Biblical Hebrew Forum

["Dave Washburn" <dwashbur AT nyx.net>]

Niels wrote:
> I will continue this theme as long as necessary. I have been in this game
> for more than 30 years, I know the rules and my colleagues know them as well
> wherever they live in the world of the academia. I also know that at the
> fringe, some institutions that may consider themselves academic ones,
> entertain ideas that are foreign to scholarship. Scholarship is not decided
> by a majority vote and although several contributors to this line of
> argument seem to think that what is not accepted by people who is running
> the game can be accepted nevertheless, they will never counts as serious or
> major figures in this business. 

Excuse me for asking, but who exactly is "running the game"???  
You?  Someone else?  Who are these people, and who exactly 
appointed them to run the game?  I've been in this game as long as 
you have, does that mean I can run it as well?  What are the 
criteria?  This is nothing more than guilt by definition, i.e. the views 
of X don't fit my self-appointed criteria of scholarship, therefore I will 
define them out of the field.  This sort of practice is in fact not 
within the realm of what I would consider scholarship.

I think that such people should address
> scholars of a certain standard within other fields and see how they react,
> when somebody is invoking supernaturalistic phenomena, are continuously
> disregarding more than two hundred years of scholarship without presenting
> any serious arguments against it (although such arguments are easy to find).
> Maybe people of my group is simply waisting our time on such discussions but

I think you mean "wasting"...

[snip]
> By the way, Peter Kirk's football player is according to the standards of
> the world outside the US not football players, since they most of the time
> use their hands. A football player is except in the USA what is there
> derogatory caller a 'soccer player'. Pele was a football player, Monotano a
> quarterback in American  football. 

In the first place, I don't know who told you that "soccer" is a 
derogatory term in the USA, perhaps you should get your facts 
straight before making such an unscholarly statement.  Secondly, 
who is "Monotano"?  Do you perhaps mean "Montana"?  

Let's face reality here: there is no one "running the game."  
Scholarship has many faces, regardless of how some may wish to 
define it more narrowly.  I suggest we all get used to it.

Dave Washburn
http://www.nyx.net/~dwashbur
Teach me your way, O Lord, and I will walk in your truth;
give me an undivided heart that I may fear your name.
                                   Psalm 86:11