User:Slrubenstein/The box on the shelf in the closet

A Good Friend
Slrub, I consider you a very, good friend! You are very moderate and tolerant in making your point on this website. Considering your work, and what I would consider your need for some recognition I award you the following:

Seconding the Star; ont the cultural background
I'm jealous that David got to award the Barnstar first. I second it!

I've added my opinion at the article, but just so you know personally that I like your work there. I think it should be limited to just life in first century Palestine, however. We have other articles to take up critical views and ... critical views of critical views! 8-) I'd also like to remove alot of the clutter of info boxes, but if you all like it, I'll live with it.

In short, I think the article should only be about Jesus, Christianity, Judaism past 40 AD/CE only tangentally. Can't we just draw a picture of his world? --CTSWyneken 13:10, 4 June 2006 (UTC)


 * I appreciate your comments. I think they do summarize what we're up against any time we try to talk about Judaism and Christianity. I think your description of the relationship between the two traditions is close to my view. We are in cousin religions which share their origins in the Hebrew faith of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Moses, David and the Prophets. As such, we share a heritage. (In fact, one of the classes at our Lutheran Concordia University Wisconsin's Adult ed program is called "Hebrew Heritage.") Where we differ is on who God is and which is most faithful to that heritage.


 * Because I count you as a friend, I feel we can be honest with each other without taking offense. My guess is that you would find the Christian view of God's triune nature as a false one, especially because it views Jesus as God. I view the Rabbinic view of God to be false precisely because it is not Triune. I do not expect that either of us will likely convince the other to change these views.


 * Yet, like the New York God Squad of a Rabbi and a Catholic priest, that does not mean we cannot understand and appreciate each other.


 * On the articles involving Jesus, then, the difficulty is in keeping the deep emotions involved in all of this from allowing us to produce a good set of helpful pieces. I think the decision to maintain a series of separate articles is wise, but I think we need to keep the topics focused and avoid overlapping us much as possible. In the current case, I think we do need an article on the background of the life of Jesus. I think we need it to focus on a narrower range of subject, though.


 * I hope this makes some sense. I think I ramble. --CTSWyneken 14:16, 4 June 2006 (UTC)