Biblical Hebrew Forum

["David Stabnow" <dstabno AT lifeway.com>]

I agree with Christine Bass when she says,

CB: All to say that each person posting has a perspective, and it is
through this perspective (Jewish, Christian, Atheist, Humanist, Agnostic,
etc.) that the Hebrew Scriptures are analyzed. There is no one that does
not. A nothing, a supposedly neutral is still a perspective. To say that
one is immune to their own perspective in interpreting scripture is a
fallacy, a form of denial.

DS: While Bartholomew was too vitriolic, IMO, his point was correct: there
is no presuppositionless interpretation. Safren is in denial when he says,
"I have never taken any faith-oriented position on this list, whether
Jewish, secularist or heterodox." Thomas Kuhn has shown that all paradigms
(perspectives, worldviews) are inherently, in practice, faith-oriented.
Therefore everything we state as truth is faith-oriented in that it comes
from our view of how the world works. (Some people have faith in a secular
worldview, others in a transcendent being.) I agree with Safren in that we
must try to put these differences aside and try to communicate on the
common ground of "neutral" philology. But to put our own biases aside we
need to be aware of them, not deny them.

Dave Stabnow