>>It is my experience that many conservative Christians are taught "what the Bible says" and no mention is made of interpretation. In fact, I've even had some claim that they don't interpret the Bible, they believe what it says. «g»<

It would help if they would translate the Five Books of Moses accurately from the Hebrew. I do know enough Hebrew to know that there are mistakes.<

The mistakes are more than just mistranslations. There are mistakes due to the way they divided up the sentences and expressions. These weren't always honest mistakes either. They were made on purpose to mislead the ignorant and uneducated.

Irv

>>They may know Hebrew better than I but that doesn't mean they uderstand it any better than do our great Jerwish Sages who have been studying the Torah for at least a 1,000 years longer.<<

Irrelevant.  Most of the scholars who do Bible translations have spent most of their adult lives studying the language and they also have the benefit the thinking of your great Jewish sages. 

>> And beside the studying these Jewish sages have lived it far longer than any Xtian ever could have. Indeed 99 44/100% of the great Jewish Sages got it frm their mother's milk. No Xtian could ever say that or prove it even if his existence wasn't subject to doubt.<<

First of all living it does not make a good translator.   Only study can do that. You live it but you admit your knowledge is not as good as that of some Christian scholoars.  Some of our sages are converted Jews who also got it from their mothers milk. Again, getting it from one who is not an expert in the language , will not guarentee understanding the languge.  Many who got if from their mothers do not even speak the language.

k

Irrelevant.  Most of the scholars who do Bible translations have spent most of their adult lives studying the language and they also have the benefit the thinking of your great Jewish sages.    <<

Among the most arrogant, insulting and ultimately dangerous aspects of Christianity is the uniquely Christian view that Jews do not know how to interpret, nor do they understand, their own material.  Bishop John Shelby Spong has made this point very strongly in "Rescuing the Bible from Fundamentalism" and in "Liberating the Gospels" Reading the Bible with Jewish Eyes."

The ideas, such as they are, that you routinely express as the perfect examples of such arrogance and would be merely insulting and antisemitic were they not the basis for Christian persecution of Jews over the centuries.  One would hope that such thinking would be gone in the 21st century, but your example demonstrates that such pernicious, dangerous and ignorant ideas about Judaism are thriving among the self-proclaimed theocrats and self-appointed moralists who pretend to know what should or should not be religious dogma.

»»   It is not irrelevant. They may have spent their lives learning the language but they have never lived the Torah. Aand that makes them less capable of understanding anything written or stated by our Sages who bith knew the language better than anyone else and how the Torah says one should live his or her life. So you can become and expert in Biblical Hebrew. But that will not make any kind of an expert in anything the Torah requires or even suggests without havig lived the Torah way for even 1 day or even an hour.<

>>It is not irrelevant. They may have spent their lives learning the language but they have never lived the Torah.<<

Livin the Torah is irrelevant to  understand it.  That come only from study and many Jews who live the Torah have not studied it an do not have a good understanding of it.

>> Aand that makes them less capable of understanding anything written or stated by our Sages who bith knew the language better than anyone else and how the Torah says one should live his or her life. So you can become and expert in Biblical Hebrew. But that will not make any kind of an expert in anything the Torah requires or even suggests without havig lived the Torah way for even 1 day or even an hour. <<

That is nonsense.  Not only studying but intense study is the only thing that will help any one understand anything. 

>>So how do you preserve the Sabbath and keep it Holy as it is defined in the Torah? <<

By remembering what God has done for me as described in the Torah---He has sanctified me and freed me from the bondage of the world.  I no longer WORK for my sanctification or for my spiritual freedom.  I remember this every day, not one day a week and that is what keeps it holy.

k

>>It is not irrelevant. They may have spent their lives learning the language but they have never lived the Torah.<

Living the Torah is irrelevant to  understand it.  That come only from study and many Jews who live the Torah have not studied it an do not have a good understanding of it.<

If you never got married how could you understand what married life is like?

>> And that makes them less capable of understanding anything written or stated by our Sages who bith knew the language better than anyone else and how the Torah says one should live his or her life. So you can become and expert in Biblical Hebrew. But that will not make any kind of an expert in anything the Torah requires or even suggests without havig lived the Torah way for even 1 day or even an hour. <

That is nonsense.  Not only studying but intense study is the only thing that will help any one understand anything. <

It is non-sense and you know it. Do you what ids like to be a Muslim? Do you know what it is like to be a Taoist? You don't and you can't possibly know it without having lived it. So stop trying to make stuff up.

>>So how do you preserve the Sabbath and keep it Holy as it is defined in the Torah? <

By remembering what God has done for me as described in the Torah---He has sanctified me and freed me from the bondage of the world.  I no longer WORK for my sanctification or for my spiritual freedom.  I remember this every day, not one day a week and that is what keeps it holy.<

Aren't we getting a little full of ourself here? One can never reach the point where one no longer has to work at waht we believe. XXXXXXXXXXXXXX

Irv

>>Interesting how you believe that to be true of Jewish scripture, but not of Christian scripture. <<

In Christsianity there is no such thing as Jewish Scripture and Christian Scripture.  There is only Scripture.

>>  Have you not said numerous times that many of us can never understand the Bible because we're not believers?<<

That is what the Bible says(I Cor 2:14).  It is based on the fact that only God's Holy Spirit can reveal spiritual truth to anyone, including Christians and non-believers do not have the indwelling of the Holy Spirit.

That does not mean non-belivers can't understand the basic, literal  meaning of a verse.  Certainly anyone with even a 8th grade reading comprehension can udnderstand what "Jesus died and rose on the third day" means.  However because they don't believe it to be true, they can't understand the spiritual truth(s) it represents.

k