Biblical Hebrew Forum

[Trevor Peterson <06PETERSON AT cua.edu>]

>===== Original Message From c stirling bartholomew 
<cc.constantine AT worldnet.att.net> =====
>The esteemed R.Buth of Jerusalem made a comment a while back about
>Waltke/O'Connor which, in keeping with R.Buth's characteristically cryptic
>style was somewhat difficult to unpack.
>
>I believe he used the word "brittle" in reference to Waltke/O'Connor.
>
>Does anyone know what this means?

I guess I should have asked him about his remarks on-list. Being a student of 
O'Connor, I was curious to find out what he meant and asked this very thing 
myself in an off-list conversation. I hope it's not out of line to say, 
briefly, that he objects to the way that some of the material is presented 
(although from what I can tell, I don't think there would be glaring 
differences between his views and O'Connor's--it's probably more in the 
presentation). As I recall, one of his major objections was to the way W-O'C 
explains the stems/binyanim. I tend to agree that a student could get the 
impression from the discussion in W-O'C that the stems were generally 
productive. We talked about some other issues, but one thing to keep in mind 
about W-O'C is that it intentionally omits pragmatics as a general rule. 
(This 
is not because O'Connor is unconcerned with pragmatics; I can't speak for 
Waltke.)

Anyway, the long and short is that I was reasonably satisfied with the way he 
explained his criticisms after further questioning, although I never got the 
feeling that I quite knew what he meant by "brittle" in his original 
assessment.

Trevor Peterson
CUA/Semitics