Biblical Hebrew Forum

[Brian Roberts <formoria AT carolina.rr.com>]

It's easy to bandy about descriptives like "fundamentalist", because it 
definitely rings true in a way, but when it comes to defining what 
constitutes a fundamentalist, why don't we let them define themselves, 
and use their own definition? Surely someone  of that persuasion has 
come up with a working definition.



On Monday, August 23, 2004, at 04:10  PM, David N. da Silva wrote:

> Peter Kirk writes:
>
> > But the statement of mine which you
> > quote relates only to "anyone who
> > believes in the "Divine Origin" of the
> > Torah". Are you saying that there
> > are such people who reject the
> > fundamentalist position?
>
> I don't know if there are, but there certainly could be.   God, wishing 
> to bring the children of Israel from Egypt to Canaan, could have 
> transported them in a flash, but chose rather to bring about the same 
> result by speaking a few words to a shepherd with a speech 
> impediment.   He allowed his chosen implements to work, sometimes in a 
> fallible way - mistakes he could have prevented from happening, but 
> chose not to.   How would such a being, given his desire that a book 
> should exist, set about the process of bringing it into existence?  I 
> would say that to suppose he would simply dictate the text, is like 
> supposing he would simply transport the Hebrews to Canaan.   He just 
> doesn't work that way.   It is more consistent with his known actions 
> to work through humans, and allow them to be human.   It seems rather 
> to suppose a certain crudeness and lack of subtlety to suppose he would 
> dictate the text.   But this does not make the text not of divine 
> origin - any more than it was M
>  osheh, rather than Yahweh, who brought the children of Yisra'El from 
> Egypt.
>
> If a fundamentalist is one who thinks that the text was dictated by 
> God, then  I would say it is certainly possible to believe in the 
> divine origin of the text without being a fundamentalist.
>
> David Nunes da Silva
> --------------------------------------
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