Biblical Hebrew Forum

[James Spinti <jspinti AT eisenbrauns.com>]

Again, apologies if this posts twice, but John was experiencing difficulties 
posting.

James
________________________________
James Spinti
E-mail marketing, Book Sales Division
Eisenbrauns, Good books for more than 35 years
Specializing in Ancient Near Eastern and Biblical Studies
jspinti at eisenbrauns dot com
Web: http://www.eisenbrauns.com
Phone: 260-445-3118
Fax: 574-269-6788
> 
> Begin forwarded message:
> 
>> From: John Cook <jacookvwbus AT yahoo.com>
>> Date: December 12, 2012, 11:13:47 AM EST
>> To: "b-hebrew AT lists.ibiblio.org" <b-hebrew AT lists.ibiblio.org>
>> Subject: Re. More on verbs
>> 
>> Dear Rolf, James, et al.
>> 
>> My apologies if you feel offended. My remarks were never ad hominem, but 
>> of course in academia very many scholars have difficulty distinguishing 
>> ideas from their own identity. Ideas we should be able to call "silly" 
>> without getting accused of ad hominem attacks (BTW Merriam Webster defines 
>> silly as "exhibiting a lack of common sense or sound judgement." Some 
>> theories do indeed lack common sense (e.g., wrt Michel's synchronic 
>> theory: if wayyiqtol and yiqtol have drastically different meanings almost 
>> all the time, isn't it common sense to admit they are two different grams 
>> the are partially homonymous, even if their etymological distinction is 
>> rejected?) or sound judgment (e.g., see my JNES review of your book, Rolf, 
>> available here: 
>> http://ancienthebrewgrammar.files.wordpress.com/2011/04/cook-2010-jnes-revfuruli.pdf).
>> 
>> Of course the irony that makes me chuckle is that your b-hebrew post is a 
>> response all wrapped up around "definitions" in response to my blog post 
>> pleading that we get BEYOND these questions! Come now, we must honestly 
>> admit that b-hebrew is known for its lack of periodic ad-hominem attacks 
>> and for getting stalled in discussions—I admit I'm a regular lurker but I 
>> refrain from posting for just such reasons.
>> 
>> But as long as you insist on dancing around definitions, let me defend my 
>> use of special pleading. As you cite in the definition, the meaning 
>> includes "alleging a need to apply additional considerations." Or, to use 
>> a more respectable source, Merriam Webster defines it more succinctly as 
>> follows: "the allegation of special or new matter to offset the effect of 
>> matter pleaded by the opposite side and admitted, as distinguished from a 
>> direct denial of the matter pleaded." I've already linked to my JNES 
>> review of your work, and my point is amply made there: you acknowledge 
>> that better than 93% of wayyiqtol forms refer to past events, but you use 
>> the special pleading of pragmatics versus semantics (temporal location 
>> versus tense) to dismiss the common sense identification of wayyiqtol as 
>> encoding past tense. Admittedly it is important to distinguish pragmatics 
>> from semantics, but you apply the term pragmatics so unrealistically 
>> broadly as to include just about any knowledge of the real world to 
>> exclude some common sense semantic interpretation (just see the example of 
>> 1 Kings 6:1 in my review or my previous b-hebrew post on Gen 2:19.
>> 
>> Similarly, your engage in special pleading when you claims that "it is not 
>> obvious that it [aspect] as the same nature" in different languages (see 
>> the full quote in the review). What does this mean when scholars are 
>> making immense strides in a wide variety of languages all around the world 
>> using the basic definitions that are found to be equally applicable across 
>> all languages (look at WALS online, Bybee et al.'s book, Dahl's work—there 
>> are hundreds upon hundreds of languages that have been successfully 
>> analyzed using the agreed upon definition of aspect). Your claim amounts 
>> to saying that ancient Hebrew speakers were simply incapable of speaking 
>> about certain types of events or events in certain ways (or else we have 
>> some retrojection of the idea of Holy Spirit Greek into Hebrew!). This 
>> idea (not you) is silly.
>> 
>> I don't mean to diminish the contribution of Michel's study; it is very 
>> important, but it is also extremely crippled by this silly assumption that 
>> since wayyiqtol and yiqtol look so much alike they must be semantically 
>> related—this in the face of a plethora of data that say otherwise. On this 
>> point, the diachronics are a mere side-issue: they clearly don't exhibit 
>> the same meaning in the same text except in few and uncertain cases. (BTW 
>> I address wayyiqtol in poetry in the fourth chapter of my book where one 
>> can find the stark contrast of approach between myself an Michel; you, 
>> Rolf, will be especially pleased that my argument is largely built on 
>> attention to the distinctness and interaction between semantics and 
>> pragmatics!)
>> 
>> John A. Cook
>> http://ancienthebrewgrammar.wordpress.com/
>> 
>> 
>> -----------------------------
>> 
>> Message: 8
>> Date: Wed, 12 Dec 2012 07:56:51 +0100
>> From: "Rolf" <rolf.furuli AT sf-nett.no>
>> Subject: Re: [b-hebrew] More on verbs
>> To: b-hebrew AT lists.ibiblio.org
>> Message-ID: <3ee0-50c82a80-23-1ae010a0@210425284>
>> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8"
>> 
>> Dear James,
>> 
>> A basic principle of the discussions on b-hebrew is that we treat other 
>> persons and their views with respect. We can disagree with other members, 
>> even having strong disagreements. But we do not, or at least, we should 
>> not, use ad hominem attacks,  implying that we KNOW and the others do not 
>> know, but they are stupid. John Cook does not meet this standard, 
>> particularly by using the word "silly," and by this implying that other 
>> scholars are stupid persons. He says:
>> 
>> 1) "It is just silly to continue arguing over basic definitions that are 
>> widely agreed upon already, because it both wastes time and halts 
>> progress." But this is exactly the way science works! Scientific progress 
>> is caused by scholars who questions established "facts" and try to go new 
>> ways. Cook has certain definitions of aspect, and many others agree. I for 
>> one do not accept these definitions, but calling my approach "silly" 
>> (=stupid), that it "wastes time" and "halts progress" shows a lack of 
>> respect for me as a scholar.
>> 
>> Cook says:
>> 
>> 2) "I made just this point in my review of Furuli?s work, which he 
>> continues to defend on b-Hebrew by special pleading about the unique 
>> character of aspect in Hebrew." I challenge Cook to give a detailed 
>> description on b-hebrew of how I use "special pleading."  Wickipedia gives 
>> the following definition:
>> 
>> "Special pleading, also known as stacking the deck, ignoring the 
>> counterevidence, slanting, and one-sided assessment,[1] is a form of 
>> spurious argument where a position in a dispute introduces favourable 
>> details or excludes unfavourable details by alleging a need to apply 
>> additional considerations without proper criticism of these 
>> considerations. Essentially, this involves someone attempting to cite 
>> something as an exemption to a generally accepted rule, principle, etc. 
>> without justifying the exemption.
>> 
>> So I ask Cook: What counterevidence have I ignored? What unfavorable 
>> details have I excluded? Where do I cite something as an exemption to a 
>> general rule without justifying the exemption?
>> 
>> Cook says:
>> 
>> 3)  "The silliness of the consciously synchronic approaches is enough to 
>> demonstrate that point (not Joosten, but e.g., Diethelm Michel)"  Again a 
>> scholar is said to be stupid; this time it is D. Michel. I find the study 
>> of Michel to be an important contribution to the study of Hebrew verbs. He 
>> proceeds along new ways, and particularly his use of the Psalms to analyze 
>> the WAYYIQTOL form rather than using narratives, where the verb must have 
>> past reference, and we cannot know whether the past reference is pragmatic 
>> or semantic, is important. In my view, Cook has not succeeded in showing a 
>> DIACHRONIC grammaticalization process for the WAYYIQTOL form, which is a 
>> basic task of his work. Nevertheless, I find his dissertation to be a fine 
>> scholarly work.
>> 
>> 4) According to Cook,  A. Andrason of the University of Stellenbosch lacks 
>> "a clear grasp of Hebrew data." His approach is "naive and unhelpful," and 
>> "his theory remains at the theoretical level and is virtually useless for 
>> the philological task if decipering the biblical Hebrew text." And, there 
>> is a "fatal flaw in the flurry of publications from Alexander Andrason." 
>> Thus, Andrason is stupid as well, according to Cook.
>> 
>> I do not find Cook's article to be "a nice overview," but rather a 
>> one-sided judgment of the works of other scholars without showing these 
>> scholars the respect they deserve.
>> 
>> 
>> Best regards,
>> 
>> 
>> Rolf Furuli
>> Stavern
>> Norway