Biblical Hebrew Forum

[Jim West <jwest AT highland.net>]

BAR's editorial staff has once more demonstrated their complete inability to
comprehend the simplest of ideas.  The recent issue contains an article
titled "Can you understand this?"; which excerpts portions of Thomas
Thompson's "Mythic Past".  The editors opine that they dont get it.

However, the excerpt (and the book) are thoroughly comprehensible.  One
wonders why the likes of Dever and others of his ilk are lionized by BAR
whilst folk like Lemche, Thompson, and Davies and Whitelam are vilified.
BAR clearly has a political agenda.  Its not hard to see that this rag is,
pardon my editorializing, simply a pro-Israel, right wing, anti-palestinian
piece of crap.

What has this to do with Biblical Studies?  Quite a bit- for the public are
spoon fed by BAR the most egregious historical errors under the guise of
scholarship regarding the Biblical text.  My suggestion is that those who do
read BAR should also be aware of the fact that the facts are not always
rightly represented.  This is not a news magazine or simple reporting of
issues related to Biblical Archaeology- it is a political magazine and
should be read in that light.

Jim

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Jim West, ThD
jwest AT highland.net
http://web.infoave.net/~jwest