Biblical Hebrew Forum

[Peter Kirk <peter AT qaya.org>]

On 19/11/2006 22:25, K Randolph wrote:
> ...
>
> 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?
>
> ...
>
> 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, thank you for your response. I have to agree that "the labels are 
not only non-descriptive, but they are also misleading", especially 
because of their lack of relationship to language, and also because of 
their links to racism. I wonder if these labels really are in as 
widespread use as you think, among serious thinkers today rather than 
those who prefer to rehash the work of 19th century writers and reject 
most 20th century scholarship. If they really were in widespread use and 
I wanted to write about this subject, I would find alternative labels, 
and define them at the beginning of my work including a reference to the 
more common terminology, and my reason for introducing new terminology.

--
Peter Kirk
E-mail:  peter AT qaya.org
Blog:    http://speakertruth.blogspot.com/
Website: http://www.qaya.org/