Biblical Hebrew Forum

[clayton stirling bartholomew <c.s.bartholomew AT worldnet.att.net>]

on 09/28/00 10:08 AM, Happydan wrote:

> Since you asked for any comments, I'll give you one...
> 
> Please try not to post such silly things on this list in the future. If you
> were to look at more pages hosted at that site, you would have seen it is a
> website that deals with paranormal phenomenon, ancient contact with
> extra-terrestrials, and so on. Such does not have a place in serious
> scholarship or on a list that is supposed to be about serious scholarship
> into the Hebrew Language.
> 
> Daniel E. Barnes

Daniel,

While I agree with you in principle, I find that the line between the
plausible and the ridiculous is often very difficult to determine. The
source of the information or the type of publisher or web site where the
information is found is not always a clear indicator of the potential value
of the information itself.  Very scholarly and well respected publishers
often present us with some really ludicrous nonsense with big names on the
covers. On the other hand some really interesting proposals can often be
completely buried and hidden from view by the thought police of academic
Gestapo. I cannot quote him from memory but Cyrus Gordon has had some rather
harsh comments to make about this in some of his older books.

Also, chasing after what looks like a bogus story can produce some useful
results, even when the story proves to be bogus. Back in the early 90's I
stumbled upon what looked like a historical fraud involving some "discovered
documents" in a book called Gestapo Chief* and in the process of checking it
out, I got some information from Gitta Sereny (author of Albert Speer) and
several other "experts" who panned the book as completely bogus. However as
the information on this story began to accumulate it sounded like the main
outline of this book was historically accurate, even if the "discovered
documents" were fraudulent. I learned a lot of history in the process.

I agree with you however, that ludicrous nonsense should not be discussed at
length on a list like b-hebrew. But where are we going to draw the line? I
see dozens of titles in my favorite used book store published by Oxford,
Cambridge, Manchester, Harvard, Yale, W/JK and Fortress which would qualify
in my thinking as ludicrous nonsense but we certainly would not stop anyone
from talking about them here would we?

Clay

--  
Clayton Stirling Bartholomew
Three Tree Point
P.O. Box 255 Seahurst WA 98062

*Douglas, Gregory.
Gestapo chief : the 1948 interrogation of Heinrich Muller
from secret U.S. intelligence files
San Jose, Calif. : R.J. Bender Pub., c1995.