Biblical Hebrew Forum

["K Randolph" <kwrandolph AT gmail.com>]

Peter:

I agree with you that the labels are inappropriate. For one, they are
not connected with the languages used, as, for example, the New
Testament, written in Greek, used "Hebrew Thought" while much of the
Talmud, written in Mishnaic Hebrew and Aramaic, used "Greek Thought".
But these are the labels handed down to me from before I was born.

The labels have historical roots: "Hebrew Thought" is that found in
Tanakh, a book written in Hebrew, while "Greek Thought" is found among
the Greek philosophers written in Greek and their followers, and,
incidentally, among most world religions.

It never occurred to me that there may have been racist roots to the
labels. You may be right.

So what would you label the two different, ways of thinking? In other
words, how do you deal with a situation where there are labels already
in widespread use, but where you disagree with them?

Yitzhak's response indicates that he did not understand my posting.
His response is a side issue, a red-herring so to speak, except not a
true red-herring in that it is not deliberate necessary for a true
red-herring, but the result of not understanding. He uses Greek
Thought to claim that his objections to a historical reading of Tanakh
is not theological.

Gary Hedrick's response is that the two ways of thinking are
complementary. Maybe so, but my experience indicates that one has to
predominate in one's thinking. This is in order to remain consistent
in one's thinking, logically and rationally.

I did not read Barr as he discusses this point, but I did find one of
his books in the library—it was so full of inaccuracies and
misunderstandings that after reading just a few pages, no more than
about 10–15, I reshelved it in disgust and forgot the title of the
book. Unless his discussion of Boman is of is qualitatively different,
I wouldn't inflict him on anyone.

However, according to people citing him in discussions I had
elsewhere, he is correct in that "Hebrew Thought" is not intrinsic to
the language (countering a common misconception), a rather basic
concept in linguistics, rather it is in how the language is used.

As far as I can tell, Thorleif Boman was a theological liberal, so I
have no idea what theological point he could have been trying to make,
if any.

In closing, "Hebrew Thought" and "Greek Thought" are philosophical
concepts, no more. They are not connected to language (except
historically), ethnicity, culture or other such. I agree that the
labels are not only non-descriptive, but they are also misleading: if
it were my choice, I would use completely different labels. Of the
world's religions that I have studied, only the one described in the
Bible (both Tanakh and New Testament) uses "Hebrew Thought", all the
others use "Greek Thought".

Karl W. Randolph.

On 11/17/06, Peter Kirk <peter AT qaya.org> wrote:
> On 17/11/2006 20:35, K Randolph wrote:
> > A little understanding is needed here.
> >
> > What we are running into here are the differences between what
> > philosophers call "Hebrew Thought" verses "Greek Thought". What
> > follows are a few comparisons:
> >
> > ...
> >
> > Now what we have here is that, philosophically thinking, Yitzhak is
> > Greek, while Harold Holmyard, I and in this case Peter Kirk are all
> > Hebrew. ...
>
> I note that Yitzhak the Hebrew is said to be Greek, whereas Harold, you
> and I, all Gentiles (I think) are said to be Hebrew. That illustrates to
> me the total inappropriateness of labelling these philosophical poles
> "Hebrew" and "Greek". In fact they have very little to do with either
> language or culture, less still to do with race. However, I think they
> do have roots in a period of racism, when "Hebrew" was a label for
> something considered bad and "Greek" for something considered good.
> Therefore I would suggest that making distinctions with these labels has
> no place on this list, or anywhere in the contemporary world.
>
> --
> Peter Kirk
> E-mail:  peter AT qaya.org
> Blog:    http://speakertruth.blogspot.com/
> Website: http://www.qaya.org/