Biblical Hebrew Forum

[Peter Kirk <peterkirk AT qaya.org>]

On 06/09/2005 02:08, Kevin Graham wrote:

> ...
>
> I'll let the words of Bart Ehrman make my point:
>
> "No wonder that most of today's NT scholars, by their own admission, 
> are not capable of rendering independent judgments concerning textual 
> variants preserved in the tradition (I except my NT colleagues here, 
> by the way; and they will for the most part agree, I think, with my 
> opinion on this point). It strikes me as a pity that most doctoral 
> candidates in New Testament are not trained even to use the apparatus 
> of the standard Greek text, the Nestle-Aland 27th ed., that most 
> divinity school students are not taught the fundamental problems of 
> the textual tradition that they are expected to teach or preach, and 
> that most of the laypersons in the churches to which the graduates of 
> divinity school go are left completely unaware of the problems of the 
> texts of the books that they themselves revere as Scripture." 
> http://rosetta.reltech.org/TC/vol05/Ehrman2000b.html


Ehrman makes a good point, but it is not about Bible colleges or 
theological seminaries. I checked the context: his reference to "most 
doctoral candidates in New Testament" refers to candidates at ALL 
institutions, and while I am not entirely familiar with US terminology I 
would understand a "divinity school" as something rather different from, 
more mainstream than, a Bible college or a seminary. Of course it may be 
true of these places too that:

> 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.


But it is hardly fair to make this accusation against Bible colleges and 
seminaries and then cite Ehrman as support when his article is not 
referring to the same kind of institution. In fact what this shows is 
simply that in general institutions which claim to teach theology or 
"divinity" are doing their job properly, by majoring on theology rather 
than language. The regrettable thing is that, as James found out, there 
are very few institutions which offer Hebrew as a language without 
bringing in theology.

...

> == I wonder what you mean by “the norm for the Ancient Jewish of God.” 
> You seem to suggest that there might be a monolithic static view of 
> Judaism.
>
> Ancient Judaism understood God anthropomorphically. He had human form. 
> Yahweh was enthroned in the temple, and had humanity created after his 
> image. This eventually took a drastic turn towards the abstract, 
> however, when Judaism became hellenized. Particularly with Arisobulus.


I think you would have to work hard to support your thesis that anyone, 
at least in the theological mainstream which condemned idolatry, 
believed that Yahweh had literal body parts, that the language about his 
body parts is to be understood as anything other than metaphorical. 
Sure, the Hebrew Bible authors could write for example that God had eyes 
- but also that these eyes run around, 2 Chronicles 16:9 and Zechariah 
4:10. This can only be metaphorical language.


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



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