Biblical Hebrew Forum

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

[snip]
> Criticism is democracy. You cannot turn it off at tap. Neither can you say 
> that 
> non-Christians must be forced to study their literature in anchronistic 
> forms.
> 
> So, please, HB, not OT. And let criticism be stated unhindered by 
> absolutisms 
> which are at root the desire of powerful interest groups to escape 
> examination.

I see.  So what this is actually saying is, all methods of 
interpretation except the Christian one are permissible.  This is a 
very discriminatory statement.  The Christian approach is part of 
the history of interpretation of the HB text, like it or not.  When 
we're seeking to understand it, there are things we may be able to 
glean from all the approaches to the text that have been used 
throughout its history.  Arbitrarily excluding one approach because 
someone doesn't happen to like it is not a scholarly approach, in 
fact it's quite anti-scholarship because it refuses to look at all sides 
of the coin.


Dave Washburn
http://www.nyx.net/~dwashbur
"No study of probabilities inside a given frame can ever
tell us how probable it is that the frame itself can be
violated."  C. S. Lewis