On the Difference Between the Ten and the Rest.

I am fortunate enough to count Dr Ruairidh Boid as a dear friend and he has been generous enough to write an addendum to my last post on Marqe. Everyone should pay careful note to what he says. He is twice as smart as I am. People like him don't waste their times writing blogs. He writes academic articles. Here is his development of what I said in the last post:

Yes, Mårqe DOES say the Ten Utterances were different in KIND from the rest of the commandments; but he equally well says the rest were IN the ten. The hymn does NOT say the rest were made up by Moses: it says ONLY HE COULD SEE THEM. Thus you could say that Mårqe allows for the dissolution of the laws other than the Ten, but does it in such a way that only those in the know will see what he has said.

USE THE ISLAMIC SOLUTION, which is also the Kabbalistic solution. Moses COULD HAVE written different MANIFESTATIONS of what was in the ten, making DIFFERENT RULES about permitted and forbidden.

Or in Islamic terms: There is one Mother of the Book Umm al-Kitâb. Manifesting from this Book, the Torah and the Gospel say the drinking of wine is not only permitted, but obligatory. (Although both Torah and Gospel allow unfermented grape juice instead of wine, both explicitly say alcohol in the form of wine is permitted). The Koran, read and proclaimed from the same Heavenly Book, does not command the drinking of either wine or unfermented grape juice. It also sets a restriction on the drinking of alcohol. The word used for alcohol is a hapax legomenon (occurs only here). There are five Sunni interpretations. (a) No alcohol at all at all; (b) no wine from grapes; (c) no fermented palm juice; (d) no drinking beer or wine, but distilled spirits are all right; (e) no drinking too much alcohol, but a bit is all right. Perhaps Muḥammad could see all five at once. According to the Torah in the Rabbinic tradition (but not Karaite), an ordinary man can have two wives at once and a king can have eighteen; according to the Gospel, a man can have only one wife at a time; according to the Koran, four, though with explicit restrictions. Abraham meritoriously married his half-sister. So did Isaac. Jacob meritoriously was married two sisters at the same time. This was under the covenant of either Noah or Abraham or both. Under the Torah, none of this can be done. One MANIFESTATION of the Heavenly Wisdom was the Ten Utterances, but the revelations to Adam and Eve, and then to Noah, were valid in their time (and still valid for mankind). The Torah was accepted by some. The Torah is a new MANIFESTATION consisting of the Ten Utterances. The Ten Utterances COULD THEMSELVES HAVE MANIFESTED in ANY set of rules, but Moses took the MANIFESTATION OF THE TEN UTTERANCES that he thought was NEEDED. Maimonides said it would have been better if the laws of the sacrificial service had not been given; but Moses knew that if the Israelites were not given a set of rituals that emanated from the Torah, they would make a set of sacrifices up that did not emanate from the Torah. Notice that Maimonides leaves the inevitable conclusion that NOT having the sacrificial system was in the original revelation as well, and that NOT having it is the manifestation from 70 AD and on forever. This is the orthodox Rabbanite and Karaite position: expecting a return of the sacrificial cult is THEOLOGICAL ERROR, and trying to bring it about is IMPIOUS and a sign of HERESY or even APOSTASY.

Thus the חרדים Haredim, loony as they might be, are dead right in rejecting both religious and secular Zionism as impious and a NEW heresy. To any Rabbi of the past this would have been obvious. It is a measure of the signs of death of the religion that only the Haredim and a few explicitly non-religious people can see this now, when once it was basic doctrine. I will spell out the steps another time if needed. Thus also the Evangelical Fundamentalists of the USA have invented what was thought to be impossible, a NEW HERESY. It is called Christian Zionism.

Where I live it is not unusual for first cousins to marry. The Anglican Church accommodates itself. In Pommyland (but not Scotland) the Anglican Church tries to impose rules. Nowhere do Presbyterians think there is anything remarkable.