Biblical Hebrew Forum

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

On 8/14/07, Kenneth Greifer wrote:
> I looked up "Isaac Fried" on Google and I found in WorldCat that 81
> university libraries have his book "The Analytic and Synthetic Etymology of
> the Hebrew Language." Also, iTanakh run by Christopher Heard (a professor)
> has his book listed as a resource for academic study.

I contacted Christopher Heard on the issue, and he pointed out the following
from his website:

== from "About iTanakh" ==
Similarly, "academic" has been rather broadly conceived in the
compilation of iTanakh's indexes. The editor's agreement or
disagreement with any particular interpretive or theological position
does not determine inclusion or exclusion (though it may, admittedly,
determine priority in how quickly a resource gets on the list). For
example, both preterist and futurist interpretations of, say, the book
of Daniel or Deutero-Zechariah are considered to be relevant to the
purposes of scholarly study of the Hebrew Bible, despite the personal
and professional judgments of iTanakh's editor as to which of these
approaches is preferable.
== end quotation ==

> If you can get universities to buy your book, someone somewhere must have
> recommended it (I guess).

You already located his promotional announcement..

> Doesn't this show that some people are interested in his ideas, or at least
> consider them worth studying?

If you publish a book, people of all sorts will read it.  But the
question is what
scholars think.  Instead of website resource listings, a better way is
to look up
academic reviews of the book in relevant journals.  This will also allow you 
to
get a more rounded picture of the issue discussed by the book.  I am not aware
of any reviews of the book yet, but maybe that's because the book was
published around 2004.

Yitzhak Sapir