From: Carl William Conrad (cwconrad@artsci.wustl.edu)
Date: Mon Jan 26 1998 - 09:25:03 EST
I am sorry to see that this thread is still continuing. I appreciate Ward
Powers' intention in urging against apologies and I am all the more
appreciative of Jane Harper's complaint about a response she received to a
message. We do constitute, as Ward noted, a unique community. But it is a
very diverse community of persons from a broad range of competence in
Greek and a broad range of faith-perspectives. What we need to maintain on
the list is a level of courtesy and respect for diversity that avoids
exchanges that directly challenge, threaten, or offend other list-members
who hold different faith-perspectives. This is the fundamental reason why
we discourage general discussion of theological stances or general
questions of Biblical interpretation and endeavor to keep the focus on
Biblical Greek, on how the Greek text of the NT and LXX and related
literature may be legitimately interpreted and the nature of the Biblical
Greek language itself. Surely humor and personal anecdotes are not amiss
and do contribute to the camaraderie of the list. But there's a line
between affable sharing of the personal side of list-members and
exploitation of the list for proclamation of one's own and/or attack upon
another's convictions. Nevertheless there is plenty of latitude between
what is so irrelevant that it doesn't belong on the list and what is
provocative or discourteous. I have myself apologized more than once if I
feel that I've overstepped the line and I'm not going to abrogate the
right to apologize if ever I feel I've given offense--as I know I've done
before.
Carl W. Conrad
Department of Classics, Washington University
One Brookings Drive, St. Louis, MO, USA 63130
(314) 935-4018
cwconrad@artsci.wustl.edu OR cwc@oui.com
WWW: http://www.artsci.wustl.edu/~cwconrad/
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