Biblical Hebrew Forum

["Harold R. Holmyard III" <hholmyard AT ont.com>]

Dear Bruce,

You say:
                                  
> It is obvious that the NT makes a habit (e.g., Isa 7:14; 11:1f) of
>reinterpreting texts in a very Jewish way. But then the Qumranians and the
>Rabbis both saw themselves as the fulfillers of past hope too. As a
>result, you find tree stumps growing again outside the Holocaust memorial
>at Yad Vashem, to commemorate not the Christian Messiah but the miracle of
>Israel for whom that application of the HB text is (equally
>self-evidently) about Israel's ethno-religious survival.

The two ideas of the Messiah and Israel's ethno-religious survival are not
contradictory but complementary.

> Also, while I do set aside the J/E debate as too inconclusive, and prefer
>the D(euteronomistic tradition followed by P(riestly Writer) and then the
>C(hronicler) I cannot ignore there is growth and development in the HB/OT
>corrresponding to D, P and C, for to reject that is to reject the evidence
>in favour of a fiction that the ancient Hebrew scriptures are exactly
>historical. Only the person who has not actually read the Bible can claim
>that with confidence. The holding of that opinion in the face of facts as
>simply 'things not yet understood' can seem a self-deception, and most of
>all give Christians a bad name as people who think they can afford to be
>irrational.

> Consider, for example, two views of a plague on Jerusalem: 2 Samual 24
>and 1 Chronicles 21. Is there NO sign of development there?  Are there no
>fresh perspectives to be noted at all?

I do not think that Dan meant to say that there are no fresh perspectives
at all. Certainly I would not say that. When about a thousand years passes,
one expects changes of perspective. I believe in progressive revelation:
God revealed more and different (but not contradictory) truth as time
passed.

                        Yours,
                        Harold Holmyard
                        Dallas, TX