Biblical Hebrew Forum

["Rolf Furuli" <furuli AT online.no>]

Dear list-members,

The post I am responding to is the sort of post I thought I would never see
on b-hebrew; it is a personal attack! I ask the moderators to give advice to
the list regarding such posts.

Yitzhak writes: "This post is not really so much about Rolf
himself, but a direct criticism of his thesis."  First, he has not read my
thesis, so how can he criticize it? Second, he accuses me of lieing,
claiming that I believe I have the right to lie under particular
circumstances; he claims there is an  agenda  behind my dissertation, and
worst
of all, he accuses me of scholarly dishonesty, by having manipulated my
data - all this without having read the thesis.
I categorically deny all this.


Yitzhak´s basic error is that he comments on things where he has no
firsthand knowledge, and that he believes gossip and slander found on the
Internet, even initiating some himself.



----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Yitzhak Sapir" <yitzhaksapir AT gmail.com>
To: "b-hebrew" <b-hebrew AT lists.ibiblio.org>
Sent: Monday, March 19, 2007 2:11 AM
Subject: [b-hebrew] Hidden Agendas in Rolf's Thesis, Methods and Data


> On 3/18/07, Yitzhak Sapir wrote:
> > On 3/18/07, Rolf Furuli wrote:
> >
> > > My dissertation is not published privately but by Awatu Publishers,
> > > Oslo
> > > Norway (awatu AT online.no), and it is
> > > distributed by Eisenbrauns. I know that the publisher has sent
> > > exemplars
> > > for  a peer-review to several scholarly journals.
>
> > To sum up:
> > 1) Awatu Publishers is a Norwegian based publishing company.
> > 2) Someone in Norway went through to the trouble of saying a study of
> > yours
> > which was published by Awatu Publishers was published privately, implying
> > that it is your own publishing company.
> > 3) The address of Awatu Publishers matches your address in the phonebook
> > and another website.
> > 4) Awatu Publishers appears to have published only two books, both of
> > them
> > by you.
> > 5) Awatu Publishers has no website or independent phone number or
> > address.
> > 6) Awatu's email address and your email address are both at the same
> > hosting company.
> >
> > In contrast, you imply that Awatu Publishers is not a private publishing
> > company of yours and that you know that the publisher has sent exemplars
> > to several scholarly journals.
> >
> > I note that the statement that you know that the publisher sent exemplars
> > etc. is not inconsistent with the contrary claim that you are the
> > publisher.
> >
> > I am not going to state anything categorical about you, or Awatu, and
> > only
> > say that list members can draw their own private conclusions.  Like
> > anything
> > else, it is just evidence.  Each person is entitled to his or her own
> > interpretation
> > of that evidence.

RF
I have not tried to deceive Yitzhak; that is only his imagination!
As for book publishing, please consider the following:
Several scholars at the University of Oslo have reacted against the
publishing situation in Europe (it may be different other places). We write
articles for scholarly journals, and the University library must buy these
journals at a high price. Two months ago the library stopped the
subscription
"packet" of journals from a big publisher because of the price. So
students have to get particular articles from other places.
The big publishers publish our books and we have no rights. To give an
example: if I
were to publish a book at one particular European publishers, the publisher
would sell the book at a very high price, and I would not get a dime in
royalties, and the publisher would have all the rights. The publisher´s
philosophy
is: "We publish your work, and therefore you get a good name in the
scholarly world, so you need no compensation." A group of scholars in Oslo
have united to circumvent this situation; there is a "joint venture" where
several scholars and other persons work together in order to publish books
that
we and other scholars have written. Awatu Publishers is a part of this
project, and several persons participate in behalf of Awatu Publishers; it
is not a "private publisher". A "private publisher," as I understand the
word, is a person who himself publishes a book he has written without doing
so through a registered corporation.


snip

.  It is more important to me whether
> they were reviewed by experts.  Indeed,  Rolf attempts furthermore to
> suggest he has passed the book on to peer-reviewed journals to review
> the book.  But obviously a review written in a peer-reviewed journal would
> at most be itself reviewed.  The book itself was not reviewed before
> publication, which is what peer review means.

I understand the concept "peer-review" in relation to a book as a review by
somone who is an expert in the field covered by the book. Most such reviews
are published a rather long time after the publication of the book. This
will also happen with my book.

snip


> Later I also considered the issue of methodology which I have been
> pressing the last few days.  Indeed, Rolf did not deny or substantiate his
> methodology.  He admitted he was "not perfect".  But what if the flawed
> methodology was not just a failure to be perfect, what if it is also a
> tool.
> What if Rolf intentionally uses flawed methodology?  This came, anyway
> after I started reading the following article.
>
> But at this point I remembered that mention I happened upon so long ago
> about Jehovah's Witnesses and deception.  After a little searching I found
> the following:
>
> "Lying in Court and Religion: An Analysis of the Theocratic Warfare
> Doctrine of the Jehovah's Witnesses", by Jerry Bergman, PhD.
> Cultic Studies Review, Vol. 1, No. 2, 2002
>
> One can read it at: http://www.freeminds.org/doctrine/lyingincourt.doc
> or an html version generated by google at:
> http://209.85.129.104/search?q=cache:ogGtJJYm-fYJ:www.freeminds.org/doctrine/lyingincourt.doc

> Now, Rolf's other book by "Awatu" aka Rolf was criticised for expounding a
> Jehovah's Witness chronology in the guise of academic study.  Maybe this
> book is to be criticised for expounding a Jehovah's Witness verbal system
> in the guise of academic study.  That is, this isn't a simple
> revolutionary
> attempt to read the verbal system of Hebrew.  It is an attempt to defend a
> Jehovah's Witness outlook on the verbal system.  For example, perhaps
> let us assume that because of some lack of expertise on the part of NWT
> translators, some verbs which were intended past were translated future.
> Rolf's study then comes to an aid and says that this is not a problem
> because it is not that NWT translators got it wrong.  It is that we don't
> understand the verbal system of Hebrew.
>
> There is nothing wrong, of course, with a fresh new study of the verbal
> system of Hebrew.  There is nothing wrong with a revolutionary reading
> of the verbal system.  What would come out of the above is that the
> study may be an attempt to defend the good name of the Jehovah's
> Witness organization.  In order to do that, it is apparently permissible
> (according to the above article) for Jehovah's Witnesses to deceive
> and outright lie to those who are not entitled to know the truth.  If a
> Jehovah's Witness is not always entitled to know the truth, then
> apparently non-Jehovah's Witnesses on the list certainly fit in the
> category of "enemies."
>
> So there may be an agenda, and a willful attempt to deceive in a study
> such as Rolf, if it is, of course, an attempt to defend the good name of
> the Jehovah's Witness organization.  Circumstantially, it may appear that
> this is the case, and also that indeed deceptions or errors are used.  The
> above tiny example regarding "private publishing" may be a clear case
> where true deception, not an error, has been exposed.  But one is left to
> wonder regarding the errors Peter notes, or the flawed methodology that
> I attempted to pinpoint.  These may not be simple errors or oversights,
> but real tools from the point of view of Rolf.  Most of us do not have at
> our hands the ability to check Rolf's statistics of various hebrew forms.
> But in light of the above, can we trust them?
>
> For me, in any case, the answer is a clear resounding No.  I normally
> accept the good will and intentions of those who put their efforts into
> studying a subject, even if they are "fundamentalist-minded", as Rolf
> may be described and as I originally viewed Rolf.  When I originally
> wrote to Rolf that his other verse example to contrast with 1 Kings 6:1
> is methodologically flawed because it doesn't exist, I viewed that as
> secondary.  But it is now clear to me that Rolf could conceivably and
> in my view, very probably has, made up and invented data for the
> advancement of his position.

RF
It is a very strong accusation that a scholar "has made up and invented data
for the advancement of his position", and that he believes he is authorised
to lie.

First I will say that it appears that
Yitzhak has little or no background in linguistics. Most books dealing with
linguistic matters abound with examples that are created by the authors in
order to illustrate particular points. To say that my methodology is flawed
because I used a created example to illustrate how our knowledge of the
world can influence our interpretation, is pure nonsense, linguistically
speaking.

Second, I will point out that the dissertation work was supervised by two
scholars, one who is a
linguist, and the other who is a Semitist, and the comittee who decided that
it was worthy
for the doctoral degree consisted of very experienced Semitists, one German,
one American, and one Israeli scholar. If  irregularities existed, these
five would naturally
have the bestchance to detect them, rather than one who has not read the
dissertation.
The dissertation is a study of text and not of theoretical matters. Thus,
2,106 passages with 4,261 verbs are discussed. This is 7.4 percent of all
the verbs used as predicates in the Tanakh. This is a big amount of data -
it is enough to
show that some data  "are made up and invented" if that is the case.

Third, the dissertation is not made in order to defend a particular Bible
translation.  Naturally, its conclusions corroborates many of the renderings
of modern translations whose translators had a different view of the Hebrew
verbal system. For example, it corroborates the rederings of WAYYIQTOLs in
the French "La Bible traduite et présenée par André Choraqui" and the
English New World Translation, but it contradicts some of the renderings of
QATALs with future references in these translatons.


> I welcome the study by George Athas.  I am not saying a new reading
> of the Hebrew verbal system is out of place.  I also think most Jehovah
> Witness members of this list are probably wholesome in their intentions,
> although I would probably be double checking from now on.  But I cannot
> trust the data, conclusions, and methods as discussed by Rolf.  I must
> conclude that they could be heavily doctored to an agenda that
> attempts to justify Jehovah's Witnesses' view and translation of
> the Bible, to the point where the data would not just be deceptive, but
> be even totally made up.
>
> I suppose that from my point of view, no "yiqtol" so clearly and
> succinctly
> displays the problems in Rolf's thesis than the one in Exodus 23:7a.

RF
Exodus 23:7 NIV says: "Have nothing to do with a false charge and do not put
an innocent or honest man to death, for I will not acquit the guilty."

These are fine words to take to heart. Yitzhak does not know me, and he has
not read my dissertation, but he believes gossip and slander found on the
Internet. On this basis he ascribes a particular religious view to me,
including that I believe I am authorised to lie. From this he draws the
conclusion that my dissertation has a particular religious agenda, and that
the data are heavily doctored - without producing a single thread of
evidence from the dissertation itself.  So I ask the list-members to have
nothing to do with a false charge, as long as the charge is not verified and
shown to be correct.


> Yitzhak Sapir
> _______________________________________________
> b-hebrew mailing list
> b-hebrew AT lists.ibiblio.org
> http://lists.ibiblio.org/mailman/listinfo/b-hebrew


Best regards,

Rolf Furuli
University of Oslo