John W McGinley – författare

Come and explore -- with an idiosyncratically odd interpreter of things Jewish -- a special brief moment in the history of Jewish letters. One is speaking of roughly 75 CE to roughly 95 CE. Come and explore what was birthed in that time period. Come and explore how what was birthed in that time period came to be rejected and suppressed on the day of the coiled snake. Come and explore how, miraculously, what was rejected and suppressed ended up being re-inscribed in the final redaction of the Bavli, rendering that written production as the quintessential expression of what is idiosyncratically Jewish.

Yes, thats right. The writings of Plato do NOT all fit together in harmony, irrespective of the question of chronological development. To be sure, one is just ice skating over the surface of Platonic writings if one does not have a nuanced understanding of the various periods of Platos intellectual development over time. The incongruity in his writings which is a function of this multi-faceted intellectual development over time can, however, be sufficiently delineated. But there is another kind of incongruity which, especially in Platos case, could never be and in fact never was explainable through a nuanced accounting of Platos long and ever-revising intellectual development.

The writings of Plato could never have been anything other than incongruous in this more fundamental sense, Plato being Plato. For Plato being Plato, early and or middle and or later, IS precisely this: Plato contra Plato. But more than that, the good itself [[i.e., Platos eventual teaching on the good and also, in fact, the good itself obtaining in and as that wellspring of greatness characteristic of reality itself]] is precisely the-good contra the-good. The good always and inevitably, and of its own nature, obtains only incompletely. Even as it presents itself, it withdraws. For the goods very manner of being-at-all is, precisely, this ever-to-be- withdrawing as its way of obtaining at all.

I am projecting to my hoped audience of Jews ---and Orthodox Jews in particular--- a very different accounting of Judaism in general; an accounting with emphasis on Scripture, first and foremost. And then there are the more nuanced offerings of portions of our Talmud Bavli produced by those subtle final anonymous editors of our Bavli from roughly 575 to roughly 610ce. Subtlety was the only coinage in this orchestration by the final anonymous editors. The over-arching power of Rabbinic Officialdom could be checked only by subtle and indirect insertions into The Record by our glorious final editors of the Talmud Bavli. God bless them.

Take heed:

I am quite consciously attempting to strip you of multiple presuppositions which -- if those presuppositions permeate your reading of this production -- would give you a false understanding of what I am putting forth.

I fully realize that my presentation of these things is not the received presentation of these things. So when you first read it you are likely to presume that I am <-- like a dufus without any consciousness of such --> akin to, say, a bar Hei Hei thereby giving one a good conscience to quickly dismiss my accounting of things Jewish. It is absolutely amazing how people entrenched in a received tradition do not really HEAR what is being offered to them when it comes from a perspective to which they are not habituated. There is only one way to break that ugly danger:

repetitio mater studiorum

resiliationin the father of truth

Take it or leave it. The burden is now on you.