Biblical Hebrew Forum

[Peter Kirk <peterkirk AT qaya.org>]

On 13/11/2003 13:08, Karl Randolph wrote:

> Peter:
>
> Didn’t you just libel me? Or is it just your opinion, which makes it not 
> libel?
>  
My defence is that I wrote what was true, or what you had just said was 
true.

> As for BDB, they were students of Gesenius, and Gesenius was a member of the 
> German rationalist school of the early 19th century. From what I have seen of 
> that philosophical school, particularly as it pertains to their treatment of 
> the Bible and ancient Israel, I don’t see how it is not anti-Semitic. 
> However, this is a “platonic” anti-Semitism that does not advocate violence. 
> Is there anything in this paragraph that is not accurate?
>  
The individual statements may be true, or maybe not. Actually probably 
not, as Gesenius died in 1842 and Brown, Driver and Briggs were still 
active in 1906. But the logic "A was B's student. B believed X. 
Therefore A believed X." is not valid. This is attaching guilt by 
association.

> As I wrote earlier, I do not have access to BDB’s dictionary, so I was 
> relying on previous posts to this list as a basis for my response. If 
> previous posts are accurate, and I have no reason to doubt them unless shown 
> otherwise, then how is my response inaccurate? It fits the philosophic 
> pattern.
>  
Perhaps you should look at the book (which is widely available and 
inexpensive) before accusing it in generalised terms ("When a word is 
found in both Biblical Hebrew and another language, they seem to make 
the presupposition that the word is a loan word into Hebrew.") on the 
basis of reports of a small and unrepresentative sample of its contents. 
Anyway, which particular posts concerning which BDB entries led you to 
this conclusion? I don't recall anything on the list which could justify it.

--
Peter Kirk
peter AT qaya.org (personal)
peterkirk AT qaya.org (work)
http://www.qaya.org/