is nothing inherently untrue about it (though I am hardly a boy anymore). We also called each other Yids. We still do. The one we really don’t like is “kike”. Or “Christ killer”.
John Paul was a great man, but it will take far longer than 25 years to undo the previous 2,000. The whole mess with Williamson shows that the Church doesn’t know how to handle certain thing (I know the whole reason behind the lifting of the excommunications, but the damage control should have been first so we understood ahead of time that this wasn’t a blessing upon a Holocaust denier).

I would just like to say, that as Jeremiah does contain the above words, then surely it is plain to see that he loves us even at an early stage in our mother’s womb. If one believes in the bible, surely it is obvious that we are valuable even at that stage! How can it be right to kill what God loves?

JB,
Thanks for the permission. No need to worry about the other names. You’re quite right about the PR flub over the lifting of the excommunications, and yes, it will take longer than 25 years to cement new bonds of fraternal love and affection between our Communities. Much longer.
But, as I said, I believe these to be consequential times. Scores of thousands of our clergy, religious and laity gave their lives sheltering Jews during WWII. Building on that, Pope John Paul II, who was a seminarian during that terrible time brought that experience to his Priesthood and his Papacy. The results speak for themselves.
Now, it’s our turn. I will ensure that my three little children grow up literate in Judaism. For that, I need Orthodox Jews such as yourself to be patient in your exchanges with us.

JB,
I don’t know where the rest of that last post went, but here it is.
I can understand your anger at Edelina’s sentiments in her post. 25 years ago in college, I took a course in Judaism, taught by an Orthodox Rabbi. When he was challenged by a Christian student on a point of interpretation, his response spoke volumes,
“It’s our book. We wrote it.”
God Bless,
Gerry

Gerry,
Trust doesn’t happen overnight. I’m certain that with people like you, the future will be brighter. It’s not just we who are Orthodox. All Jews need to be a patient.
Now look at Angelina’s post. She is certainly a Xian. By her telling us that her interpretation is so evident (which is the exact opposite of the Jewish interpretation), sh is telling us we can’t read our own scriptures.
It’s very frustrating.

JB,
I agree with you. And I also believe that the future is brighter with people like you and Rabbi Hirschfield. In the interest of full disclosure, I studied for the Catholic Priesthood for a few years before changing my mind and becoming a molecular biologist. I can’t overstate the case that most people know the fundamentals of WHAT we believe, but they do not understand the process by which we have formulated our doctrines.
The average man in your community, by contrast, has studied the Torah for years and years, steeping himself in thousands of years of debate and its methodology. Not so for your average Christian. Rabbi Hirschfield got it exactly right in his comments above when he said,
“When any of us reduce the abortion debate to what our reading of the Bible “proves” or how the people who read it differently from us are “obviously” wrong about the intent of scripture, we are no better than those who treat us that way.”
Then there is the issue of spiritual and personal maturity. Many are convinced of the truth in what they believe. While there is certainly nothing wrong in that, absent spiritual and personal maturity, dialogue with people who believe differently often degenerates into people trying to score easy points and quick victories.
A few columns down from this topic, Rabbi Hirschfield gives us a way past that mentality and offers a framework for real conversation, writing under the one titled:
INVITATION TO NEW INTERFAITH CONVERSATION
“We must break out of the negotiating sessions and build genuine relationships which are deeper than whatever divides us. There will always be differences, even occasionally painful ones, in the relationship between Judaism and the Church. Such is the case with all siblings.
“In fact, it is precisely because siblings love and need each other, that the divisions are so painful. But those divisions need not be divisive when we remind ourselves that the only thing bigger than our occasional pain and frustrations with one another, is the love shared between the siblings.”
I know your frustration. I get tarred for other Christian’s excesses. However, good will begets good will. I doubt very much that I’ll see in my lifetime the full realization of the vision Pope John Paul had for our communities. But I also believe that there is much sweetness in taking the journey together.
God Bless.

Jewboy and Gerard (sounds like a sitcom, no?),
Conversations like you have carried on, are what make writing this blog so personally gratifying. In a world of ugly religious posturing, the two of you, with the many differences which divide you, model the kind of honest, wise, and searching give and take which really can and will change the world. Thank you for not only teaching us that truth, but living it. As we say in Hebrew, kol hakavod. Major kudos is about the best translation I can offer, but it’s said with deep feeling!
AND
Gus,
When you are done making assumptions about what I know and don’t know, including the fact that I have studied both the Hebrew Bible in Hebrew and the New Testament in Greek and Latin (I confess to having a much easier time with the former), and ready not only to be right but to stop insisting that others are obviously wrong, I would love to continue our conversation as well.

Rabbi Hirschfield,
Yes, it does sound like a sitcom!
Thank you for your kind words. I am grateful to you for not only providing the space for my heartening exchange with JB, but for providing the leadership by example. In the 2,000 year history of my Church, I am grateful to God for the opportunity to live in a time when the major obstacles to building bridges have been removed.
As for the Jewish position on abortion, I would love to discuss this with you at some length in the not too distant future.
God Bless,
Gerry

Rabbi Brad,
Everyone cherry picks through the Bible. We have to, because it says so many things that we could only wish it didn’t say. The whole rabbinical tradition is based on scholars deciding what is good to teach and what is not.
I’m going to go out on a limb here and guess that you haven’t taught your congregation to cut off the hand of a woman who grabs a man’s testicles during a fight. But you probably have taught them to welcome the stranger and love their fellow.
Cherry picking?

To be considered “cherry picking” the author would have to cite at least 2-3 examples from the Bible to support his claims. Just one example taken out of context doesn’t mean anything. This blogger is just a rank amateur at writing and critical thinking.

Leah,
“The whole rabbinical tradition is based on scholars deciding what is good to teach and what is not.”
Perhaps you can clarify a few things for me. How does the Rabbinic Tradition approach the Bible relative to interpretation? I see two approaches as opposite ends of a spectrum of approaches. Your statement above seems to be one end, where Rabbis pick that which they believe to be good to teach.
On the other end of the spectrum is what is called Contextual Criticism. In this approach, the Scriptures are viewed as an organic whole, and passages can not be pulled out of the greater context and trajectory of the corpus of God’s Revelation. Aiding contextual criticism to help resolve seeming contradictions are the Historical Critical Methods that help us to understand the situation/context in which the particular book was written.
In the Christian Scriptures, St. Paul (his Jewish name was Saul), a Pharisee and prize student of Rabbi Gamaliel, wrote in 2 Timothy 3:16 “All Scripture is inspired by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, for training in righteousness; that the man of God may be adequate, equipped for every good work.”
This was one doctor of Jewish Law writing to another Jew in the first century.
So, my questions are these. Paul understood ALL Scripture to be inspired by God and to be useful for the reasons listed. If this was a Rabbinic take on the Sacred Scriptures in the first century, when did the Rabbinic Tradition that you mention begin? Does Orthodox Judaism today maintain the same understanding of Divine Authorship and application that Paul did? Why, or why not?
Leah, if you or anyone else want to jump in and help, I would be most appreciative.
God Bless.

Hoo boy, Rabbi. Did you open a can of worms. And have proved a very valid point when it comes to reading the Tanakh and interpreting it — everyone is right, and everyone is wrong. We each peruse with our own set of values and biases, and think ours is the ultimate truth and interpretation. If that gives comfort and a sense of religious solidarity, great. But in the end, all I ask is not to push it in my face and expect me to swallow wilingly. We need to question, explore, uncover, and decide as the great scholars have done and encourage us to do as well. The Holy One gave us individuality, and with it a responsiblity to use it, not become drones in a collective. Object, agree, as long as you’re thinking!

DG,
You wish you could be such an amateur.

There without a doubt is absolutely no reason- medical or otherwise to perform partial birth abortion. WHen the birthing process has gone that far-it can be seconds till the child is fully delivered. It is a barbaric and grotesque procedure. The Nazi’s would of loved it- along w all their other medical experiements they practiced on the JEws!!
If a women has a known medical condition that will take her life if she gets pregnant- then she shoud not get pregnant!!! That is easy to fix- without taking the life of an innocent baby! IF she gets pregnant- she is not giving birth to a kitten- she is having a human being w a soul and a spirit. It is written G_d knit you together in your mother’s womb, and He knew you before you were formed, and children are a blessing of the Lord- and thou shalt not kill-in the TOrah. Lame excuses for abortion need to stop- G-d is the author of life and it is sacred.

Gerard,
At my shul we have a printed handout that we give to Christians or former Christians who attend adult education classes. The reason we do that is because so many come with the expectation that our views of theology and the Bible in particular match their own, i.e. Christianity without the Christ. But it’s not of course. Just a few days ago several people got fairly upset with our Rabbi for stating he believed in evolution.
In regard to perspectives on Torah, this is the text exactly as written in the guidebook (not my own opinion).
Orthodox: Of Divine origin, handed down to Moses on Mount Sinai.
Conservative: The revealed, but not the literal, word of G-d, as refracted through human transmission.
Reform: Written by human hands, with Divine inspiration; other viewpoints are acceptable.
Reconstructionist: The attempt to strive for self-fulfillment. Collection of writings by different people. Belief in Divine inspiration, not revelation.
As far as the rest of the books in the Tanakh, there is a pretty broad concensus that they were not written by G-d.
I hope this helps you understand why pointing to a psalm or a passage from the book of Job as the absolute word of G-d might be greeted with dismay by 90% of Jews.
May Peace, Health, and Joy Be With You

This is a response to Brad and BrokenSp1r17 , who have addressed me personally. If others wish to do so, please do it on my blog.
Brad- I am genuinely unsure what you mean by accusing me of assuming more on your part than I have reason to do. I made an initial playful rhetorical response, riffing off your initial opening line, and then went to address more substantive issues. I think I only discussed your arguments and your words.
What assumptions did I make that were wrong or inappropriate? If I did that, I apologize, but I do not see where I did.
BrokenSp1r17
I did not attack either Christianity or Judaism. I attacked ONE interpretative claim made by SOME Christians that the Bible condemns abortion as murder. It is arrogant of you to say that this criticism is an attack on Christianity, let alone Judaism. Many Christians do not agree with you. Who are you to presume to speak for them?
I gave a passage rather longer than the alternatives I have been deluged with. The alternatives are far more ambiguous in their meaning than the one I gave because mine was in the form of an explicit command on a point of law. I also responded to some of the alternatives that were thrown my way. So – I answered some of your side’s cites, and your side ignored mine, and then accuses me of “cherry picking.” Even if I picked only one “cherry,” I think it is much bigger than any of yours.
Why did I even get involved? Because you folks are trying to make your views, views hardly accepted by all Christians, let alone the rest of us, into law. Ramming it down our throats. In doing so you have also removed yourselves from rational debate with other citizens. When pushed, you go to your interpretation of scripture and say it trumps all other argument based on biology, neuroscience, or what have you. To even talk to you we HAVE to address scripture, you leave us no alternative.
I gave readers of my blog, who are mostly Pagans, a Biblical verse to respond to such stuff. Hopefully it would promote a little humility among the less than absolutely convinced. When all sides are open to CO-mmunication, good things can happen. When one side is, and the other side is closed, the results have often been horrendous in matters of politics and law.
I am a citizen as well as a Pagan. A peaceful politics is a wonderful thing. Christian dominated Europe only became capable of it on an enduring basis when people learned to tolerate religious differences, and not try and cram their views down other people’s throats. To use your terminology, it is “insanely rude” to try and do so.
Gus

Leah,
Thank you for that beautiful blessing and for clueing me in to the broad consensus on the origins of the Tanakh. We definitely have VERY different approaches to the same books.
Given the Pharisee Paul’s perspective in the first century and what you detailed for me here, was Paul’s perspective mainstream at the time? As a prize student of Rabbi Gamaliel, am I wrong to presume that his perspective was more widely accepted? If it was, when did the perspective change?
When The Men of the Great Assembly assembled the Tanakh, did they leave behind a commentary on how this was accomplished and what their beliefs were?
I ask because I have often wondered where our Scriptural paths diverged. Quite apart from whether one accepts Jesus as the Messiah, Jesus and his community of followers were all Jews. They continued to worship with the rest of the Community in Jerusalem until the fall of the Temple.
If you, or anyone reading this does have a sense of where and how our paths diverged, I’d love to know. I suspect the issue of who Jesus was/is to our respective Communities plays a role. If you think so, feel free to say what you believe, and let the chips fall where they may. I won’t get offended.
Again, thanks for getting back to me and for your gracious blessing. May Peace, Health, and Joy Be With You Also.
God Bless.

deebusybee wrote: “There without a doubt is absolutely no reason- medical or otherwise to perform partial birth abortion. WHen the birthing process has gone that far-it can be seconds till the child is fully delivered.”
Please look up the term ‘partial birth abortion’ as to the when and how. There is nothing there about doing in a baby as it is in a natural (I use this word cautiously) and ordinary labor. This is not about the mother changing her mind at the last minute, after eight or nine months of carrying the fetus. It is about a second trimester abortion; 4 to 6 months of gestation.
Partial birth abortion is referring to a method used to end a pregnancy – not about the mother or doctor or whomever deciding that this one should not continue at a point that it is considered a viable human baby.
The rest of your argument is merely anti-abortion. period. If that is your case, argue that position. Whether or not it is ‘partial birth’ or ‘intact dilation and extraction’ or RU486 or an IUD is irrelevant. They are all methods of ending a pregnancy. The when and the how are less important.

It always bothers me how the abortion issue is nearly always pitched into 2 camps. Pro-life, and Pro-choice.
I myself am pro-thought.

To Gerard Nadal:
I can’t speak as a jew about where these divisions took place, but as a Christian I can point you to the early division between Paul and to a lesser extent Peter and James the leader of the rest of the early church. James thought christianity was only for jews. Peter thought that it was okay to convert “God-fearers” (Helenists who dug on judaism, but didn’t wanna get snipped) and Paul thought it was cool to directly approach straight-up pagans. Jame’s jewish christianity essntially died with the Temple. Paul’s Christianity is what ALL present christians are descended from. We have a lot less grounding in jewish perspectives interpretations, etc, because non-apostolic early members weren’t jews.
By the way, good luck finding out whether anything anybody thought in that period was mainstream. There was a lot of contention among jewish factions as well. Was it the priests? They were sell-outs to the Romans. Was it the Pharisees? There were lots of them, but they had no real power in the Temple. The Essenes? Also powerless and isolated, but well respected. Some think they were actually the disenfranchised Zodokite priests. But I digress.
I guess my point is that both modern judaism and modern christianity grew into the religions we still practice AFTER the destruction of the temple. So it’s not easy to find any real point of demarkation.
Check out Rabbi Paul by Chilton for more historical context.

P.S. It’s all in Acts if’n ya don’t wanna read Chilton.
P.P.S. You can’t even know what Paul was referring to when he said “All Scripture is inspired by God” Was it the Hebrew scripture that was primarily orally learned and passed on? Was it the Septuigint (a Greek translation of the Hebrew Bible that had some extra books in it- that’s where the Apocrypha comes from) Was it Aramaic oral traditions? Was it the actual written Hebroew scriptures? As a diaspora jew, Paul would have been familiar with all of them (the Aramaic least of all, which conversely would have been Jesus’s probable fave.)
One thing we can definitely surmise- he wasn’t talking about his own letters. The idea of his words later being cannonized would probably never have occured to him. He probably never saw any of the Gospels in written form. I always find it amusing that this is THE scripture that is quoted to classify the bible as immutable, innerrant truth, when it’s not even talking about the same Bible people are defending. Besides- it says “God inspired” or “God-Breathed” which is exactly what the 2 most liberal jewish (uh…denominations? Factions? What do you guys call those divisions) attest to. All scripture is divenly inspired. That does not remove the need to interpret it. That’s what Paul wrote all those letters about- his interpretations of scripture.

P.P.P.S. I just read over what I wrote and it sounds all pompous and self-assured. Maybe a little combative. I apologize. I’m an irreverant person by nature, but I don’t want that to translate into disrespect. I do realize that you are not arguing and have not argued that scripture does not require interpretation. I just had a sort of a kind of an answer to your question, and I kinda got carried away. The kind and thoughtful interaction which preceded my comments is inspiring to me too, and I’d hate to think that my comments in any way diminished that. Blessing to one and all.

Oh, puh-lease. I completely agree with Rabbi Hirshfield. Perhaps abortion should be regarded at as ‘a case-by-case basis with a spiritual foundation’ instead of ‘a blanket crowd control device’. How is it a threat when a woman chooses to have an abortion? Because she has made an individual choice, which scares the be-jeebers out of those crowd control folks. I am a Christian, but I have strong Jewish interpretations. How can anyone know what G-d intended? He gave us a brain to interpret scriptures as individuals. By ignoring the possibility that other people MIGHT have different opinions and thoughts about an issue, I would be disrespecting G-d and his gift of intellect to me. A woman is responsible for the welfare of her child. This is why adoption is vulgar to be. Adoption is just like taking a helpless animal and dumping it by the side of the road, because you will never know if that animal which was sent to your care will be properly taken care of. As in the case of a child given up for adoption-will the child have enough to eat? Will the child be warm and safe? What if the adoptive parent die within a year and the child is sent to another home where he or she is sexually or physically abused? Good grief. Where is the personal responsibility? I really like that Rabbi Hirschfield refers to aborion as a ‘sacred act.’ Thanks for listening.

In the Tanakh – Deliberately spilling man’s seed on the ground was punished by death by the Almighty / in another case – causing the harm of an unborn infant was to be compensated by any amount the father requested. As a nurse I can testify that there are very few cases where the pregnancy endangers the mother’s life. it is usually the other way around – the mother is endangering the unborn’s life ..with drinking alcohol, smoking cigarettes, taking drugs, & staying with a dangerous father ( of the infant ).