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Dennis Prager along with thousands of other Jewish
thinkers over the centuries, cut his teeth on Talmud - the oral law.
The Talmud supplements and interprets the written law which is found
in the Torah - the five books of Moses.
One important Jewish thinker widely believed to have also learned
logic from studying the oral law was the Apostle Paul, the founder
of Christianity in the view of disinterested scholars. In truth,
as opposed to Christian myth, Paul was not a learned Jew, and shows
little knowledge of Pharisaic logic.
Listening to Prager speak, one will often encounter his use of
a fortiori reasoning, known in Hebrew as khal va-khomer. It literally
means light and heavy. If you know about one thing has an amount
in a light form, then it must be true all the more so of some other
thing that has the quality in a heavy form. So, if a person should
not drive after drinking a certain quantity of beer, how much more
so should a person not drive after drinking the same quantity of
whiskey.
I am quoting an example from page 65 of Hyam Maccoby's excellent
book THE MYTHMAKER: Paul and the Invention of Christianity.
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