Biblical Hebrew Forum

[dwashbur AT nyx.net]

Wow.  Let's talk about personal attacks and labeling, shall we?

On 28 Jan 2009 at 10:47, Gabe Eisenstein wrote:

> 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
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Dave Washburn