Skip to Content.
Sympa Menu

b-hebrew - Re: [b-hebrew] Interpretation of Biblical Hebrew, or Harold, is this your methodology?

b-hebrew AT lists.ibiblio.org

Subject: Biblical Hebrew Forum

List archive

Chronological Thread  
  • From: "Karl Randolph" <kwrandolph AT email.com>
  • To: "Hebrew" <b-hebrew AT lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: Re: [b-hebrew] Interpretation of Biblical Hebrew, or Harold, is this your methodology?
  • Date: Wed, 07 Jul 2004 20:37:19 -0500

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
--
_______________________________________________
Talk More, Pay Less with Net2Phone Direct(R), up to 1500 minutes free!
http://www.net2phone.com/cgi-bin/link.cgi?143








Archive powered by MHonArc 2.6.24.

Top of Page