Biblical Hebrew Forum

[Peter_Kirk AT sil.org]

Vince wrote:

"I'm a born-again atheist too. is that going to be a problem for you?"

Interesting question! My first reaction was, of course not, your 
religious beliefs (including your belief about God that he does not 
exist) are a personal matter and irrelevant to studies of b-hebrew. If 
anyone is going to have a problem, it is you - if I am right, that God 
exists and there will be a judgment.

But then I thought a bit more about the nature of the materials before 
us in b-hebrew. Would you, any of you, agree that in order to properly 
understand an ancient (or modern) religious text you need to have at 
least a sympathetic understanding of the religion of the writers? The 
same would apply to e.g. ancient Babylonian or Indian scriptures. 
There is of course a difference between a sympathetic understanding 
and a personal faith, but I suspect that it is difficult for all but 
the most dispassionate scholars to show the proper sympathy for a 
religion which is diametrically opposed to our own deeply held 
convictions. I trust that Vince can be one of those dispassionate 
scholars.

I also suspect that Hebrew biblical studies took a serious step into 
wrong directions in the last century when it became dominated by 
people whose faith and general world view led them away from 
sympathetic understanding of ancient Hebrew religion. For example, 
although in general 19th century biblical scholars were theists, their 
"liberal" and "enlightened" concept of God could not cope with the 
idea of God commanding wars and genocide. (This is of course hard for 
me too.) This led them towards theories which make the Hebrew 
scriptures into a collection of ancient documents assembled in an 
unintelligent way (I am thinking of theories that imply that ancient 
compilers didn't notice doublets and allegedly glaring 
inconsistencies) and thereby negated their authority. I could also 
criticise "fundamentalist" "scholars" who interpret according to the 
theories of inspiration and general religious understanding of their 
brand of Christianity. But I don't have time for a major article.

Just one more specific point where atheism might affect Vince's work, 
such as the dialect study he would like to do - certainly if dating 
becomes an issue. I would assume that most atheists presuppose that 
prophets cannot have genuine supernatural knowledge about future 
events. Therefore, when they come across an apparent prophecy, e.g. of 
the Babylonian captivity in "Deutero"-Isaiah and of the Maccabean 
period in Daniel, they have to conclude that the book was actually 
written after the events described. Theists do not make this 
presupposition - though we might accept the conclusions if there are 
other convincing arguments. I wonder what Vince's "more than 10 
diagnostics of dialect that haven't been looked at" would say about 
the dialects and dating of these passages. I also wonder how an 
atheist scholar would deal with evidence that (for example, and purely 
hypothetically) pointed to "Deutero"-Isaiah being from the same 
period, or even the same pen, as Isaiah son of Amoz and contemporary 
of Hezekiah. Would the conclusion be accepted? Or would the scholar 
suddenly find some reason for rejecting the diagnostics - or quietly 
fail to publish the conclusions? (For that matter, what would the 
fundamentalist scholar do with evidence that the dialects are very 
different?)

OK, just a few points to think about. Yes, if atheists and believers 
are to work together in scholarship (and I know I have left out any 
special references to our Jewish brothers' presuppositions, if they 
have any ;-) ) they need to face up to such questions of 
presuppositions, even sometimes prejudice, and not assume that 
everyone is an entirely dispassionate scholar.

Peter Kirk