Biblical Hebrew Forum

[Rolf Furuli <furuli AT online.no>]

Jonathan Robie wrote:
>
>Please, no personal attacks!
>
>I've been very happy with the way Bryan, Lewis, and Kirk have been running
>this list, and by the informative and interesting messages I've seen here.
>But I have also seen some personal attacks which I find rather distressing.
>
>I think we should have certain basic rights on this list:
>
>1. The right to goodwill from the other.
>2. The right to be heard by the other and to be responded to with courtesy.
>3. The right to have your own view, even if the other has a different view.
>4. The right to receive a sincere apology for any jokes you find offensive.
>5. The right to participate free from criticism and judgement of you as a
>person - though naturally your views may be criticized!
>6. The right to be called by no name that devalues you.
>
>Each of these rights should apply not only to individuals, but also to the
>groups to which we belong.
>
>I am upset when I see posts like these:
>
>> Have you read any of the works by Stanley Porter and
>> others that discuss the issue of whether the Aorist in Greek is temporal
>> or aspectual?  If not, then you are too inadequately informed to
>> critique the view you are arguing against.  There's a growing mass of
>> literature in this regard, and I suggest that you read it first.
>
>"Too inadequately informed to critique the view you are arguing against",
>eh? Ouch. This dismisses the person without addressing anything that person
>said.
>
>It's not my job to decide who is adequately informed and who is not, though
>I must point out that many people who are quite familiar with Porter's
>works disagree with both his methodology and his conclusions, as is quite
>evident in the growing mass of literature mentioned here. So why shouldn't
>everyone be entitled to agree or disagree with Porter? If there are
>specific things discussed in that literature that might enlighten us and
>change our views, why not bring them up here and help us all instead of
>berating someone you suspect of not reading the literature? That way, you
>can also demonstrate your own mastery of the literature and impress us with
>your brilliance, and bring the rest of us to the point that we are
>"adequately informed". Or at least cite the titles of some of the seminal
>works that have been helpful for you. I don't expect that we can all expect
>everyone to have read the same books we have, and one of the purposes of
>this list is to foster exchange among people whose backgrounds may differ.
>
>In other word, if someone seems to be mistaken on a point, please specify
>where the mistake is, furnish the information we need to understand the
>error, and be humble enough to recognize that there may be more than one
>point of view.
>
>If you know something, share it!
>
>And now look at this:
>
>> apparently the critque didn't sit well with you.
>> you might reread the critque more carefully and more critically.
>> if you need access to my own publications in the field i'll respond
>> offlist.
>
>Let me put myself in the place of the person who received this. Apparently,
>if I disagree with the person who sent this, it means that I can't read
>carefully and critically, and if I wish to be enlightened...
>
>Please, share what you know, and avoid personal attacks!
>

Dear Jonathan,

I am very much in line with you regarding the rights you outline and your
exhortaton to avoid personal attacks.  However, in this particular case I
think you miss the mark somewhat. (I know from your many excellent posts on
b-greek that you are open-minded an appreciate that others state their
views directly, though in a respectful way). I have been too busy with
semester-start to be able to answer the post to which Ken' s post was
directed.  But it appears to me that the writer of that post (he has
contributed with many excellent posts on b-hebrew) , in this case
critizises something of which he has no knowledge. What I gather from the
excerpt below is as follows:

 Those using scientific methods to test a hypothesis that Greek aorist (or
Hebrew wayyiqtol) is not past tense are vasting their time, BECAUSE AORIST
*IS* PAST TENSE! Therefore either Olsen's methods are not excellent or Rolf
Furuli is misrepresenting her conclusions. It is evident that the writer
has not read Olsen' s thesis, and without sanctioning every word Ken wrote,
I perfectly understand his reaction. I do not see that Ken's post is an ad
hominem attack more than the other post is an attack on me, and I do not
feel that.  What Ken called for, as I understand him, was scientific
arguments to meet scientific arguments, and this is in my view very fine.



>this ties into Hebrew after a Greek survey
>{rolf furuli wrote}
>>Mari Broman Olsen, who follows the principles of P.H. Grice did such a
test
>>with NT Greek, by a scrupulous differentiation between semantic an
>>pragmatic factors.  Her conclusion regarding aorist, which for the most
>>part is used with past meaning, is that it represents the perfective
aspect
>>but is time indifferent. Her excellent methods have the advantage that
>>they
>>are testable, and I follow a similar method in my study of Hebrew verbs.

>i am sorry to hear an unqualified statement about olsen's conclusions and
>methods. i suspect that one or the other isn't completely accurate, or else
>the methods are not excellent.

>by definition, or self-evidently, the greek aorist is PERFECTIVE.
>if someone wants to claim, though,
>that the greek aorist [say of the maccabean era] is 100% time indifferent,
>that the greek aorist indicative is not the simple, perfective, PAST tense,

>then they are really wasting time.

>methodologies may be very rigorous and very scientific, and wrong.
>e.g., look at the "differentiation" criteria used in historical Jesus
>research. if it is scientific to only use material for characterizing Jesus
>that no one else ever said or used, then the resulting composite will
>certainly be wrong and a caricature, but very rigorous and very scientific.



Regards
Rolf

Rolf Furuli
Lecturer in Semitic languages
University of Oslo