Biblical Hebrew Forum

[Niels Peter Lemche <npl AT teol.ku.dk>]

Answer to Paul Zellmer,

a discussion about personal beliefs is out of bonds, as is an argument based
on personal beliefs. I think that Ian H.'s position. Beliefs in scholarly
ideas that can and should be changed according to evidence and general
knowledge has nothing to do with personal beliefs. i aimed at a scholarly
position that might chance, as I have over the last 30 years changed almost
everything. It has nothing to do with religious beliefs. Just to insinuate
this is to attack personal religious beliefs, and that is out of bonds. So
if scholar X is the conviction that something is X1 and is attacking another
scholar Y because of his beliefs that it is Y1, X is behaving according to
protocol. If a conservative scholar--and I stress the word scholar, as I ask
us to limit this to people who are au courant with the available evidence
and are trained to interpret this--is maintaining something because of the
person's religious convictions, this is offensible and should not be
accepted, and when this person is attacked by other people because of the
presuppositions that may be seen as a distortion of his analysis of the
material, he can not defend his position by maintaining that it is his
religious convictions that are under attack. If you on the other hand attack
a scholar for having based his or hers ideas on a religious (or political
for that matter) conviction, you have to prove your case or you are acting
in an improper way. If we do not get these categories right, there will and
can be no more conversation. 

For Nashville in the fall of 2000 (SBL National Meeting) I and a
conservative scholar try to set up a program unit discussing these matters:
What is scholarship and appropriate for scholars to discuss and what is not.
Charles and I may not agree on many things from a scholar's point of viewm
but we agree on the so-called ROE, it is 'rules of engagement'.

NPL