Biblical Hebrew Forum

["Kevin Graham" <kevlds AT hotmail.com>]

== I am wondering what was in the course that you found against your faith.

So am I. This sounds tremendously fishy to me.

== I don't know that anyone can suggest possible course if we don't know 
exactly
what you want to avoid.

It seems the avoidance of anything that undermines a presupposed theology. 
Such as that the Bible has one author: God.

== I suspect that if you want a course where the Bible will be treated as 
the inerrant word of God - with all the assumptions that go along with that 
belief - you probably won't find one.

Sure he could. He would just have to get a "doctorate" from some Bible 
college. A "theological seminary" of some sort. They tend to put theology 
first and foremost. Whatever Greek and Hebrew they learn must come 
prepackaged so that it doesn't offend their theological sensibilities. The 
"education" they receive is tainted with theological persuasion.

Which is why I always get a kick out of conservative scholars who insist all 
other scholars (they label "liberal") are the ones who are "subjective" 
simply because they don't begin with their own theological presuppositions.

I'll give you a perfect example of what I'm talking about. A couple of years 
ago I was discussing the Gospel of John with a student from Dallas 
Theological Seminary. He insisted the Bible teaches that God is not 
anthropomorphic, metaphysically, because John 4:24 demands such an 
interpretation. I pummeled him with scholarship indicating how 
anthropomorphism was the norm for the  Ancient Jewish understanding of God, 
and how it passed over to the early Christians. He went further to say that 
the "rules of Greek grammar" insisted on his interpretation, and he said 
this was something he learned from his Greek professor at DTS. Now this is 
something you could only learn at a "Bible college."

I emailed Evangelical Greek authority, Carlton Winbery about this and he 
pretty much said this was nonsense. The question for God's metaphysics is 
one for a theologian, and not something that can be conclusively determined 
through "rules of Greek grammar."

Anyway, red flags always pop up for me whenever a ThD starts preaching, 
using his or her "academic" credentials as proof he or she is right and I'm 
wrong. Too much of the Bible "theology"is based on interpretation outside 
the rules of Hebrew and Greek, which is why the comparison to the MD in a 
life saving situation is absurd.

My two cents.

Kevin







> From: "Kevin Riley" <klriley AT alphalink.com.au>
> To: <b-hebrew AT lists.ibiblio.org>
> Subject: Re: [b-hebrew] Doctorates or not (was Re: XSD)
> Date: Mon, 5 Sep 2005 12:04:26 +1000 (AUS Eastern Standard Time)
>
>  I am wondering what was in the course that you found against your faith.  
> I
> don't know that anyone can suggest possible course if we don't know exactly
> what you want to avoid.  We can make guesses and assumptions, but it is
> possible we could be wrong.  I suspect that if you want a course where the
> Bible will be treated as the inerrant word of God - with all the 
> assumptions
> that go along with that belief - you probably won't find one.
>
> Kevin Riley
>
> -------Original Message-------
>
> From: Read, James C
> Date: 09/05/05 10:31:27
>
> I posted twice because I thought the first one hadn't gone through. Sorry!
>
> I'm all for studying alternative theories but enforcing students to agree
> with them
> is not a justifiable prerequisite.
>
> The title of my course was MA Hebrew/Classical Greek. You can't get much
> more linguistic
> sounding than that. Here in GB Hebrew degrees are not that common and only 
> a
> few uni's offer
> them. I searched long and hard for a purely linguistic course and this was
> the best I could
> find.
> Anyway, I found the workaround. I shall be doing a Ph.D in Artificial
> Intelligence and my
> translation algorithms will give me the chance to put to good use the
> hebrew/greek I learned at
> St. Andrews without having to make any compromises.
> I think that studying the NT could only be valuable to any Jew as it would
> give a valuable insight
> into an important part in your nation's history. From a historical point of
> view the NT gives a
> wealth of information about Hebrew practices and beliefs of that time. It
> also provides you with a
> wide view of how certain hebrew terms were translated and understood at 
> that
> time, a valuable link
> when tracing the evolution of meaning of many hebre terms e.g. torah/nomos.
> If anybody knows of a purely linguistic hebrew degree, I would dearly love
> to know of one. Distance
> learning would be best. Even OU doesn't offer a purely linguistic degree.
>
>
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