Biblical Hebrew Forum

[K Randolph <kwrandolph AT gmail.com>]

Thanks, Yigal:

On Sat, Feb 13, 2010 at 10:43 PM, Yigal Levin <leviny1 AT mail.biu.ac.il>wrote:

> Okay, people, this has gone far enough. Jim, James, Karl and everyone else
> has had ample opportunity to re-state your well-known positions. Questions
> about language, geography, the text itself are allowed. Further blanket
> statements about the historicity of the narratives is off-limits.
>
> Thank you,
>
> Yigal Levin
>
> Co-Moderator, B-Hebrew
>

The only blanket statement I want to make on history is that we can’t make
blanket statements.

1) There is no such thing as “secular history”. What is called that is based
on records that are just as much religious as the Bible.

2) No modern reconstruction of history is not without problems, gaps of
understanding, and contradictions to other historical records. Therefore
none are to be taken as the last word.

3) Academics are human, just as prone to corrupting their specialty as any
other human activity. Therefore the claim that certain teachings are
academic consensus does not necessarily mean that they are accurate.

My last long response to James came out stronger than I intended — I meant
for them to be examples, not as definite statements. Outside of faith, it is
impossible to make certain correlations between all versions of ancient
histories.

So let’s stick to the language.

Karl W. Randolph.