Biblical Hebrew Forum

["Karl Randolph" <kwrandolph AT email.com>]

Dear Harold:

In other words, you don’t have a methodology.

What do you do when two or more of the experts that you depend on hold 
contradictory and mutually exclusive position? How do you determine which 
position is correct?

>From my understanding, the following are the reasons that you don’t like my 
>methodology:

1) It comes up with a result that you don’t like. “It was the results you 
came up with on the verb XBL and the translation ideas that you produced for 
verses that used it.”

2) All scholars and traditions disagree with me. “compare your results with 
the findings of other people. And give the results of others the respect that 
they deserve.” and “So if they  agree, and agree with many other 
translations, you have to have good reasons for disagreeing.” and “I don't 
know what makes you think you can ditch the almost uniform conclusions of 
lexicons, commentaries, and translations”

3) I didn’t answer in detail to your posting. “You aren't even willing to 
defend your results on most of the verses that we have discussed.”

My answers:

1) a good methodology does not depend on whether or not we like the results. 
In fact, the Biblical PoV is not cherry picking the portions of the Bible 
that we like, tickling our ears. It is taking the whole text, even the 
portions that we don’t like. BTW, how many times have you read Tanakh, 
starting with Genesis and reading through Chronicles? In Hebrew?

2) This goes back to my upbringing—the excuse “Everybody is doing it” didn’t 
wash. If something is right, even if I’m the only person in the world doing 
it, I am to do right.

I now carry that over in to the academic world. Even if 100% of the world’s 
scholars disagree with me, that does not mean that they are right. Further, I 
know I approach my studies with enough of a different PoV that there is 
almost certain to be times where I will disagree with them. Yes, I look at 
what they say, but I do not think that they are inspired or better than I. 
That is why I say that a good methodology is more important than any 
particular result it gives—the result could be an improper application of the 
methodology.

Notice my first step, which is to erase over 1000 years of tradition, the 
points that all scholars depend on and upon which they all base their work.

BTW what is your take on my application of my methodology on Proverbs 1:19?

3) I didn’t have the time. Copying and pasting other people’s word takes 
seconds. Careful, scholarly answers can take hours, especially when 
accompanied by double checking, after which comes the time to present the 
case. If you want to take one verse at a time, fine, but I didn’t have the 
time to answer a whole slew of verses at one time.

It took hours with the Song of Songs verse, then you just sluffed off my 
answer.

Karl W. Randolph.

----- Original Message -----
From: "Harold R. Holmyard III" <hholmyard AT ont.com>

> Dear Karl,
> 
><snipped portions not quoted above>
> 
>                               Yours,
>                               Harold Holmyard
-- 
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