Jon D. Levenson thinks Yonatan Adler's thesis is very learned but problematic because Pentateuchal law is prescriptive and pre-Hellenistic

 Much more problematic, however, is Adler’s claim that before the Hellenistic period biblical law was perceived as descriptive and iconic, rather than prescriptive and to be obeyed by individuals. This misses the fact that the law collections in the Pentateuch appear within a framework of covenant, with their particular norms thus revalorized as covenantal stipulations. And covenantal stipulations are very much intended to be obeyed.

Thus, Deuteronomy, the book most imbued with the conceptions and idioms of covenant, time and again insists that its laws be carefully practiced and continually kept in mind. It promises blessings to those who heed that counsel and curses to those who violate it, proving faithless to the covenant. “For the word is very close to you,” reads the conclusion to one of its most memorable exhortations, “in your mouth and in your heart to practice it” (Deuteronomy 30:14). This was written long before anyone ever heard of Ptolemy II or the Hasmoneans.

More.

Like brute beasts we travel with the herd

 Like brute beasts we travel with the herd, and are never so solicitous for the rightness of the way, as for the number or figure of our company.

-- John Rogers (1679-1729)

The good we love for its own sake we obey

 It is not imaginable that men will be brought to obey what they cannot esteem.

 

-- Robert South

There is a kind of good we love both for its own sake and for its consequences.

-- Plato, Republic II, 357b,c

Finally, some really good reporting on how American Puritanism became a feature of the political left

 . . . according to Rothman . . . there is “a popular mythology that long ago outlived its usefulness,” he said in a direct Twitter message to Tablet, which “postulates that the vestiges of prudish American puritanism are exclusive to the political right.” Instead, he said, “with the policing and enforcement of moral frameworks again becoming a feature of the left, America’s vestigial puritanism is assuming a form that is far more historically familiar.” ...

“Today,” Rothman said in his message to Tablet, “as the left gravitates away from liberalism and toward progressivism, they are assuming many of progressivism’s conceits—chief among them, a messianic utopianism that views everything, even life’s most banal pleasures, through the prism of political activism.”

More.

The many are trusting, lazy-minded followers

 Most take things upon trust, and misemploy their assent by lazily enslaving their minds to the dictates of others.

-- John Locke

Michael Gerson has died

 

“Fate may do what it wants,” he said. “But this much is settled. In our right minds, we know that love is at the heart of all things."     

Obituary here.

You shall know them by their shrugging

 There is a kind of sluggish resignation, as well as poorness and degeneracy of spirit, in a state of slavery.

-- Joseph Addison

The road to ruin

 The ruin of a state is generally preceded by an universal degeneracy of manners, and contempt of religion, which is entirely our case at present.

-- Jonathan Swift

Presbyterian Church in America (PCA) this summer rejected by 75% a statement condemning political violence

Reported here :

Elders on the debate floor objected to the resolution. One elder speaking against the statement said that without political violence, the Protestant Reformation and American Revolution wouldn’t have happened. “We’d all still be genuflecting and using holy water,” he said. 

The squeamish, elitist minority claims in response that “It’s not uncommon for evangelicals to not be too concerned whether there is historical pedigree to something they think is biblical.”

Yeah right, there's no historical pedigree WHATSOEVER, lol:  

Rebellion to tyrants is obedience to God.

Rebellion to tyrants is obedience to God.

Yeah, it's called The New Testament, but the rabbi has his own book to sell

 

What Jews Don't Know About Christianity Could Fill a Book

Jeffrey Salkin, RNS