Translating my thoughts into words.
Scenes From A Multiverse – A daily comic about life by Jon Rosenberg (a fellow Cornellian). He does bring up some good points. (Oh, and in case you don’t read the title above the comic, in which case you probably aren’t reading this either, the piratey looking fellow being interviewed is “Original God.” All installments can be found here.)
“Nothing is esteemed a miracle, if it ever happens in the common course of nature.”
— David Hume, Enquiries Concerning Human Understanding, Section X, Part 1, para. 91.
It seems to me one of the things that the Jesus Seminar so frequently forgets is that the Gospel writers understood miracles just as did Hume. They were describing something outside of the normal course of nature, that is, something miraculous.
Duane of Abnormal Interests offers This Isn’t Kindergarten in response to James’ ”Essential Languages for New Testament Study” which was, in turn, a follow up to Larry’s discussion of what languages are essential to NT studies. Duane ups the ante quite a bit. Any serious student of the first two centuries CE
needs to know not only Hellenistic Greek, but more than a smattering of Aramaic, Hebrew (including Rabbinic Hebrew), Syriac, Coptic and Latin.
And if you are interested in Hebrew Bible, well let’s just say you better put your linguistic cap on.
A serious student will know Hebrew, Aramaic, Hellenistic Greek, Akkadian including peripheral Akkadian, Ugaritic, Phoenician, Egyptian, and Classical Greek. I think they also need know Hittite.
All of this glossolalia got me thinking about the fact that none of the authors of the NT or the HB knew all or likely even more than three of these languages. Most likely only knew a couple, which is still more than most people today, I will grant you that. But does Duane or any of us really think that the author of Ruth, for example, Akkadian or Ugaritic or Phoenician? Do we really think they knew historical grammar and the development of Northwest Semitic languages? Of course not.
I understand that for us as literary scholars, historians, theologians, archaeologists and the like we need to know a far greater breadth and depth than the author’s whose works we study. Often they are influenced in ways they were unaware of and that is often grist for our scholarly mill. Each scholar takes a different tack based upon our interests and training, some linguistic and others theological, and to investigate those niches we need specialized tools.
But it might just be worthwhile sometimes to remember the original context and the limitations and expectations of the author and his/her audience.
Frankly, these debates exhaust me and I have little use or time for wading through the morass of words generated by all combatants. This was a very nice article, however, from Michael Ruse on the Chronicle of Higher Education, an atheist against the New Atheists. A snippet:
Most of all I detest the New Atheism because I think it is playing into the hands of the Religious Right. The way fundamentalism—scientific creationism, creation science, intelligent-design theory—has been kept out of the biology classes of the nation is by drawing a line between science and religion and arguing that it is a violation of the First Amendment to allow religion (scientific creationism, etc.) into the classrooms. If you blur the science-religion distinction, specifically if you mesh evolution and atheism, then I just don’t see how you can continue that strategy. The fundamentalists argue that since the evolutionists’ position has religious implications, sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander. Either you don’t talk about origins at all or—and they prefer this alternative—you allow talk about everyone’s views on origins.
Do they have a point? Well, I’m inclined to think that they do. There is no question but that any reasonable reading of New Atheist material totally meshes evolution and atheism. Look at the best blog of them all—University of Chicago biology professor Jerry Coyne’s Why Evolution is True. It intersperses quite brilliant discussions of evolutionary topics with diatribes against religion, and makes it very clear that these two are connected. If you are for evolution, you cannot legitimately be for or even tolerant of religion. Accomodationism, as he and others refer to the position I take—that you can keep the two separate—is just not a viable option.
Read it all if this is the sort of thing you like: New Atheism Redux – Brainstorm – The Chronicle of Higher Education.
You think I need more focus? You mean you don't like rambling posts, comics, and iOS tips?
Well, my site may not be as popular as our reigning #1 Biblioblogger, but I think I have figured out why I fare so poorly in the Alexa rankings. It isn’t that I am blogging far less frequently or that people aren’t interested in what I have to say (well, that could be it, but I resolutely refused to accept it; I reject your reality and substitute my own). Rather it is that Alexa ranks my home domain http://targuman.org rather than the blog URL. See, if they would measure my blog’s actual hits rather than the home page (which is very nice looking, by the way, you really should stop by) then I am sure my ranking would be right up there. Easily up to #48. I am sure of it. Absolutely.
