> Filoi,
>
> I get the impression, from a number of posts on this list (and other
> lists as well) that being an inerrantist is being unscholarly - it's
> as
> though the attitude is well, "you're an inerrantist - that speaks for
> itself - you can't be a thinking scholar and an inerrantist". In other
>
> words "only a complete moron would be an inerrantist."
>
> Is this what people think - That's the impression I get anyway.
>
This is a complex issue and, I assume appropriate for discussion
from the aspect of how either faith or paradigm tendentiousness impacts
scholarship. Any scientific discipline should be neutral and self
challenging. Churchill was right on target when he called the study
of Greek a "joy." I remember my first lessons at Johns Hopkins when
I was but a lad. I must have read Paul's "love song" at 1 Cor 13 a
hundred times in my Elizabethan KJV and thought it was..well...nice,
but when I first read it in Greek, I got those chills that climb one's
spine
when hearing a beautiful piece of music...I still do. I understand and
share the graecist's passion and love for the language.
The point here is that the Love Song is in Paul's own language and
set down just as it sprang from his mind. His language is his signature
and when we read Paul we feel and sense the man himself. Much the
same can be said of Mark with his unique style. After a while, you get
to *know* these people and to see their personalities in the very words
that rose from the wellspring of the experiences.
I do not get this same sense when I read the words of Jesus
translated
to Greek by the NT authors. The Aramaic, however, sends those chills.
The point of all this is that my "chill factor" is not scholarship. It
cannot
be quantified or duplicated. Neither can paradigms of faith simply
because
there are now over 21,000+ various and contradictory "faith forms" of
Christianity.
The Greek of the NT gives me a sense of the author of the text and
not
Jesus of Nazareth. Aramaic allows me to get a sense of the mind of
Jesus. ALL Aramaic is not retroversion but that also is vaid
methodology.
The NT is rife with Aramaisms and that is natural. It is an enhancement
of the study of NT Greek to look to the Aramaic substrata where it
exists.
I find the "Greek Only" paradigm of some graecists to be as limiting as
the "inerrantist" position in attempting to look at the pre-Hellenistic
"mind and culture" of Jesus.
The Gospelers used both oral and written traditions that came from
the Aramaic speaking community of the first generation. Yes, I do
think that Jesus was competent in Greek and used it on occasion. I also
think he was knowledgable in Hebrew. I don't know when these
sayings were first translated to Greek that gave rise to the putative
"Q"
and GThomas but our Greek-speaking Gospel authors used them,
hence it is enlightening to use whatever methodology is available,
form criticism, literary criticism, retroversion, to try to understand
passages more clearly. Using these methodologies, a number of
enigmatic passages in Greek "light up" in Aramaic with an original
idiom not preserved in Greek. Accordingly, I do not understand
the apoplexy generated among some graecists when the word Aramaic
rises.
Tendentiousness of any form is an obstacle to scholarship.
Jack
-- Dâman dith laych idneh dânishMA nishMA Jack Kilmon (jpman@accesscomm.net)