Biblical Criticism & History Forum - earlywritings.com

Secret Alias wrote: ↑Thu Jan 05, 2023 6:12 pm

Maybe next time you are sitting at Bold's feet you can ask him that question.

I only respected Boid, Baarda and Andrew (Criddle). That's it. Look at Boid's very meagre scholarly productivity. But what do you notice? https://independent.academia.edu/RuairidhB%C3%B3id Two academic papers written in French. He wrote another in German somewhere. Taught Hebrew. Reads Aramaic, Arabic, Greek, Latin. For me that's praiseworthy. But I am crazy.

You've made similar comments before -- even said such scholars are "a different species". But there are many more who can do that sort of thing than I think you realize. Nothing special about it. One over time is able to pick up languages with a little dedication. I have taught French. I speak English and Thai (my French is very rusty now). I read Latin, Greek, Hebrew, French and German -- though two of those a little slowly. It's not a great thing. I know quite a few less educated people who are also multilingual. One can speak and read several languages without having a "great" education in the sense I think you imagine.

How many academic papers have you written in English let alone French or German? It's masterful. Like playing the guitar behind your back, between your legs.

People say that about the Letter to Theodore. "Oh Morton Smith could read Greek." Reading Greek. Teaching Greek. Writing Greek at a high level. Writing Greek in imitation of one Greek writer. Writing Greek in imitation of two Greek writers. Sliding scale of difficulty.

Secret Alias wrote: ↑Thu Jan 05, 2023 8:13 pm How many academic papers have you written in English let alone French or German? It's masterful. Like playing the guitar behind your back, between your legs.

Is it? Not really. Just training.

Secret Alias wrote: ↑Thu Jan 05, 2023 8:27 pm People say that about the Letter to Theodore. "Oh Morton Smith could read Greek." Reading Greek. Teaching Greek. Writing Greek at a high level. Writing Greek in imitation of one Greek writer. Writing Greek in imitation of two Greek writers. Sliding scale of difficulty.

Oh come on, SA. One expects academics in certain fields to be able to work with several languages. It's part of the job description. You are too easily impressed and awed by the mediocre and also the converse -- you fail to recognize serious talent just as badly. Do you want me to link to earlier comments of yours? And if they haven't mastered the languages themselves there are excellent machine tools that make the task very easy nowadays. It's not a big deal. Sorry -- I know too many academics up close, have worked hand in hand with them for years on their research projects, they are not "another species" but simply mostly (not all) intelligent with skills honed by years of training.

One could not even get a university lowly bachelor of arts degree when I went to university unless one acquired a second language.

But answer my question. When did the Kingdom of Israel cease to exist?

Secret Alias wrote: ↑Thu Jan 05, 2023 8:13 pm How many academic papers have you written in English let alone French or German? It's masterful. Like playing the guitar behind your back, between your legs.

To be honest, SA, I had long assumed that YOU could read Hebrew and Greek, too. You periodically copy and paste large swathes of text in Hebrew and Greek so I just assumed you had read it. Otherwise why would you have copied it? I don't care if you can read Hebrew and Greek but maybe you are flattered now that I told you I always assumed you could. You have spoken of your German heritage and I would not have been surprised if you also read German. I just assumed all that as a matter of course.

(I have written too many "academic papers" in my years of study and I would have to be slightly mad to keep writing them now that I am no longer a scholar! What's your excuse! )

Working on a paper now that took me 30 years to write.

When did the Kingdom of Israel cease to exist?

When the Royaume de France ended the République française began. France through and through. A Christian sees "Israel" as some mystical concept that gets "transferred" from one people to another. Not so it seems with Josephus who as I demonstrated sees his people as "Jews." It can be argued that Jews in Europe learned from their Christian masters to see "Israel" as a more flexible, mystical, transferable concept than their ancestors did before the second century period. The modern Israeli notion of Christianity being dependent upon "Judaism" was certainly developed from Protestantism even American Evangelism. I still haven't looked through the Mishnah to see if "Israel" was used to describe the Jewish people. On my to do list.

Secret Alias wrote: ↑Fri Jan 06, 2023 10:53 am

When did the Kingdom of Israel cease to exist?

When the Royaume de France ended the République française began. France through and through. A Christian sees "Israel" as some mystical concept that gets "transferred" from one people to another. Not so it seems with Josephus who as I demonstrated sees his people as "Jews." It can be argued that Jews in Europe learned from their Christian masters to see "Israel" as a more flexible, mystical, transferable concept than their ancestors did before the second century period. The modern Israeli notion of Christianity being dependent upon "Judaism" was certainly developed from Protestantism even American Evangelism. I still haven't looked through the Mishnah to see if "Israel" was used to describe the Jewish people. On my to do list.

Analogies can be misleading. There is an enormous gulf between the evolution of modern western nation-states and the nature of ancient Levantine kingdoms based on geography and ethnic regions. One cannot transfer modern "nationalist" identities with anything in the ancient world.

Were you attempting to respond in an evasive way to my question: When did the Kingdom of Israel identified in the archaeological evidence come to an end?