It is important to understand that as a Westerner, your thought processes are vastly different from those who have been raised to reason dialectically, as the Jewish writers were:
"
...Dialectical reasoning is actually opposed to formal logic in many ways.
Western Logic Versus Eastern Dialecticism
Aristotle placed at the foundations of logical thought the following three propositions.
1. Identity: A = A. Whatever is, is. A is itself and not some other thing.
2. Noncontradiction: A and not A can't both be the case. Nothing can both be and not be. A proposition and its opposite can't both be true.
3. Excluded middle: Everything must either be or not be. A or not A can be true but not something in between.
Modern Westerners accept these propositions (but Easterners do not)...
...three principles underlie Eastern dialecticism. Notice I didn't say 'propositions...' the term 'proposition' has much too formal a ring for what is a generalized stance toward the world rather than a set of ironclad rules.
1. Principle of change:
Reality is a process of change.
What is currently true will shortly be false.
2. Principle of contradiction:
Contradiction is the dynamic underlying change.
Because change is constant, contradiction is constant.
3. Principle of relationships (or holism):
The whole is more than the sum of its parts.
Parts are meaningful only in relation to the whole...
These principles are intimately linked...
The principles also imply another important tenet of Eastern thought, which is the insistence on finding the 'middle way' between extreme propositions...
...and Talmudic scholars developed it over the next two millennia and more.
"
"Mindware" Richard E. Nisbett, pp. 224-5
So the gist here is to recog that you are trying to read logically a Book that was written dialectically, which will not work, as evidenced by all of the disagreement, which disappears when a dialectic approach is pursued. Now you also lose the certainty, but that was all crap anyway.
"
...Dialectical reasoning is actually opposed to formal logic in many ways.
Western Logic Versus Eastern Dialecticism
Aristotle placed at the foundations of logical thought the following three propositions.
1. Identity: A = A. Whatever is, is. A is itself and not some other thing.
2. Noncontradiction: A and not A can't both be the case. Nothing can both be and not be. A proposition and its opposite can't both be true.
3. Excluded middle: Everything must either be or not be. A or not A can be true but not something in between.
Modern Westerners accept these propositions (but Easterners do not)...
...three principles underlie Eastern dialecticism. Notice I didn't say 'propositions...' the term 'proposition' has much too formal a ring for what is a generalized stance toward the world rather than a set of ironclad rules.
1. Principle of change:
Reality is a process of change.
What is currently true will shortly be false.
2. Principle of contradiction:
Contradiction is the dynamic underlying change.
Because change is constant, contradiction is constant.
3. Principle of relationships (or holism):
The whole is more than the sum of its parts.
Parts are meaningful only in relation to the whole...
These principles are intimately linked...
The principles also imply another important tenet of Eastern thought, which is the insistence on finding the 'middle way' between extreme propositions...
...and Talmudic scholars developed it over the next two millennia and more.
"
"Mindware" Richard E. Nisbett, pp. 224-5
So the gist here is to recog that you are trying to read logically a Book that was written dialectically, which will not work, as evidenced by all of the disagreement, which disappears when a dialectic approach is pursued. Now you also lose the certainty, but that was all crap anyway.
