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What’S So Funny About Arguing With God? A Case For Playful Argumentation From Jewish Literature., Don Waisanen, Hershey H. Friedman, Linda Weiser Freidman
What’S So Funny About Arguing With God? A Case For Playful Argumentation From Jewish Literature., Don Waisanen, Hershey H. Friedman, Linda Weiser Freidman
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In this paper, we show that God is portrayed in the Hebrew Bible and in the Rabbinic literature—some of the very Hebrew texts that have influenced the three major world religions of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam—as One who can be argued with and even changes his mind. Contrary to fundamentalist positions, in the Hebrew Bible and other Jewish texts God is omniscient but enjoys good, playful argumentation, broadening the possibilities for reasoning and reasonability. Arguing with God has also had a profound influence upon Jewish humor, demonstrating that humans can joke with God. More specifically, we find in Jewish literature …