Biblical Hebrew Forum

[Ian Hutchesson <mc2499 AT mclink.it>]

At 12.15 04/01/00 -0500, Lee R. Martin wrote:
>On the other hand, sometimes the tools themselves need modification.

Certainly true, Lee. You can see this in the way history has changed. Here
are a few excerpts I've translated from an essay by Mario Liverani, the
Italian Assyriologist. Cut 1:

The first point is that one needs to put not the fonts nor the events (or
even the people) at the centre of attention, but the historical problem,
and for its developmentone needs to bring to play all the available sources
(literary and epigraphic, archaeological and environmental) and all the
approaches (ideological, sociological and economic). History therefore is
transforming itself from literary to multidisciplinary, from narrative to
procedural, and finding itself in a wide temporal location and ecological
context, wanting to be global (from the history of a country to that of the
mentality).

Cut 2:

The second point is that the critical analysis ("dismantlement") of the
sources, the semiological analysis of the text, from the principles of the
theory of communication (the text taken as a message, with a sender, a
purpose, a means and receivers) is something more than just a preliminary
examination of the data, but it is the historiographical operation itself...


Cheers,


Ian

>> >The quote of Ian was a direct attack at a person's faith position.
>>
>> This is clearly incorrect. It was an attempt at a description of the sort
>> of unreasoned procedure followed by the person concerned. And this is
>> important, there is an undercurrent of uncritical use of source materials,
>> which I can only attribute to an approach that doesn't seem to want to deal
>> with the consequences.
>>
>> If you are going to do work you should use the tools of the trade. If you
>> don't like what those tools are able to produce, you change trade.