Biblical Hebrew Forum

["Yitzhak Sapir" <yitzhaksapir AT gmail.com>]

On 11/18/06, Peter Kirk wrote:

> I don't know much about this work, but it has attracted two very bad
> "spotlight reviews" at Amazon,
> http://www.amazon.com/Hebrew-Thought-Compared-Greek-Thorleif/dp/0393005348.
> Here is one of them, apparently from a scholar called Williams at UCLA:

I would guess this is Dr. William M. Schniedewind whose email is listed as
williams AT humnet.ucla.edu in this webpage:
http://www.nelc.ucla.edu/Faculty/Schniedewind.htm

> > This book assumes the peculiarity of the Hebrew language to make a
> > theological point. Unfortunately, the author does not make a
> > systematic analysis of either Hebrew or Greek. The arguments of the
> > book were completely demolished by James Barr (Regius Professor of
> > Hebrew at Oxford University) in his book, The Semantics of Biblical
> > Language. While I would urge everyone to study Hebrew (and Greek)
> > because it will open up new insights into the Scriptures, this facile
> > treatment of Hebrew is not really worthwhile.

> These are my thoughts exactly, on the basis of what you and Karl have
> described of Boman's work. Go away and read Barr, and then reevaluate Boman.

Yitzhak Sapir