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I'd like to invite you all to look over and hopefully participate in a new StackExchange site: Biblical Hermeneutics. The purpose of the site is to study the Bible on its own terms. We try be be doctrinally neutral (if such a thing is possible). The majority of the text that is on topic for us is the Tanakh, but it seems the majority of the participants are Christian. To be successful as a site that is trying to understand that text without favoring a particular doctrine, we really need a more diverse community.

So I'm asking for your help.

A sample question that I personally would like help with is about Psalm 22. I've found plenty of Christian resources about the Psalm, but unfortunately most of the Jewish sources seem to be most interested in refuting the Christian interpretation. What I (and others in our community) would like to know is what people thought about it before there were Christians. There must be answers, but as a non-Jew I haven't been able to find them. (Seriously, my answer to the question is pitiful.)

Here are a few more questions that could use some help from a Jewish perspective:

No doubt there will be many more as time goes on. Are you willing to help us?

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My experience there so far has been that Jews are a real minority and many questions won't apply to us, but enough do that I've found it worth following so far. The couple of times I've brought a Jewish perspective on a question it seems to have been well-received. (I won't engage on Christianity-specific questions; not gonna argue with believers about Jesus.) The prominent people there (including Jon Ericson) seem firm in saying that that is not the place for dogma. I've only encountered one frequent poster who doesn't seem to get that yet, but he appears to be learning. Worth a look. – Monica Cellio♦ Oct 25 '11 at 16:13
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I added the Jephthah question, which I just saw there and would like to see answers to. – Monica Cellio♦ Oct 30 '11 at 3:21
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@MonicaCellio, if you want answers to it from a Jewish perspective and are not satisfied with what you get there, you might try asking here: there may be some users who will see and answer it here and not there. – msh210♦ Oct 30 '11 at 4:03
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@msh210, I considered that and will if I don't see appropriate answers there. I'm not sure what the etiquette is of lifting questions from one SE site to another, so I figured I'd wait to see if anything happens there first. – Monica Cellio♦ Oct 30 '11 at 17:08
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@MonicaCellio, I haven't looked around the site much, but I checked out one of the questions linked to here. Oddly, although the question was about Tanach, an answer claimed that the pasuk was talking about Jesus. Go figure. I commented on it and gave, l'havdil, a Jewish explanation in a separate answer. But I doubt I'll frequent the site. – msh210♦ Oct 31 '11 at 7:18
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@msh210: Thank you for taking a look and helping us out with an answer. Obviously there is a cultural divide between the two sites and not everyone will move freely between them. (I'm afraid I can't even read most of the questions here without looking up half the words on Wikipedia. ;-) Since we include Christian texts in the scope of our site, we are going to always have Jesus read into the Tanach as well. And we don't explicitly discourage it unless, as in this case, the analogy is clearly wrong. (And we are still very much in the community-forming stage, so things may change yet.) – Jon Ericson Oct 31 '11 at 16:32
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I think one of the challenges is that SE participants conventionally both ask and answer questions. Yeah, not necessarily (I have 6K+ rep on english.SE and have never asked a question), but it's what SE is designed for. Jews will never ask text questions on hermeneuitcs.SE; why should we when we can ask them on judaism.SE? So we can still read and answer (as I've done a little), but it's going to be lop-sided like that. Is that viable long-term? Hard to say. – Monica Cellio♦ Oct 31 '11 at 19:13
@Monica: Well, you could ask questions about the Christian texts... ;-) – Jon Ericson Oct 31 '11 at 19:27
Re "if you want answers to it from a Jewish perspective and are not satisfied with what you get there, you might try asking here": now at judaism.stackexchange.com/questions/11035/… – msh210♦ Nov 1 '11 at 15:48

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