Biblical Hebrew Forum

[K Randolph <kwrandolph AT gmail.com>]

Yigal, Yitzhak, Stoney, et al.:

This reaction caught me by surprise, not only Yitzhak’s open complaint, but
others I got privately.

We who are Biblical literalists, both Christian and Jews, are repeatedly
subjected to having our opinions labeled by the pejorative “myth” with its
connotation that it is not true. Oh, we are told, we should not take
offense, because it is being used in a technical way, but even in that
technical sense the pejorative understanding still leaks through.

Now I called another belief concerning the Bible “myth” because it is based
on a religious faith that goes back to ancient Greece, if not earlier.
Although it is by far the majority faith in academia today, it has no basis
in science or history, and like the myths of yore, it is used to give an
overarching narrative to explain our world and our lives. It is in every way
a “myth” in the technical terminology of academia.

I did not expect those who use “myth” in the technical sense to take
offense: after all, they expect us not to take offense when they use it to
describe our beliefs. Further, I expected it to be understood in the
academic technical sense. But I see I was wrong.

(No, this was not an experiment. I was genuinely surprised at the reaction.)

2010/7/14 Yigal Levin <leviny1 AT mail.biu.ac.il>

> Dear Yitzhak,
>
> While your arguments below are (as usual) both informative and contribute
> to the discussion, your attack on Karl is absolutely uncalled for. We know
> that Karl's views are not in line with most of modern scholarship. He admits
> this freely, and usually limits his comments to the Hebrew language.


Actually, I suspect that my views on the language deviate in only a very
small way, maybe no more than 1 to 2%, from most modern scholarship. After
all, I do have to make sense of the same book that they are working with,
namely Tanakh.


>
> Thank you,
>
>
> Yigal Levin
>
> Co-moderator, B-Hebrew
>
> Karl W. Randolph.