re: #48 Obdicut

But Christians really, really do have the old testament available to them, and they really, really do interpret it without looking to the oral law. So in actual practice, what is written there actually does get used in that fashion.

They have their translation in the absence of the oral law with whatever interpretations on the translated written text they have. They most emphatically do not have a Tanakh.

I am not making a vule judgement here. However, the King James OT should be considered as a totally different work. I see it with the same respect I would give the Koran or the Rig Veda. It is someone else’s, entirely different, holy book. As to which holy books you beieve or don’t believe it is up to you and I firmly believe that all good poelpe can get along no matter what they believe. However as a point of fact, the differences between King James in translation, or any translation, in the absence of the oral law, fitted with a new interpretation, that fills in all the things the Oral law used to, is a totally different text from the start. The words in it mean totally different things. As such it truly is as far from being the Torah as the Koran is - however much both are descended from Torah.