Sunday Service - 2/9/14 - Barbara Brown Taylor

A service of worship in Duke University Chapel. The Rev. Barbara Brown Taylor delivers a sermon entitled "The Grace of Good Works."

[@PopGoesTheology]

(32:30) As *Rabbi* Norman Solomon says: "The problem of unjust or immoral laws in
the Torah is pervasive and remains a blemish
within Judaism.
If we are to take these doctrines literally & avoid radically reinterpreting these ancient texts, we will
be stuck in the extremely problematic
position of having to affirm that God
literally commanded
morally unsound laws
." He's not the only Jew who would burst Dr. Taylor's little bubble (and A.J. Levine's). The other one is Jeremiah, who prophesied in Jeremiah 31 31, "The days are coming says YHWH when I will make a new covenant with Israel and Judah. It will not be like the covenant that I made when I brought them out of Egypt - a covenant that they broke. I will put my law within them. I will write it in their hearts." Levine is an Orthodox Jew and I've seen her careful re-interpretive footwork when she attempts to defend the iron-age Torah. She doesn't represent all of Judaism. I'd say Dr. Taylor has some reading to do.