Biblical Hebrew Forum

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

Tory:
OK, so I was wrong concerning the dates for Ptolemy (I was lazy, didn't
check) though I prefaced my statement saying that it was from memory. If I
knew that you would make an issue of it, I would have checked my dates
before posting.

Much of the rest of your response is arguing, and I'm not going there.

On Wed, Apr 23, 2008 at 1:14 AM, Tory Thorpe <torythrp AT yahoo.com> wrote:

> --- K Randolph <kwrandolph AT gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > > I did not say, not to discuss dates, rather not to
> > argue about them. For
> > example, was Daniel written by an official in the
> > court of Nebuchadnezzar,
> > or was it written about 150 BC? I and some others
> > take the former, others on
> > this list insist on the latter: therefore we have
> > made a gentleman's
> > agreement to disagree, and not to argue about dates.
>
>
> You said "arguing dates is off list for this group"
> which sounds like something a moderator would say if
> arguing dates related to the composition of a Jewish
> authored text in biblical Hebrew or Aramaic was
> against list rules. If all it is is a gentleman's
> agreement between you and some others here, then you
> and the others should opt not to participate in the
> arguments.
>
> The rule on this list is not to start them. If you don't believe me, ask
the moderators yourself.

>
> > >
> > >  In scholarship we can continue to
> > speak in dogmatic terms
> > > until the situation changes, and until the balance
> > of probability shifts.
> >
> >
> > This attitude has brought much disrepute to
> > scholarship. If scholars were
> > humble and admitted that there's a certain amount of
> > uncertainty, then what
> > is dogmatically said will be more believable.
>
>
> A good scholar is dogmatic about where the balance of
> probability lies. He or she is not trying to win a
> believability contest. If the balance of probability
> should favor a hard to believe theory the good scholar
> is dogmatic about the harder theory because that is
> where the evidence points.
>
> The better the scholar, the more willing he is to admit the limits of his
knowledge and the less dogmatic he is.

The more dogmatic he is, the more likely that dogmaticism is a cover up for
insufficient data. After all, if the data is there, the scholar doesn't need
to be dogmatic, he can just point to the data.

>
> Tory Thorpe
> Modiin, Israel
>

Karl W. Randolph.