Biblical Hebrew Forum

[Harold Holmyard <hholmyard3 AT earthlink.net>]

Gabe,
> 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.
>   

HH: I'm not defending what Karl said. But it is believers in God who 
enabled and developed a scientific viewpoint. It was people who assumed 
an order in the universe because of a Creator. Many university scientist 
are believers.
> 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.
>   

HH: All people who believe in truth share some common ideas about evidence.
> 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.
>   

HH: What body of laws are you talking about that contradict the laws in 
Exodus?

> 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.
>   

HH: People who believe the Bible study Ugaritic, Phoenician, and West 
Semitic and consider how they may have influenced the Hebrew language. 
The idea that biblical faith is somehow opposed to scholarship is false. 
Karl does not regularly consult or easily accept the findings of Bible 
dictionaries, grammars, translations, and commentaries. He has a unique 
perspective based on reading the biblical text without pointing and 
deriving most of his conclusions from his own insights into what the 
text might mean.

Yours,
Harold Holmyard
>