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  • From: "Kevin Graham" <kevlds AT hotmail.com>
  • To: b-hebrew AT lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: Re: [b-hebrew] Doctorates (PhD or ThD?)
  • Date: Mon, 05 Sep 2005 11:35:25 +0000

== I am wondering what was in the course that you found against your faith.

So am I. This sounds tremendously fishy to me.

== I don't know that anyone can suggest possible course if we don't know exactly
what you want to avoid.

It seems the avoidance of anything that undermines a presupposed theology. Such as that the Bible has one author: God.

== I suspect that if you want a course where the Bible will be treated as the inerrant word of God - with all the assumptions that go along with that belief - you probably won't find one.

Sure he could. He would just have to get a "doctorate" from some Bible college. A "theological seminary" of some sort. They tend to put theology first and foremost. Whatever Greek and Hebrew they learn must come prepackaged so that it doesn't offend their theological sensibilities. The "education" they receive is tainted with theological persuasion.

Which is why I always get a kick out of conservative scholars who insist all other scholars (they label "liberal") are the ones who are "subjective" simply because they don't begin with their own theological presuppositions.

I'll give you a perfect example of what I'm talking about. A couple of years ago I was discussing the Gospel of John with a student from Dallas Theological Seminary. He insisted the Bible teaches that God is not anthropomorphic, metaphysically, because John 4:24 demands such an interpretation. I pummeled him with scholarship indicating how anthropomorphism was the norm for the Ancient Jewish understanding of God, and how it passed over to the early Christians. He went further to say that the "rules of Greek grammar" insisted on his interpretation, and he said this was something he learned from his Greek professor at DTS. Now this is something you could only learn at a "Bible college."

I emailed Evangelical Greek authority, Carlton Winbery about this and he pretty much said this was nonsense. The question for God's metaphysics is one for a theologian, and not something that can be conclusively determined through "rules of Greek grammar."

Anyway, red flags always pop up for me whenever a ThD starts preaching, using his or her "academic" credentials as proof he or she is right and I'm wrong. Too much of the Bible "theology"is based on interpretation outside the rules of Hebrew and Greek, which is why the comparison to the MD in a life saving situation is absurd.

My two cents.

Kevin







From: "Kevin Riley" <klriley AT alphalink.com.au>
To: <b-hebrew AT lists.ibiblio.org>
Subject: Re: [b-hebrew] Doctorates or not (was Re: XSD)
Date: Mon, 5 Sep 2005 12:04:26 +1000 (AUS Eastern Standard Time)

I am wondering what was in the course that you found against your faith. I
don't know that anyone can suggest possible course if we don't know exactly
what you want to avoid. We can make guesses and assumptions, but it is
possible we could be wrong. I suspect that if you want a course where the
Bible will be treated as the inerrant word of God - with all the assumptions
that go along with that belief - you probably won't find one.

Kevin Riley

-------Original Message-------

From: Read, James C
Date: 09/05/05 10:31:27

I posted twice because I thought the first one hadn't gone through. Sorry!

I'm all for studying alternative theories but enforcing students to agree
with them
is not a justifiable prerequisite.

The title of my course was MA Hebrew/Classical Greek. You can't get much
more linguistic
sounding than that. Here in GB Hebrew degrees are not that common and only a
few uni's offer
them. I searched long and hard for a purely linguistic course and this was
the best I could
find.
Anyway, I found the workaround. I shall be doing a Ph.D in Artificial
Intelligence and my
translation algorithms will give me the chance to put to good use the
hebrew/greek I learned at
St. Andrews without having to make any compromises.
I think that studying the NT could only be valuable to any Jew as it would
give a valuable insight
into an important part in your nation's history. From a historical point of
view the NT gives a
wealth of information about Hebrew practices and beliefs of that time. It
also provides you with a
wide view of how certain hebrew terms were translated and understood at that
time, a valuable link
when tracing the evolution of meaning of many hebre terms e.g. torah/nomos.
If anybody knows of a purely linguistic hebrew degree, I would dearly love
to know of one. Distance
learning would be best. Even OU doesn't offer a purely linguistic degree.


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