Biblical Hebrew Forum

[Gabe Eisenstein <gabe AT cascadeaccess.com>]

I can't stand reading anymore of this "science is just another 
ideology/faith" stuff. Not only does Karl not understand the basic 
nature of science (for example, his picture of competing "ideologies" 
cannot explain why the whole vast edifice of modern biology works as it 
does -- why one "ideology" has created modern technological civilization 
while the other simply pours out verbiage), this notion of ideologies 
logically reduces to complete relativism, where everyone is free to 
choose his own premises.

Instead of talking about faith and ideology, a philosopher would say 
that there are different language-games involved here, with different 
paradigms of inference. The real mistake is to think that scholars 
(mainstream university scholars) and fundamentalists share some common 
notions of truth and evidence. They do not, and it is the misfortune of 
this list to be a forum for such utter miscommunication.

In the case of Deuteronomy, there is much more to the theory of its 
7th-century origin than just the note about its being "found" in the 
Temple. There is the body of laws that contradict the early laws of 
Exodus, and do so in exactly the ways that would be needed if local 
shrines had been allowed before but were now being banned, in line with 
a new centralized system. And of course there are the great stylistic 
differences, as well as a different theological mindset. (See Moshe 
Weinberg's great book on this.) All of these things must remain hidden 
from fundamentalists, in the same way that the contents of biology are 
hidden from them.

Getting back to the subject of Hebrew... I recall that in answering a 
question of mine about the third-person ending NW (with "nun 
energicum"), Yitzhak Sapir gave an explanation that involved "The 
original reconstruction of the verb way back when before Hebrew", and 
presupposed a linguistic evolution. I also note that, in addition to the 
work of Hurvitz on stages in the development of Hebrew mentioned here 
previously, there are books along the same lines by Robert Polzin, Gary 
Rendsburg and Ziony Zevit. This is the kind of thing I would love to see 
examined by the Hebrew scholars here, but it is anathema to the 
fundamentalists.

So I would like to see the fundamentalists get their own list or website 
(just as Karl often harangues poor Jim to do), and leave this list to 
scholars.


Gabe Eisenstein