@menelion

Jewish scholarship is therefore less about "What is the story saying" than it is about a critical analysis of the text. So much of it is about why a specific word is placed at a specific spot.

From there it's deep analysis of what's *not* in the text. Also Jewish biblical scholarship involves interpretation and commentary on interpretation and commentary, comparing, contrasting and building on the various previous works.

Jewish children begin this kind of analysis fairly young and it's part of Jewish thinking generally, which has a lot of looking for loopholes, missing parts, etc. Constructive argument is deeply part of Jewish culture. Debate and disagreement is almost a love language amongst Jews. Two Jews, three opinions isn't just a saying... it's really how Jews think.

My favorite book about this that isn't biblical in nature is The Rabbi's Cat, but since it's a comic book, I'm really not sure how you'd be able to read it?
@acarson do you have ideas here?

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@menelion

Let me offer you an example of what I mean about words and missing words.

In Genesis God is creating the world, but the wording in this creation is important. He doesn't make the world with hands, rather he speaks the world into being.

When God asks for there to be "fruit trees", it says "and there we trees bearing fruit".

Rashi notes this. "Fruit trees" and "trees bearing fruit". If you assume the bible is not missing words or mincing words, you must assume that these word choices are deliberate. Well, Fruit Trees and "Trees bearing fruit" aren't the same thing. So Rashi speculates on what a "fruit tree" might be. A whole tree that's an apple, you can bite right into it. But that's not what the Earth made.... So the Earth was disobedient, or at least it didn't follow the instructions exactly. The Earth, like man, has will, and it's strayed from God's vision, essentially sinning.

And when later Adam and Eve are kicked out of Eden, Rashi references this...

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@acarson

@menelion

Rashi commentary is also highly non-linear. It references things in the past, in the future, in other places, word choices, etc.

But you can see just this tiny thing... something most non-Jews pass by, this becomes a whole area of interpretation and consideration for a Jewish scholar, and this is what Jewish children who are brought up religiously begin to read when they're young. Their understanding of the bible is not just as a text, but as a starting point for critical thinking- for taking something apart word by word.

I think some Christians might even find this to be a bit blasphemous, but it's par for the course for Jews.

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@acarson

@menelion @technocounselor I asked this to Truthly, an AI grounded in Catholic teaching, and here is a part of its response.

What About the Genetics?
Here is where the question gets especially interesting. The concern about genetic deformities from close-relative reproduction is real — but it is real today because of the accumulation of genetic mutations over thousands of generations.

Inbreeding depression — the reduced fitness of offspring from mating between close relatives — is in general mainly caused by the unmasking of recessive deleterious alleles in homozygous genotypes. In other words, harmful traits emerge when two copies of a damaged gene are inherited from both parents. But that can only happen if those damaged genes already exist in the gene pool.

Mutations accumulate and increase the frequency of potentially lethal genes in the human gene pool — the "genetic load" — and mutations will continue to accumulate until a new equilibrium is reached.

Here is the key insight: at the beginning of humanity, genetic mutations had barely begun to accumulate. Adam and Eve, created by God in a state of original integrity, would have had near-perfect genetic material. Their children, being only one generation removed from this original purity, would have carried very few harmful recessive mutations. With so few defective genes in the pool, the risk of two siblings passing on matching harmful recessives to their children was extraordinarily low — essentially negligible.

As generations passed and mutations slowly accumulated across the human population, the risk of harmful genetic expression through close-relative unions grew proportionally. This is precisely why God, in His providence, later forbade such unions — not because they were always wrong, but because they became increasingly dangerous and socially disordering.

@menelion It's one of those two Jews three opinions things, but yes there are some sources/commentaries that basically say there are/were other humans and that the Adam Eve story, and the rest of the creation story for that matter, isn't meant to be taken literally. And I don't mean modern sources. Rabbi Shlomo Yitzchaki, (Rashi), for example, says in his commentary on the first chapters of Genesis that if you really think God created everything in literal six literal 24-hour days and the like that you're a moron and no one should listen to you on anything else. I'm paraphrasing, but Rashi's commentary is pretty much foundational to Torah study and dates from the 11th century. See also: That line in the movie Dogma about going through five Adams before getting it right. That's a reference to more than one Jewish source on the subject. Hope this helps.

@acarson "Two Jews three opinions", I love it! Maybe because it's the same with Ukrainians (and with French, to be honest, too).

@menelion

The core here is understanding how Jewish scholars think about the texts differently than Christians.

Jews build their entire year based on the stories of the Bible. The calendar revolves around them, we say them in synagogue as part of of weekly reading, and some holidays involve re-telling the stories as well, so Jews traditionally are already highly familiar with the events in the bible. Many expressions and sayings in Hebrew are grounded in the bible as well.

It's been our Memes for thousands of years.

Jewish interpretations are also carrying our existing interpretations. Commentary plays an important role in Jewish thinking which is different than Christian thinking, which is largely about getting the information out to people.

Remember that for most of Christian history, most people weren't literate, where it was expected that *at least* Jewish men were, and often Jewish women as well.

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@acarson

@serge @acarson Exactly, that's why I love conversing and discussing with Jews, religious or not. English language is poorer than Slavic languages in this case, btw, we have two words for Jew/Jewish person: one for the religion (basically analog to Judaist), and another for the ethnicity. Anyway, it's super interesting that, being monotheistic, you are allowed and even encouraged to question everything, hence your minds are more flexible and more open for critical thinking.