Contemplating Hebrew Language and Theology

 According to the Jews, the name YHWH is pronounced as one would breath, in and out. That's what the two previously linked, beautiful essays, declaim. Unfortunately, one consequence of this is immediately applicable. According to the Hebrew understanding, no one is fully a human being until they take first breath after birth. That first breath after birth is what makes an infant the image and likeness of YHWH.

So, partial-birth abortion is fine, because the thing being destroyed, having not yet taken first breath, is not yet in God's image and likeness. It is not yet fully human. This is the Hebrew participation in cosmological wisdom, it is their participation in the Tree of Life. America's abortion law for the last fifty years has followed Hebrew wisdom by always checking to see if the baby's lungs have air in them before charging someone with a baby's murder. If the baby has taken first breath, the murder charge can be levelled. If not, then not. In this respect, American law has been dominated for a half-century by the ancient Jewish theological worldview.

Knowing all this, we Christians, who are grafted onto the deep theological understanding of God that the Jews bring to the world like a branch is grafted onto the foundational root, can contemplate the wellspring of rich Hebrew understanding of God. We can rest in that understanding, certain that it is grounded in millennia of contemplating God's Holy Life, grounded even in the very structure of Hebrew word and language. We can see that deep foundational structure, we can see the Hebrew image of God described therein, and say to Judaism with absolute certainty, "F*ck off, you murderous bastards."

TLDR: Any theology which allows the murder of infants is bankrupt. If Hebrew theology is bankrupt, and Christian theology is based on Hebrew theology like a branch grafted onto a root, then...