To: "Biblical Hebrew" <b-hebrew AT franklin.oit.unc.edu>
Subject: RE: _)aSHER_ in Ex. 3:14 (was "I AM")
Date: Tue, 22 May 2001 15:45:42 -0500
Oh, dear.
I apologize to both Greg and Peter (Daniel and Trevor, too) for having
delayed my response to their much-valued postings and thus giving occasion
for this matter to get out of hand. My excuse is that I am trying to get
my ducks in a row and present a less offhand, more considered response,
which will follow in due course.
For the record (although I am grateful for Peter's defense) I was neither
annoyed nor intimidated by Greg's remarks. On the contrary one of the
pleasures of this list is the passion its participants invest in the
discussion, and if Greg expressed himself a trifle emphatically, why, as
Bernard Shaw says, "Effectiveness of assertion is the alpha and omega of
style."
Greg has, moreover, already been considerably exercised on the subject at
issue in the course of the debate over nominals. And I quite appreciate
his irritation at the intrusion of a confessed amateur into the substance
of his profession. Perhaps "I know more Hebrew than you" is an ad hominem
argument; but it's a fact, and I concede a relevant one.
And by the way: I don't claim that my "literary scholarship" confers any
particular authority. You can walk into any college library and pick up a
thousand works by guys with same PhD in criticism I hold which exhibit all
the sensitivity to nuance of your average mushroom.