On any day of the week, when the Rabbi rashly took on St. Paul, he shot himself in the foot.

¡Ora, UTEP! ¡Ora, DESTINO! ¡Ora, Profe Ezra Cappell!

Topic: St. Paul's famous passage ending in most English language bibles as: "..for it is better to marry than to burn." I Corinthians 7:9

Input on this theme: Steinberg, Milton. Basic Judaism. New York: Harcourt, Brace and Company, 1947.

Note: As Rabbi Steinberg puts in honestly and to the point in his preface "I am not neutral on Judaism itself. I am a professing Jew whose faith is a matter of heart as well as head, or ardor no less than conviction. Of this enthusiasm I could not make a secret if I would; I would not if I could."

Personally, I find Rabbi Steinberg a most credible person. He is a man who believes in God and practices his belief. He makes no bones that St. Paul is not among his favorite historical personages. Yet for all that he inadvertently explains St. Paul's true meaning in Paul's controversial phrase: "..for it is better to marry than to burn," ( I Corinthians 7:9 ) and he does it with such clarity and precision, that I can't help wondering if it isn't obvious that St. Paul intended to say the exact same thing, and does. Because the bulk of St. Paul's listeners, perhaps even the non-Jews, would surely have been aware of what Rabbi Steinberg calls on page seventy five "one of [the] most ingenious bits of word play," used by "the ancient rabbis," dealing with the topic of matrimony itself, and which we have highlighted and colored at will:

"The Hebrew word Iish, meaning man, contains a letter i which is missing from the word Ishah woman; just as Ishah has in it an h lacking in Iish.

"Now these two letters i and h when joined together spell out a Hebrew name for God. On the other hand, when they are deleted from Iish and Ishah respectively what remains in either case is the word Esh or fire.

"And the moral of all this?

"When God, that is the hallowed and the ideal, is removed from the relationship of a man with a woman they are both transformed into consuming fires.

"But when God is present between them their humanity is intact; man is man, woman woman, and both truly husband and wife to each other."

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So! Let's take just one more look at St. Paul's concluding words: "..for it is better to marry than to burn." I Corinthians 7:9

"Now: can we get the picture? You bet!"