Torah and West Bank

We have a new commenter here that most of you may not have seen much of, because he has been browsing and commenting on some of the archival posts.  The way to a blogger's heart is through his archives, as the Talmud points out.

So. Luke Lea, who I have seen commenting over at the HBD sites, passes along this older article which I liked, The Torah and the West Bank. It touches not only on that tight subject, but the whole expanse of how we are to read Scripture, including competing texts that point in parallel, or even different directions.  I didn't know it was older until well into the essay.  Even after reading the name Meir Kahane I only thought "Really?  He's still around?  Who knew?"  Many paragraphs later I looked up at the top of the essay and saw that it comes from 1987.  That's the sort of important detail that aids understanding, eh?

Or not.  The general principles hold, and it provides the sort of conclusion I have an attraction to:  the moderates turn out to be the real keepers of the ancient understandings, while the supposed extreme fundamentalists turn out to be following some newer understanding that is old to them, but not actually from the foundation.