On 3/18/07, Yitzhak Sapir wrote:
On 3/18/07, Rolf Furuli wrote:
> My dissertation is not published privately but by Awatu Publishers,
> Oslo
> Norway (awatu AT online.no), and it is
> distributed by Eisenbrauns. I know that the publisher has sent
> exemplars
> for a peer-review to several scholarly journals.
To sum up:
1) Awatu Publishers is a Norwegian based publishing company.
2) Someone in Norway went through to the trouble of saying a study of
yours
which was published by Awatu Publishers was published privately, implying
that it is your own publishing company.
3) The address of Awatu Publishers matches your address in the phonebook
and another website.
4) Awatu Publishers appears to have published only two books, both of
them
by you.
5) Awatu Publishers has no website or independent phone number or
address.
6) Awatu's email address and your email address are both at the same
hosting company.
In contrast, you imply that Awatu Publishers is not a private publishing
company of yours and that you know that the publisher has sent exemplars
to several scholarly journals.
I note that the statement that you know that the publisher sent exemplars
etc. is not inconsistent with the contrary claim that you are the
publisher.
I am not going to state anything categorical about you, or Awatu, and
only
say that list members can draw their own private conclusions. Like
anything
else, it is just evidence. Each person is entitled to his or her own
interpretation
of that evidence.
they were reviewed by experts. Indeed, Rolf attempts furthermore to
suggest he has passed the book on to peer-reviewed journals to review
the book. But obviously a review written in a peer-reviewed journal would
at most be itself reviewed. The book itself was not reviewed before
publication, which is what peer review means.
Later I also considered the issue of methodology which I have been
pressing the last few days. Indeed, Rolf did not deny or substantiate his
methodology. He admitted he was "not perfect". But what if the flawed
methodology was not just a failure to be perfect, what if it is also a
tool.
What if Rolf intentionally uses flawed methodology? This came, anyway
after I started reading the following article.
But at this point I remembered that mention I happened upon so long ago
about Jehovah's Witnesses and deception. After a little searching I found
the following:
"Lying in Court and Religion: An Analysis of the Theocratic Warfare
Doctrine of the Jehovah's Witnesses", by Jerry Bergman, PhD.
Cultic Studies Review, Vol. 1, No. 2, 2002
One can read it at: http://www.freeminds.org/doctrine/lyingincourt.doc
or an html version generated by google at:
http://209.85.129.104/search?q=cache:ogGtJJYm-fYJ:www.freeminds.org/doctrine/lyingincourt.doc
Now, Rolf's other book by "Awatu" aka Rolf was criticised for expounding a
Jehovah's Witness chronology in the guise of academic study. Maybe this
book is to be criticised for expounding a Jehovah's Witness verbal system
in the guise of academic study. That is, this isn't a simple
revolutionary
attempt to read the verbal system of Hebrew. It is an attempt to defend a
Jehovah's Witness outlook on the verbal system. For example, perhaps
let us assume that because of some lack of expertise on the part of NWT
translators, some verbs which were intended past were translated future.
Rolf's study then comes to an aid and says that this is not a problem
because it is not that NWT translators got it wrong. It is that we don't
understand the verbal system of Hebrew.
There is nothing wrong, of course, with a fresh new study of the verbal
system of Hebrew. There is nothing wrong with a revolutionary reading
of the verbal system. What would come out of the above is that the
study may be an attempt to defend the good name of the Jehovah's
Witness organization. In order to do that, it is apparently permissible
(according to the above article) for Jehovah's Witnesses to deceive
and outright lie to those who are not entitled to know the truth. If a
Jehovah's Witness is not always entitled to know the truth, then
apparently non-Jehovah's Witnesses on the list certainly fit in the
category of "enemies."
So there may be an agenda, and a willful attempt to deceive in a study
such as Rolf, if it is, of course, an attempt to defend the good name of
the Jehovah's Witness organization. Circumstantially, it may appear that
this is the case, and also that indeed deceptions or errors are used. The
above tiny example regarding "private publishing" may be a clear case
where true deception, not an error, has been exposed. But one is left to
wonder regarding the errors Peter notes, or the flawed methodology that
I attempted to pinpoint. These may not be simple errors or oversights,
but real tools from the point of view of Rolf. Most of us do not have at
our hands the ability to check Rolf's statistics of various hebrew forms.
But in light of the above, can we trust them?
For me, in any case, the answer is a clear resounding No. I normally
accept the good will and intentions of those who put their efforts into
studying a subject, even if they are "fundamentalist-minded", as Rolf
may be described and as I originally viewed Rolf. When I originally
wrote to Rolf that his other verse example to contrast with 1 Kings 6:1
is methodologically flawed because it doesn't exist, I viewed that as
secondary. But it is now clear to me that Rolf could conceivably and
in my view, very probably has, made up and invented data for the
advancement of his position.
I welcome the study by George Athas. I am not saying a new reading
of the Hebrew verbal system is out of place. I also think most Jehovah
Witness members of this list are probably wholesome in their intentions,
although I would probably be double checking from now on. But I cannot
trust the data, conclusions, and methods as discussed by Rolf. I must
conclude that they could be heavily doctored to an agenda that
attempts to justify Jehovah's Witnesses' view and translation of
the Bible, to the point where the data would not just be deceptive, but
be even totally made up.
I suppose that from my point of view, no "yiqtol" so clearly and
succinctly
displays the problems in Rolf's thesis than the one in Exodus 23:7a.
Yitzhak Sapir
_______________________________________________
b-hebrew mailing list
b-hebrew AT lists.ibiblio.org
http://lists.ibiblio.org/mailman/listinfo/b-hebrew
Archive powered by MHonArc 2.6.24.