What are your thoughts on Walton’s recent book ‘The Lost World of The Torah’? I have to admit that I am not entirely convinced, namely due to the fact that thousands of years worth of Jewish, and perhaps Christian tradition has missed Walton’s central thesis that the laws of the Torah were never meant to be literal moral commandments, but mere reflections of God’s character.
I have it on “to get” list, as I here it is one of his better books.
Regarding:
That is not far from Enn’s view that the Torah leaves ambiguity, and it is necessary to apply wisdom in it’s interpretation. Even commandments literally written in stone are fuzzy ( Though shalt not kill. Except in war, or when taking over someone’s country, or maybe your slave if you don’t kill them immediately.)
My problem is that for thousands of years of Jewish history, not a single Jew claimed the Torah was what Walton claimed it was, no one.
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That bothers me also when someone has an idea or interpretation that seems new or novel. Someone, perhaps Lewis said that most new ideas are old ideas that have been examined and found wanting. However, there is also something to the idea that God’s word is alive and can apply in new ways to changing times. Sorry I have not read Walton’s Torah book, so cannot comment specifically.
I don’t doubt in general that they may well have conceived the cosmos as analogous to a temple… I believe Walton’s error, if I may be so bold (In my most humble opinion) is that he takes that general observation, which may well have great merit, but then goes and derives all sort of specific inferences or deductions from that general principle. There may have been some sense in which they thought, and even spoke, of the moon and birds being in the same general category, the same general sphere…
But then I think in rather similar categories myself, and I imagine you likely do too… with no exaggeration whatsoever I can state that I, in fact, conceptualize the moon, Mars, Uranus, Polaris, and the Andromeda Galaxy as being in the same general category, the same basic “sphere.” I even have a term for it: “Outer Space.” There is the earth, there is our atmosphere, and there is “outer space.” And if someone generations from now ever read my casual thoughts or discussion on that, and then tried to claim that I thought that distant Galaxies “existed in the same space as earth’s moon,” and used that as evidence of my primitive unscientific mind, I would be dumbfounded. Just because a people use certain general categories of how they conceptualize things, There is no justification to make that kind of logical leap.
I mean, these ancient people didn’t even have TV. What else did they have to do after sunset besides look up at the moon? Do we really think these people so dull that, upon the countless nights, year after year, of time spent looking up into the sky, that no one ever noticed that clouds always pass in front of the moon, and never behind it?
You know there is a legitimate and straightforward reason (having nothing to do with trying to “harmonize” anything) that nearly every modern translation, including the hardly evangelical leaning NRSV, translates this as “you shall not murder”, no?
I fear I find it odd when someone quotes a passage like this from King James Version in order to show a tension, problem, or apparent contradiction, when said problem would be nonexistent if they quoted from any modern translation.
Unless you’re KJV-only, of course! 
That’s an excellent point, well worth bringing up. But I’m not sure it entirely solves the problem, unless there is some non-circular definition of the difference between killing and murder. Illegitimate? Not sanctioned by the state, or by society? But doesn’t that mean the state or society could accustom themselves to any kind of killing and say it’s not murder? Sanctioned by God in the Bible? What part, the Old Testament or the New?
Good point. And a great illustration of how language and meanings change with time, and how we need to use wisdom and be guided in what message God has for us in scripture, as it is an ancient record in a dead language.
I am fairly literate in Ancient astronomy, and I know that Aristotle believed the universe was split into the superlunary realm (the heavens) and the sublunary realm (the earth and air), so the birds must have dwelled ‘below’ the moon, not in the same sphere. Keep in mind that Aristotlian/Ptolemaic cosmology was taken for granted until Copernicus.
However, Walton is on somewhat stronger ground with his discussion on Ancient Cosmology, since many early Jews and Christians recognised the cosmic temple imagery, and some, in the Church of the East took it hyper-literally. His claim that biblical cosmology is functional, not materialistic, however, I am again skeptical of, again because of a lack of support in historical traditions
I don’t doubt in general that they may well have conceived the cosmos as analogous to a temple… I believe Walton’s error, if I may be so bold (In my most humble opinion) is that he takes that general observation, which may well have great merit, but then goes and derives all sort of specific inferences or deductions from that general principle. There may have been some sense in which they thought, and even spoke, of the moon and birds being in the same general category, the same general sphere…
But then I think in rather similar categories myself, and I imagine you likely do too… with no exaggeration whatsoever I can state that I, in fact, conceptualize the moon, Mars, Uranus, Polaris, and the Andromeda Galaxy as being in the same general category, the same basic “sphere.” I even have a term for it: “Outer Space.” There is the earth, there is our atmosphere, and there is “outer space.” And if someone generations from now ever read my casual thoughts or discussion on that, and then tried to claim that I thought that distant Galaxies “existed in the same space as earth’s moon,” and used that as evidence of my primitive unscientific mind, I would be dumbfounded. Just because a people use certain general categories of how they conceptualize things, There is no justification to make that kind of logical leap.
I mean, these ancient people didn’t even have TV. What else did they have to do after sunset besides look up at the moon? Do we really think these people so dull that, upon the countless nights, year after year, of time spent looking up into the sky, that no one ever noticed that clouds always pass in front of the moon, and never behind it?
Do remember though, that Ancient people believed the moon was a god who travelled across the sky in a chariot, not a lump of rock.