Biblical Hebrew Forum

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

Niels wrote:
> > Somehow the discussion about smoking or burning columns is very strange,
> > indeed--to put it mildly. Already Reimarus and Lessing mocked such
> > assumtions more than 200 years ago. 

So what?  How do we know they were right?  Anybody can mock 
anything, but that doesn't mean they were correct just because 
they were well known or influential in their times.

It was before the period of critical
> > scholarship--you might call it pre- or proto-critical. Our evangelical
> > friends must understand that we--the scholars--do not mock their beliefs
> > but it is difficult to be serious when confronted with all sorts of
> > arguments that were put aside as irrelevant hundred of years ago. 

Excuse me, but this subtle setting up of "evangelical" versus 
"scholars" as if the two are polar opposites is a cautious but 
definite form of mockery in itself, and is built on the assumption 
that an evangelical cannot be a scholar, by definition.  This has 
never been shown, and indeed can't be without resorting to tons of 
other assumptions.


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