um..no offense but there are way more than 14 generations form adam to david.... from adam to moses is exactly 26 generations.... and then i'd have to look it up but id guess another 4-8 gens...so guess 30 or so... but not 14, no way.
You are absolutely correct, I was kind of winging it from memory. It's been 10 years since I took New Testament so most of the information is a little hazy. What I was actually alluding to was in Mathew 1:17 "So all the generations from Abraham to David are fourteen generations; and from David until the carrying away into Babylon are fourteen generations; and from the carrying away into Babylon unto Christ are fourteen generations."
I believe Mathew was written for the Jewish community to show them that Jesus of Nazareth had fulfilled the Messianic (sp?) prophecies, hence the 14 generational thing.
I understand that you don't don't read the New Testament, in fact you probably don't like the term Old Testament. I was just using this as an example of the numerology in the Bible.
as for 7 being an important number -- yes, bc its tied to the seventh day of sabbath, 7 year of shemittah [agricultural rest] and 7x7 yrs=jubilee -rest again...all the rest is a way of admitting that there is a G-d... so is there a tie between resting and the idea of sabbath and impure animals? i dont see it....do you?
Seven is just a holy number, period. That its applied to rest does not preclude it from being applied to other things, IMO. Oh, and the seven good deeds seven times, can't find it. Must be a figment of my over imaginative mind. I did however type in "seven times" as a keyword search on an online bible sight and found numerous passages with that phrase in it. Most of them do not relate to the Sabbath or Jubilee, a lot of them from the Torah.
as for the diea of 'covering' miraceles- if a perosn sees a direct miracle - ie G-d talks to you -how can you then even have to struggle to search and find belief in G-d? theres no choice any mroe..so the point of life in a sens eis over....in a sense theres no test.... so G-d hides it in a way so that man, who rationalisez everything, will try to rationalize it....and nowhe must choose between being logical or rationalizing it away....the choice, the test is kept....
I understand your logic, but it still seems selective when looking at events in Jewish history, which you hint at here . . .
[1] the exxodus story and generation -ther ethe point was to instill into one generation so many open miracles to utterly convince the jews thatt hre is G-d. From this one moment [or 40 yr moment of living in amiracle -how can 3,000,000 people survive ina desert for 40 yrs?] they carrid to the world the firm belief in G-d, so much so that in our time we need whole webstire to fight against this belief, since its so ingrained.... so that generation did its job well....but even they had a free willl...the choice of whether to obey....thats why their punishemnts are worse for smaller infracirons.. the more you now G-d, the closer you are, the more he expects from you....
My memory is a little hazy, but didn't the Sun stop for Joshua's army? I think obvious miracles happened after the wandering in the dessert. I could be wrong, correct me if I am.
jewishj though has it that all of existnece is in fact a miracle, but were so used to everythin that it becomes'noraml' why should our planet be in 'just' the right orbit to sustain life..not too close to the sun...not too far..and we just happen to have th eatmosphere we need.and the water... and the rain cycles...etc etc etc..right? a dead seed when given water and dunlight all of a sudden lives....a miracle..no its "nature"...its 'supposed' to be that way...think about it...yet we find no other life anywhere in the universe..and im no expert [hey experts..please correct me i want to leanr] but i dont think theyve found any planet or sattelite anywhere as conducive to life as ours...mars? europa? venus..ccrushing pressure, killer gases....
Interesting hypothesis, and I think it is covered on another recent thread, so I will be brief. If life were found off of Earth, what would this mean to your interpretation of the Torah or Jewish interpretations of life? It's an interesting topic, if just for debate.
It's great that you are one this site, it gets a little bland with all of the christian fundamentalists sometimes. Hope you post more. BTW, I hope I didn't offend you in anyway, I'm more curious than judgmental.