Biblical Hebrew Forum

[Jonathan Bailey <jonathan.bailey AT gmx.de>]

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

>       [Niels Peter Lemche]  In 1998, an Iman gave a lecture to me and my
>students in Damascus. One of his points was interesting. A commity of
>liberal Muslim theologians had worked for years on the text of the Qur'an in
>order to see whether it was the work of man or of God. Great surprise, they
>had to conclude that such a text could not have been written by any man, so
>it must be God who was the author. I repeat my earlier remark that this idea
>about inspiration belongs in a different context.

I will make up a story about a group of humanistic bible theologians who set 
about to
discover whether Torah was from men or from God. Great suprise, they had to
conclude that such a text could not have come from God, so it must have been a
mish mash of pagan myths.

I don't know what you are trying to get at with your Muslim story, but I will 
say that I
wrote my post to Kirk late last night, and my mentioning of the possibility 
that the
divine origin of Torah affecting our analysis of it was really not to clever 
an argument in
that context, and I will indeed keep such statements to a minimum. I do 
challenge you
however, to see your desire to exclude any religious argument from our 
discussions
as really a plea for the universal adoption of the religion of secular 
humanism in the
list, and to remember, that though this list is a non religious list, it was 
originally
started by Christians, and then joined by Jews and members of other 
religions, and
their views should also be welcome here. Now I am certainly not advocating 
sermons
out of the OT, but since it seems that the history of the Hebrew text is 
on-topic for
this list, one should be prepared for a variety of views concerning the 
generation of the
book, particularly since the book claims to be the written revelation of God 
on earth. If
you can't tolerate people who are willing to treat the book like the word of 
God, then
do not study the bible.

I am not asking you to reply to my posts or share threads with me. I am just 
asking
you not to get so upset by the fact that there are people on the list who are 
not
coming from the same place you are. I will certainly not be upset if you wish 
to
discuss the process by which primitive hunter-gatherers invented Yah. The 
list is
open to all.




Jonathan Bailey
Hochschule für Jüdische Studien
Heidelberg