Biblical Hebrew Forum

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

On 10/30/07, Dave Washburn wrote:

> > > On 30 Oct 2007 at 8:22, Yigal Levin wrote in part:
> > >
> > > >Since none of us have yet recieved direct prophecy from God, we
> > > > cannot "take on faith" that the authors of the Bible did either.
> > >
> > > This is perhaps the biggest fallacy of all in "modern" scholarship.  
> > > "It hasn't
> > > happened to me or anyone I know, therefore it doesn't happen."  Yes, I
> > > know I'm simplifying, but that's the essence of the argument.  And it's
> > > nothing but a cop-out.
> >
> > The argument is actually more complex.  ... Otherwise, we get into 
> > circular
> > reasoning.
>
> That wasn't what you said.  And I'm not going to get into this any further 
> with you.

If you are referring to what Yigal Levin said, then I'm not Yigal
Levin.  Please don't
ascribe to me things that I did not write.

I also think you misquoted what Yigal wrote ("we cannot 'take on faith'" 
becomes
"it didn't happen"), but Yigal can speak for himself.  To be clear, I am also
in a certain sense voicing a position different from Yigal.

I tried to look in the archives to make sure whether I said anything that 
could
be construed other than what I said here, and it turns out that
apparently I voice
this opinion consistently.  I dealt with it a year ago (Sep 16 2006 or
so) in the
discussion of the dates of Ezra/Nehemiah and I also touched on it in a note
about Ibn Ezra who basically theorized Deutero-Isaiah despite his believing in
prophecy.  When the issue of Daniel and predictive prophecy came up in the
other thread, I thought about discussing it and decided in the end not to do 
so.
I wrote "post-exilic" with the intention of being inclusive of those who date
Daniel early, and there was no reason to turn the discussion into something
it was not.  Maybe I'm missing something, but it really seems to me that you
were thinking of what Yigal wrote and somehow thought that I wrote it.

Yitzhak Sapir