Biblical Hebrew Forum

[peter_kirk AT SIL.ORG]

Dear Lee,

You seem to know more about my view of inspiration than I do! Or 
perhaps you are just assuming that my view is "in line with American 
evangelicalism". Well, I am not an American evangelical; I would call 
myself an evangelical, though I am not sure that all American 
evangelicals would consider me one! I am very aware of the 
shortcomings which you have noted in the American evangelical view.

On the other hand, I do believe that the Bible is a source of 
authoritative divine teaching. In studying and applying that teaching, 
I need to be able to distinguish between true divine teaching and 
human teaching. That was a major concern of Paul in the New Testament, 
but that is outside the Hebrew Bible and perhaps you would consider 
him western. But a similar concern for defining the limits of divine 
teaching is evidenced in Deuteronomy 18:20-22 and in the controversies 
between the true and false prophets. Jewish leaders may not have 
defined a canon before the council of Jamnia/Yavneh, but at that time 
they did do so, and the detailed attention given to preserving the 
text at least from that time onward testifies to a concern for 
canonical authority at the verbal level. So you can hardly reject that 
type of concern as something purely western.

Moreover, as a Bible translator I have to work with churches which 
hold to various views of inspiration including the American 
evangelical one. And I have to decide which text to translate. 
Sometimes I could fudge the issue with a compromise between MT, LXX 
etc., but in many cases I am forced to make a "mechanical, artificial, 
rationalistic" choice between different, sometimes contradictory 
renderings. What would be the non-western, biblical way of doing this, 
I wonder?

Peter Kirk

______________________________ Reply Separator 
_________________________________
Subject: Re: Text and inspiration
Author:  lmartin AT vol.com at internet
Date:    08/04/1999 09:09


The view that you have stated seems to be a very mechanical, artificial, 
rationalistic, western, non-biblical view of inspiration, but very much in 
line 
with
American evangelicalism.  It is not my view of inspiration. 
Lee R. Martin

peter_kirk AT SIL.ORG wrote:
<snip>