Modern philosophy's fascination with language - for the last century, its obsession- may illustrate the axiom that we love to talk about what we desire and we desire what we don't have. From the perspective of traditional Judaism, philosophic obsession with language reflects the modern philosopher's dislocation from those speech communities in which, alone, language has meaning. Natural speech communities, meaning those whose origins are either unknown or referred to an indefinite past, are characterized by inherent semiotic norms: rules for (...) transforming elements of the natural world into meaningful signs (morphology), for determining relations among those signs (syntax), for determining relations between signs and intended objects (semantics), and for determining relations between signs and the actual behavior which they recommend (what the American philosopher Charles Peirce calls pragmatics). For the traditional Jew, these norms are collected in what is called Torah: God's speech to Israel and the literary and behavioral history of Israel's attempts to interpret what that speech means. For this Jew, dislocation from the speech community of Israel would imply dislocation from Torah, and, thereby, from the possibility of meaningful speech and controlled behavior. Jewish philosophy is the attempt to find means of reintegrating dislocated persons into appropriate speech communities: in particular of reintegrating Jews into the speech community of Israel. On the following pages, I describe what modern philosophy looks like in terms set by Torah. Without apology, the Jewish philosopher first defines the non-problematic (the language of Torah), then the problematic (the enterprise of modern philosophy), then suggests means of placing the two in dialogue. (shrink)

Logic in the Torah is a ‘thematic compilation’ by Avi Sion. It collects in one volume essays that he has written on this subject in Judaic Logic (1995) and A Fortiori Logic (2013), in which traces of logic in the Torah and related religious documents (the Nakh, the Christian Bible, and the Koran and Hadiths) are identified and analyzed.

This research outlines the concept of resurrection from the ancient Hebrew Torah to Rabbinic Judaism and Christianity according to authoritative and linguistically accurate scriptures accompanied by English translations. Although some contemporary scholars are of the opinion that resurrection is vaguely portrayed in the Hebrew Torah, our research into the ancient texts offers quotes and provides proofs to the contrary. With the passing time, the concept of the resurrection grew even stronger and became one of the most important doctrines (...) of Judaism, enjoined as one of the thirteen articles of faith by Maimonides in the Mishnah. Imitative of the Jewish concept of God reaching out to save Israelites from gehenna, Jesus’ crucifixion and death for the sins of the world, resurrection on the third day, descend into the hells and subsequent rise into heavens became the essential foundation of Christianity, with Christ's resurrection as the impetus for the resurrection of those who believe in him. According to this Pauline theology, Christian faith is based upon the resurrection of Jesus and the hope for a life after death. (shrink)

In this article, I will argue against the Orthodox Jewish view that the Torah should be treated as an absolute authority. I begin with an explanation of what it means to treat something as an absolute authority. I then review examples of norms in the Torah that seem clearly immoral. Next, I explore reasons that people may have for accepting a person, text, or tradition as an absolute authority in general. I argue that none of these reasons can (...) justify absolute authority if the authority prescribes norms that we strongly judge to be immoral. I then respond to three objections to my argument. I end with a note explaining why, contrary to a popular trend, the narrative of the binding of Isaac is not a good place to start this discussion. (shrink)

All adherents of hard determinism face a number of steep challenges; those with traditional religious commitments face still further challenges. In this paper I treat one such further challenge. The challenge, in brief, is that given hard determinism, it’s very difficult to say why God couldn’t, and why God wouldn’t, just immediately and directly realize the final end of creation. I develop the challenge, and a number of solutions, through the work of the medieval Jewish philosopher, Hasdai Crescas. After arguing (...) that Crescas is indeed a hard determinist, and showing that he forecloses all the easy solutions to our challenge, I piece together from his work two solutions. They both start from the assumption that the purpose of creation is creaturely love of God. Each then lays down a constraint on proper love of God, which can be satisfied only if God demands of us to realize some state of affairs other than loving Him. (shrink)

This writing is a review of the 3rd chapter of Katherine E. Southwood's "Marriage by Capture in the Book of Judges".

Judaic Logic is an original inquiry into the forms of thought determining Jewish law and belief, from the impartial perspective of a logician. Judaic Logic attempts to honestly estimate the extent to which the logic employed within Judaism fits into the general norms, and whether it has any contributions to make to them. The author ranges far and wide in Jewish lore, finding clear evidence of both inductive and deductive reasoning in the Torah and other books of the Bible, (...) and analyzing the methodology of the Talmud and other Rabbinic literature by means of formal tools which make possible its objective evaluation with reference to scientific logic. The result is a highly innovative work – incisive and open, free of clichés or manipulation. Judaic Logic succeeds in translating vague and confusing interpretative principles and examples into formulas with the clarity and precision of Aristotelean syllogism. Among the positive outcomes, for logic in general, are a thorough listing, analysis and validation of the various forms of a-fortiori argument, as well as a clarification of dialectic logic. However, on the negative side, this demystification of Talmudic/Rabbinic modes of thought (hermeneutic and heuristic) reveals most of them to be, contrary to the boasts of orthodox commentators, far from deductive and certain. They are often, legitimately enough, inductive. But they are also often unnatural and arbitrary constructs, supported by unverifiable claims and fallacious techniques. Many other thought-processes, used but not noticed or discussed by the Rabbis, are identified in this treatise, and subjected to logical review. Various more or less explicit Rabbinic doctrines, which have logical significance, are also examined in it. In particular, this work includes a formal study of the ethical logic (deontology) found in Jewish law, to elicit both its universal aspects and its peculiarities. With regard to Biblical studies, one notable finding is an explicit formulation (which, however, the Rabbis failed to take note of and stress) of the principles of adduction in the Torah, written long before the acknowledgement of these principles in Western philosophy and their assimilation in a developed theory of knowledge. Another surprise is that, in contrast to Midrashic claims, the Tanakh (Jewish Bible) contains a lot more than ten instances of qal vachomer (a-fortiori) reasoning. In sum, Judaic Logic elucidates and evaluates the epistemological assumptions which have generated the Halakhah (Jewish religious jurisprudence) and allied doctrines. Traditional justifications, or rationalizations, concerning Judaic law and belief, are carefully dissected and weighed at the level of logical process and structure, without concern for content. This foundational approach, devoid of any critical or supportive bias, clears the way for a timely reassessment of orthodox Judaism (and incidentally, other religious systems, by means of analogies or contrasts). Judaic Logic ought, therefore, to be read by all Halakhists, as well as Bible and Talmud scholars and students; and also by everyone interested in the theory, practise and history of logic. (shrink)

A Fortiori Logic: Innovations, History and Assessments is a wide-ranging and in-depth study of a fortiori reasoning, comprising a great many new theoretical insights into such argument, a history of its use and discussion from antiquity to the present day, and critical analyses of the main attempts at its elucidation. Its purpose is nothing less than to lay the foundations for a new branch of logic and greatly develop it; and thus to once and for all dispel the many fallacious (...) ideas circulating regarding the nature of a fortiori reasoning. -/- The work is divided into three parts. The first part, Formalities, presents the author’s largely original theory of a fortiori argument, in all its forms and varieties. Its four (or eight) principal moods are analyzed in great detail and formally validated, and secondary moods are derived from them. A crescendo argument is distinguished from purely a fortiori argument, and similarly analyzed and validated. These argument forms are clearly distinguished from the pro rata and analogical forms of argument. Moreover, we examine the wide range of a fortiori argument; the possibilities of quantifying it; the formal interrelationships of its various moods; and their relationships to syllogistic and analogical reasoning. Although a fortiori argument is shown to be deductive, inductive forms of it are acknowledged and explained. Although a fortiori argument is essentially ontical in character, more specifically logical-epistemic and ethical-legal variants of it are acknowledged. -/- The second part of the work, Ancient and Medieval History, looks into use and discussion of a fortiori argument in Greece and Rome, in the Talmud, among post-Talmudic rabbis, and in Christian, Moslem, Chinese and Indian sources. Aristotle’s approach to a fortiori argument is described and evaluated. There is a thorough analysis of the Mishnaic qal vachomer argument, and a reassessment of the dayo principle relating to it, as well as of the Gemara’s later take on these topics. The valuable contribution, much later, by Moshe Chaim Luzzatto is duly acknowledged. Lists are drawn up of the use of a fortiori argument in the Jewish Bible, the Mishna, the works of Plato and Aristotle, the Christian Bible and the Koran; and the specific moods used are identified. Moreover, there is a pilot study of the use of a fortiori argument in the Gemara, with reference to Rodkinson’s partial edition of the Babylonian Talmud, setting detailed methodological guidelines for a fuller study. There is also a novel, detailed study of logic in general in the Torah. -/- The third part of the present work, Modern and Contemporary Authors, describes and evaluates the work of numerous (some thirty) recent contributors to a fortiori logic, as well as the articles on the subject in certain lexicons. Here, we discover that whereas a few authors in the last century or so made some significant contributions to the field, most of them shot woefully off-target in various ways. The work of each author, whether famous or unknown, is examined in detail in a dedicated chapter, or at least in a section; and his ideas on the subject are carefully weighed. The variety of theories that have been proposed is impressive, and stands witness to the complexity and elusiveness of the subject, and to the crying need for the present critical and integrative study. But whatever the intrinsic value of each work, it must be realized that even errors and lacunae are interesting because they teach us how not to proceed. -/- This book also contains, in a final appendix, some valuable contributions to general logic, including new analyses of symbolization and axiomatization, existential import, the tetralemma, the Liar paradox and the Russell paradox. (shrink)

The Torah lays out a rich idea of God’s governance in the Scroll of Esther: Circumstance lays the warp, but human choices weave the woof of destiny. God remains unseen. Delegation of agency, including human freedom, is implicit in the act of creation: God does not clutch efficacy jealously to his breast. Biblically, God acts through nature, making the elements his servitors. Miracles do not violate God’s covenant with nature. Maimonides, following rabbinic homilies, finds them embedded in that covenant. (...) Divine agency is clearest today in evolution and its special case, the emergence of autonomy and the rise of consciousness and personhood. (shrink)

This paper attempts to illuminate and interpret the contradictory portrait of God as both seen and unseen in the Torah. Thus Moses is commanded not to look on the face of God yet also praised for having spoken to God “face to face". We seek ways to reconcile the contradictory portraits of God through the use of the term “doubled-mindedness” in the theology of Jerome Gellman, in the logic of “thirdness” in C.S. Peirce’s semiotics, and in the use of (...) both particle and wave models in Einstein’s physics of light. The paper concludes by disusing the practical consequences of theological double-mindedness for the religious life and the philosophical meaning of redemption as the time when the contradiction of the unseen and seen God is resolved. (shrink)

I discuss the second of the three theses advanced by Anscombe in ‘Modern Moral Philosophy’. The focus is the nature of entities to which – if Anscombe’s diagnosis is correct – ought and cognate modals are assumed by modern moral philosophers to refer. I reconstruct the alternative account offered by Anscombe of viable and justified ‘Aristotelian’ modals – as contrasted with mysterious and unjustified ‘Kantian’ modals; I discuss the nature and status of ‘Aristotelian necessity’ to which such legitimate modals refer (...) to. I conclude with the claims that Anscombe’s account of modern moral philosophy is viciously parochial, reducing it to Oxford philosophy from the Thirties and Forties and its immediate antecedents; that her historical reconstruction is vitiated by lack of awareness of the existence of law-views of morality preceding Christian theology, artful anticipation of secularization in order to fit her picture of modern moral philosophy as the ‘day after’ of Christianity; that Aquinas’s and her own view of natural morality as made of rational moral judgments laws is incompatible with both her predilection for ‘divine law’ instead of plain down-to-earth ‘natural law’; that her strained reconstruction of a Christian-Jewish-Stoic view of morality as law promulgated by God has little to share with any reconstruction of the Biblical moral traditions meeting academic standard and in more detail there is no possible translation of Torah as Law; and that her criticism hits just targets from the old little British world she was familiar with, while leaving Kantian ethics unaffected. -/- . (shrink)

The use of modern medical technologies and interventions involves ethical and legal dilemmas which are yet to be solved. For the religious Jews the answer lies in Halakhah. The objective of this paper is to unscramble the difficult conundrum possessed by the halakhalic standing concerning the use of human embryonic cell for research. It also aims to take contemporary ethical issues arising from the use of technologies and medical advances made in human reproduction and study them from an abstract philosophical (...) perspective. Instead of providing any Jewish practical ruling the paper have tried to incite, stimulate and encourage philosophical thoughts about the issue through the intensive understanding of traditional Jewish thoughts. In this paper, an objective as well as a deep-rooted study has been adopted about the use of human embryos for research and the Jewish adoption of assisted reproductive technologies through the prism of the knowledge of Halakhah, Torah and Talmud. The paper finds that the embryo research sits at the crossroads of many halakhalic issues. Judaism adopts the belief that God has created man in his own image. The Jews not being dogmatic decipher “the image” of the creator as the ability to discern and reason. It follows that Judaism does not subscribe to the notion that tampering with nature is prohibited. To the Jews the mitzvah for procreation is so great that they are open to reason and adopt newer medical advancement in procreation. The Jewish laws are not only for engagement in intellectual exercise or academic pursuit but subscribe to a higher order of moral conduct. The Jewish approach is not situational but also casuistic in resolving conflicting medical issues. (shrink)

La libertà di pensiero è l'assunto principale della filosofia di Spinoza in età moderna. La posizione dei filosofi nei confronti dell'ortodossia religiosa è particolarmente delicata, dal momento che pone in questione l'autorità stessa delle Scritture e la verità della Torah e della Chiesa. In particolare Spinoza riflette nel Trattato Teologico Politico del nesso tra il libero pensiero e l'obbedienza del popolo Ebraico alla Legge Mosaica.

Both Christianity and Judaism have their basis in the Torah, the five central books of the Hebrew Bible that culminate in the revelation at Sinai. This very commonality, potentiality a source of mutual respect and concord, has played itself out, in the two thousand years since the advent of Christianity, in a disastrous rivalry of interpretation. Christians have interpreted their own religion in such a manner as to disallow the separate legitimacy of Judaism. Jews, in response, have often adopted (...) an insularity of focus at odds with the universality of God as Judaism itself understands it. I believe this rivalry has had a distorting effect upon both religions. The purpose of my essay is to search out some theological positions that both traditions might be able to accept, and that might permit each to adopt an affirmative, and informed, acceptance of the other. (shrink)

What would a Jewish process theology look like if it also adopted the a priori principles of rabbinic Judaism - among them, the authority of Torah given on Sinai, an historically particular revelation of divine instruction for a particular people, and the authority of the Oral Torah, an historically evolving hermeneutic, according to which that revelation becomes normative practice for communities of observant Jews? I trust this would not be a naturalism, since it would be a theology that (...) found its grammar or regulative logic in a textual hermeneutic rather than in an account of the orders of perception and imagination. It would not, for the same token, be an anti-naturalism, but rather a theology for which the distinction between natural and super- or non-natural was not definitional. For such a theology, for example, the world out there would belong to the order of creation (maaseh bereshit), rather than to "nature." This would mean that, since God creates through words, language (at least some sort of language) and world would be intimately connected rather than extrinsic phenomena, It would mean, furthermore, that for language to "know" the world would not be surprising and that something like a form of realism would not be out of the question, While it would presuppose the authority of divine speech and even of some human interpretations of it, this other-than natural theology would not, as naturalists might suppose, present a heteronomous conception of divine law, If the distinction nature/not nature would not be definitive for this theology, neither would those of autonomy/heteronomy, body/spirit, this world/other world, This theology would present its own variety of neutral monism; in this case, however, the undifferentiated plenum would be termed a plenum of undifferentiated signification (or pure semiosis), of which undifferentiated feeling (or pure experience) was an instance; "prehension" would be another term for interpretation, Max Kadushin was the first and, as far as I know, the only Jewish thinker to articulate a process theology in the service of what he considered the behavioral or halakhic authority of classical rabbinic literature. In this paper, I examine Kadushin's work as the foundation of a rabbinic text process theology, I assume, from the outset, that such a theology may complement a Jewish natural process theology and that a Jewish process theology, in general, would appear as a process of dialogue between textual- andnatural-process theologies. (shrink)

The article "Philosophia of Pure Mind: Declassification of the basic Biblical Mysteries" offers a tool for solving biblical mysteries — this is the philosophy of pure mind, which brings to life conceptual thinking with private and extremely general comparative concepts — concepts of practical mind and categories of pure mind. From these positions, an active study of the fundamental biblical mysteries is carried out, and not just their description or discussion. The investigation implies their comprehension related to the understanding of (...) reality, which we find in the first lines of the Torah, in which comparative concepts are represented by gradation (light and darkness, day and night) and orthogonal views, i.e. the relationship between two pairs of opposites (day and night — evening and morning): "And there was evening, and it was morning: day one." Thus, through the concepts of practical mind, the author reveals the general idea of the Creator, reflecting the harmony of nature in Words, each of which is a comparative concept of one kind or another. This is the key to uncovering the Biblical mysteries, namely: how the Word of God relates to the mystery of the fall, to the mysteries of the Book of Creation (Sefer Yetzira), the mystery of the Holy Trinity and the Sign of the Cross. Finally, how the proposed thinking helps to understand and gain a more complete understanding of the essence of these mysteries within the framework of one more general problem. Moreover, the root of all these problems, in my opinion, is that the mind thinking of people, given to them, as well as to all living things from nature through sensations, was supplemented by a person with a multi-valued reason thinking with classification concepts of natural language. In this connection, the natural human mind, through unambiguous comparative concepts, was supplanted by reason, apparently absent in animals. All of this unfolds against the background of three successive Reformations, which gave rise to three Abrahamic religions dating back to the patriarch of the Semitic tribes, Abraham. Whereas the beginning of these reforms is associated with the struggle of Moses for faith in the invisible God Yahweh, perceived as a civil war between the supporters of Moses as one part of the Jews with another part of them worshipping the God of their ancestors, the creator of all things — Ilohim. The article concludes with an understanding of the 4th Reformation, which aimed to create a modern synthetic religion with the help of AI. (shrink)

يصْدُرُ موسى ابن ميمون (Moïse Maïmonide) (1204 – 1138م) في مؤلّفه ''دَلَالةُ الحَائِرين'' عن رؤيةٍ نقديّةٍ؛ إذ همَّ إلى الأنظار المُكْتَسبة والتقليديّة حول التوراة، وقام بمراجعتها، محاولاً بناء معرفة منطقية عقلية لا تنفي النصّ المقدس وإنما تقرأه في ضوء نظرةٍ فلسفيةٍ ذات راهنية. وما دعاهُ إلى مثل ذلك، هو تتبع واقع النصّ المقدّس على عصره، وما آل إليه واقع التّفسير. إنّ قراءة، أبواب الكتاب وحروفه التي قسّمها إلى ثلاثة أقسام حسب ما ثقفت؛ العنصر الأول، وهو يناقش مفهوم الله الذي أشْكَلَ (...) على الفلاسفة وعلى رجال الدين، فما اتّفِقَ حوله قط، خصوصا في ما يتعلق بخصائص الذات وعلاقتها بالصّفات، مفهوم العالم وفيه مؤاخذات ومواقف كثيرة، لا يكاد يحدُّها حصرٌ، حيثُ أدْرَجَ ابن ميمون هذه المسألة بذكاء حادّ وفطنة يقظة، ليدافع عن فكرة حدوث العالم، و في الأخير مفهوم الإنسان. Maimonides, in his book “Guide for The Perplexed”, produces a critical vision. He has attributed to traditional views of the Torah and reviewed them, attempting to build a rational logical knowledge that does not deny the Torah but reads it in the light of a current philosophical view. What he called for, is to follow the reality of the Sacred texts on his time, and the reality of interpretation. Reading, the doors and letters of the book which he divided into three sections according to what I have learned; the first element, is the concept of God, which cause a problem for philosophers and theologians, what has never been agreed upon, especially with regard to the characteristics of the Godself and its relationship to qualities. the second concept is the World; many attitudes listed this question with sharp intelligence and vigilance, discussing the idea of the “Eternity World”, and at last the concept of Man. (shrink)

Religion-based AI chatbots serve religious practitioners by bringing them godly wisdom through technology. These bots reply to spiritual and worldly questions by drawing insights or citing verses from the Quran, the Bible, the Bhagavad Gita, the Torah, or other holy books. They answer religious and theological queries by claiming to offer historical contexts and providing guidance and counseling to their users. A criticism of these bots is that they may give inaccurate answers and proliferate bias by propagating homogenized versions (...) of the religions they represent. These “embodied spiritual machines” may likewise bear bias against women, their gender, and their societal roles. This paper crafts a concept intended to address this GPT issue by reimagining, modifying, and implementing a feminist approach to these chatbots. It examines the concepts and designs of these bots and how they address women-related questions. Along with the challenge of bringing gender and diversity-sensitive religious wisdom closer to the people through technology, the paper proposes a re-engineered model of a fair religion-based AI chatbot. (shrink)

G.E.M. Anscombe famously claimed that ‘the Hebrew-Christian ethic’ differs from consequentialist theories in its ability to ground the claim that killing the innocent is intrinsically wrong. According to Anscombe, this is owing to its legal character, rooted in the divine decrees of the Torah. Divine decrees confer a particular moral sense of ‘ought’ by which this and other act-types can be ‘wrong’ regardless of their consequences, she maintained. There is, of course, a potentially devastating counter-example. Within the Torah, (...) Abraham is apparently commanded by God to slaughter and set fire to his innocent son, Isaac. For attempting to do so, he is praised in the Biblical passage and by later Jewish and Christian commentators. This paper examines rabbinic and early Christian analyses of the story and finds that it was not unambiguously held by these interpreters that God absolutely prohibits killing the innocent, until the time of Augustine, whose position on the story evolved over time. (shrink)

Asaf Halet Çelebi, who is a poet interested in Eastern religions. This is due to reach the family atmosphere, the love to know different languages and mysticism. What makes him different aspects of Turkish literature, the history of religions is the masterful use of motifs in his poems. Religions, mythology, mysticism and music information about the poet, his poetry reflects this versatility. Sound in poetry, harmony, knowledge, symbols, and images of compliance on this issue reveals the talent of the poet. (...) He uses motifs in poetry from Ancient Egypt, Buddhism, Judaism, Christianity and Islam traditions. This is particularly highlighted in poems motifs identified with religious traditions. In this context, the Tafnit, Bodhisattva, Sidharta, Mâra, Torah, Abraham, Solomon, the Church of Christ, the Trinity concepts are the motives of the history of religions of the poet's poems aesthetic and depth to you to use. Çelebi focuses more on Buddhism. For this reason, he wrote a work called According to Pali texts Budha Gotama. Here he focuses on the Buddha's life story and some Buddhist texts. This study entrated on the religious motifs of a poet who is a historian of religions. In this context, priority has been given to the poetry found associated with religious motifs. In this article, it is tried to explain what these motifs in his poems mean in terms of the history of religions. -/- . (shrink)

There is only one and unique substance in existence, a substance that is infinite, self-caused, and eternal. This substance is the spatio-temporal world. But it is also God, says Baruch Spinoza, the Sephardi Jew from Amsterdam excommunicated by the Talmud Torah congregation.

This is part of a proposed monograph on the Law, and jurisprudence and is to be used for understanding punishment through wergild to the early Modern and to even the post-modern. The paper is just a draft and in the future will be published as a monograph.

"Noah and the Olive Branch" by Luis Herrera explores the profound symbolism of the olive branch in the context of human morality and existential renewal. Drawing on the biblical narrative of Noah's Ark, Herrera delves into a metaphor for peace, reconciliation, and the restoration of harmony between humanity and the natural world. The work interprets the olive branch not merely as a sign of the flood's end, but as a deeper emblem of ethical rebirth, signifying the opportunity for humanity to (...) reconstruct a more just and compassionate world after calamity. -/- Through a philosophical lens, Herrera examines the duality of destruction and creation, positing that potential for moral and spiritual growth follows great trials. The text questions the nature of divine justice and human responsibility, suggesting a call for ongoing ethical vigilance in a world perpetually on the brink of self-destruction. -/- It is a parable for man's quest for connection and reconciliation with the divine, in a violent world filled with chaos, anarchy and the antinomian pursuit of hedonistic ideals. Herrera's work resonates with contemporary concerns about cultural degradation and social fragmentation, urging a re-evaluation of our relationship with God and each other. The olive branch, in this interpretation, becomes a timeless symbol of hope, resilience, and the enduring quest for a harmonious existence. (shrink)

When we look at the Qur'an, we see that wrong information is constantly given about the world and the universe. The Qur'an's description of the world, the solar system and the universe is primitive and absurd when compared with today's knowledge. Therefore, this issue is one of the most important proofs that the Qur'an does not come from God.