Biblical Hebrew Forum

[K Randolph <kwrandolph AT gmail.com>]

Yitzhak:

On Sat, May 23, 2009 at 2:23 PM, Yitzhak Sapir <yitzhaksapir AT gmail.com>wrote:

> On Sat, May 23, 2009 at 11:04 PM, K Randolph wrote:
> > Yitzhak:
> > For once your famed ability to find sources has failed. And for me, again
> > the pitfalls of going from memory—I got it largely right, but slightly
> > wrong. I said no mention, while the article says only a bit player, not
> > major.
>
> Karl, it is your personal interpretation that changing "Only two
> letters from the
> rulers of Hazor were found in the Amarna archive" to "Hazor, which was
> never
> mentioned in any of the letters" is "largely right, but slightly
> wrong."  You have
> a written source in front of you and yet you still changed its wording to
> create
> a fact ("Hazor is not mentioned in any of the [Amarna] letters") out of
> nothing.


Wrong! I had to go out and find a copy of BAR to find where I had gotten the
information. It was then that I realized that I had made a mistake. For you
to state otherwise is to claim that you can read minds. That you have it
wrong shows that you can’t read minds.

>
> In this case we had the source in front of us so we could go ahead an
> correct
> your misunderstanding of the source.  But if this is how you treat an
> article
> from less than half a year ago, what can we say about a lecturer you heard
> years ago?  What if you misunderstood a lecture years ago?  How would we
> be able to correct your misunderstanding?  Will you still insist on facts
> that
> are flat out wrong?


Because you have made an unsupported statement that, in light of other
unsupported statements that you have made, makes me doubt that I can believe
this one. In other words, why should I trust you here?

Then there is also the question of importance I put on the information.

When I read BAR, my first reaction was “That’s interesting” then to go on to
the next subject. I forgot about it, until a question came up that this
statement impinged, at which point I asked myself “What did the article
say?” and tried to answer it from memory.

As for the lecture, I had materials at hand to test every part of the
statement that I could test (went to the Bible) and found that what he said
seems to fit. The only part I couldn’t test directly was the date, but since
what else he said seems correct, I then assumed that the part I couldn’t
test would also be correct.

The one case was a quick read then forget about it until something caused me
to recall it, the other case was where I analyzed it with the tools I had
available. Does it make sense that the recall rates to be different?



> Yitzhak Sapir
>
> P.S. The article ought to mention that Hazor, aside from two letters
> authored
> by the kings of Hazor (EA 227, 228), is also mentioned in two letters from
> Tyre
> and Ashtarot (EA 148, 364).


I debated including that in the quote.

Karl W. Randolph.