Tanach Thoughts

May this post be in merit of our soldiers, a swift return of the hostages and a speedy recovery for Dror Yisrael ben Rut Miriam (דרור ישראל בן רות מרים). Once I read Yirmiyahu in a single sitting. It took a few hours, to be sure, but I studied it all during one seder erev (evening study period) at yeshiva. It was during the three weeks and I had tears in my eyes part of the time. I had been in the middle of writing an essay comparing Plato's writings with those of Yirmiyahu because of an old tradition that Yirmiyahu met Plato and perhaps even taught him. After going through some Platonic texts, as well as gathering as much info on their purported relationship as I could, I turned to studying Yirmiyahu. And so I read it all. And I was deeply immersed and moved. I found myself deeply relating to Yirmiyahu's difficult life. To this day I feel a deep connection to his character. Two verses in particular caught my eye that night, 9:22-23 : " כֹּה אָמַר ה' אַל יִתְהַלֵּל חָכ...

On this blog I've discussed a couple of times the Exodus and archeology (see here and here ). Recently, I have been thinking to myself that perhaps the lack of hard evidence means something. True, there's a loose collection of findings (such as the Ipuwer Papyrus or the Book of Gates (see here )) that many Bible-believers hold to be evidence of the Exodus, but since they have all been dismissed by academic scholars in a manner that has lulled the world into a belief that there is zero evidence for the Exodus, it is difficult to consider them hard evidence. Not impossible, just difficult. Which led me to think that perhaps there's a reason for us not having found hard evidence for the Exodus, i.e., something that will completely knock the socks off of academia, and that is that the Exodus stands as a challenge to our generation: Will you believe or will you deny? Look at it this way: Although we have not yet found evidence for portions of the Tanach, it is no longer (compa...