My reply to Robert Turkel's claim that "commentators of all stripes" agreed with his position on the meaning of Hosea 1:4 was originally posted on the old alt.bible.errancy forum and then posted by Joseph Joson on the Tecktonics.Org:Exposed site as "Robert Turkel and His 'Commentators of All Stripes.'" Turkel, being Turkel, posted a typically sarcastic reply to it under the title linked to in the headers above. Joson introduced my article with his own introduction, which Turkel included in his reply, so Joson is the "Mojo Jojo" in Turkel's reply. Whenever Turkel resorts to this kind of antic in his articles, I reply in kind, so I will be referring to him as "Bobby," a diminutive of his real name, which he is known not to like. As I have said before, if Bobby ever decides to debate civilly, I will be happy to reciprocate, but until then, I will respond to him in kind.
To assist readers in following who has said what, I will use the header Till to identify the material in my original article and Turkel to identify Bobby's comments on my original material and on the information in Joson's introduction. Joson will identify comments that he made in the introduction, and Till will identify my replies to Bobby's jabs at Joson and his comments on my original article.
Turkel:
The statement McTill refers to here ["commentators of all stripes"] was
actually removed from
my re-editing [sic] and compiliation [sic] of this debate
several years ago,
which is now found
here,
and which McTill
has ignored for years after scuttling back to the safety of his Errancy
List. In the meantime,
interestingly, McTill has been flummoxed by one of his own Skeptical
readers coming out in
defense of there being no contradiction between 2 Kings and Hosea.
Quite interesting.
Till:
Flummoxed? This word means "baffled" or "perplexed," so what makes
Bobby think that I was
baffled by having a skeptic disagree with me? Skeptics often disagree,
and anyone who has
followed the Errancy list, which,
unlike Bobby, I will
link readers to so that they will have access to the internet forum
that has put so many burrs
under his saddle, know that disagreement among skeptics is commonplace.
Readers of Bobby's
website will find in-house
disagreements unusual, because
they will find no open opposition in his domain, where he exercises
tight controls over what they will see. I suspect that Bobby didn't
mean to say that I was baffled or perplexed by the
opposition of another skeptic but that I had experienced another
emotion, such as dismay or
distress, because if I had been truly baffled, I wouldn't have been
able to rebut the
skeptic's proposed solution to the Jehu problem, which, as I will show
later, I was certainly
able to do. The humor in Bobby's apparent misuse of flummoxed
is that he sees himself
as a linguistic expert, who can see "nuances" in Hebrew that escape
even those knowledgeable
enough in the language to participate in the compiling of English
translations of the Bible,
yet he so often can't even see nuances in his own native language.
In saying that the opposition of another skeptic on the Jehu issue had "flummoxed" me, Bobby "No Links" Turkel, of course, didn't bother to link his readers to the article written by that skeptic and my reply to it. Both were published in the January/February 2001 issue of The Skeptical Review. When Tim Simmons, the skeptic Bobby was referring to, let me know that he had retracted a position he had taken in an earlier article in which he too had said that 2 Kings 10:30-31 and Hosea 1:4 were irreconcilably inconsistent, I told him that I would publish any article he wanted to submit in defense of his new position. This was in keeping with my "open-door" policy--which I maintained through the 12 years that this journal was published and which I still maintain in this forum--that allowed dissenting positions to receive a hearing. (I also maintain a feedback section in this forum, where dissenting views may be posted, a policy that is completely foreign to Bobby, who maintains a closed-door forum, where readers won't have the opportunity to hear both sides of issues that he writes on.) On the date referred to above, I published "The Jehu Solution" by Simmons and my reply to it. Bobby "No Links" didn't let his readers know where they could access these two articles, because his policy is to keep his readers in the dark as much as possible on what opponents of his positions have published. Those who take the time to read the two articles just linked to will see that Simmons presented his case and that I replied to it point by point. Simmons did not submit a rebuttal article, so I assumed that he could see that his "solution" to the Jehu problem, like so many other attempts to solve this problem, was untenable.
Bobby failed to mention that Simmons pointed out in his article that he had found Glenn Miller's solution, which Turkel lauded and appropriated in his exchanges with me on this issue, indefensible and had rejected it in favor of the solution that he submitted. Those who read his article linked to above and my reply to it will see that Simmon's theory, like so many others that have been proposed to eliminate this inconsistency, turned out to be unsatisfactory. The fact that so many contradictory solutions of this problem have been proposed should be sufficient within itself to show that that this inconsistency doesn't exist just in the minds of skeptics trying desperately to find discrepancies in the Bible. It is a real problem, which has required inerrantists to lean over backwards to try to find some way to explain it.
Over the years, I have had many solutions to this problem presented to me. One of the most innovative ones that I encountered was presented by a Christian in Sri Lanka, who came up with the idea that the "son of the prophets" who anointed Jehu to be king didn't command him to go destroy the house of Ahab but had merely prophesied that he would. This apologetic theory claimed that the belief that 1 Kings 10:30-31 and Hosea 1:4 presented conflicting opinions of the massacre at Jezreel has resulted from having mistaken a prophecy spoken by the "son of the prophets" (2 Kings 9:6-10) for a mandate or a command. The Sri Lankan Christian and I debated this theory at length on the old alt.bible.errancy forum until he apparently saw that his interpretation was indefensible and dropped out. It has been posted on this website under the title "Jehu Again" so that readers can see the extremes that biblical inerrantists will go to in order to defend their misguided belief in the inerrancy of documents written in prescientific, superstitious times.
As for Bobby's claim that I "ignored" his "compilation of the debate" for years, I didn't bother to reply to it, because it was just another typical example of his "debating" style in which he (1) substitutes insults and sarcasms for argumentation, (2) selectively replies by skipping rebuttals he can't answer satisfactorily, (3) cites writers who agree with him without bothering to include enough context from his "sources" for readers to evaluate the strength of their positions, and (4) deletes from the original exchanges materials that prove embarrassing to him. In my own three-part compilation of the debate, I have inserted red-print addenda to reply to the new materials that Bobby included and to point out where the four evasive features of his compilation, identified above, occurred in his editing of the original debate. Those who read it will find that it is detailed and documented so that, unlike Bobby's unlinked tirades, sources referred to can be conveniently accessed. I link frequently to Bobby's "articles," because I want discriminating readers to see just how shallow his logic is. He doesn't link to mine because... well, I will just let readers decide why he won't link to them. This reply should give them a clue to how much time and detail I put into my rebuttal articles.
So why am I just now posting these replies to Bobby's editing of the original debate? Well, with other projects that needed my attention, I honestly couldn't see spending time writing a detailed reply to something that Bobby would treat in his usual fashion and that most of his readers would never see anyway because of his refusal to link them to the material of skeptics that he is "answering." Earlier this year, however, I received a personal message from a skeptic who claimed that he has encountered biblical inerrantists who think that I didn't reply to Bobby because I couldn't. I suppose that I am just vain enough to want to show these inerrantists that they are wrong, so this article, my three-part series linked to above, my exposure of Bobby's "commentators of all stripes" as just a couple of inerrantists trying to find a new way to explain the Jehu problem, and the debate with the Sri Lankan Bible believer are my way of showing Bobby's sycophants that they are very wrong if they think that his position in the Jehu matter is unimpeachable.
Turkel:
At any rate, this [apparently "commentators of all stripes"] is another
one of those comments
that McTill hopped on with his own interpretation, never getting the
point that was actually
behind it. We'll see in a moment. First, some words from Mojo Jojo.
Till:
Turkel's original article has been retrieved from internet archives and
posted on this
site, so readers
can go here
and
here
and here
to judge
for themselves whether I have misrepresented what Turkel said about the
approval of his
position on Hosea 1:4 by "commentators of all stripes."
Joson:
In the first Farrell Till/Robert Turkel Debate,
accessible
here,
Turkel had tried to defend his position by quoting from commentaries
that agreed with his
stance.
Turkel:
Translation: by quoting commentaries that gave solid, documented
reasons for their stance,
which McTill couldn't answer.
Till:
An incorrect link was given to the original Jehu debate, so I have
corrected it so that
readers who want to see the original debate can do so with just a mouse
click. In my
three-part series, which began
here,
readers will find the original debate (which Bobby has removed from his
website) imbedded between the red sections,
which contain my replies to Bobby's attempts to rebut my
counterarguments.
In his "translation" of Joson's claim that Bobby has tried to defend his position by quoting commentaries that agreed with his position, Bobby said that these were commentaries that gave "solid, documented reasons for their stance," but I urge everyone interested in this subject to read the entire original debate, linked to above, to see that no such "solid, documented" evidence was given. All through his so-called "reply," Bobby simply inserted bracketed references like these:
I have quoted here, in their entireties, all of the sources that Bobby cited in Part One of our debate. If anyone can find anything here that even remotely resembles "solid, documented reasons" for the stances that these "sources" took please point it out to me, because I honestly cannot see anything here but crass assertion. Bobby quoted nothing that gave any "solid, dicumented" reasons why these authors had taken the positions he was appealing to.
Now let's look at the "solid, documented reasons" in all of the sources that Bobby cited in Part Two of the original debate.
I have momentarily skipped two long quotations where Bobby "gave the floor" to McComiskey and Stuart. I will quote these sections in their entireties after we have looked at Bobby's citations in Part Three, but for now I just want everyone to look at the citations above to see if there are any "solid, documented reasons" given in support of whatever Hobbs or Andersen and Freedman et al said in the truncated citations from their books. Any honest person will have to admit that no such "solid, documented reasons" were given by any of them. Their comments were nothing more than personal beliefs that they were asserting. If Bobby really believes that he quoted sources that had given "solid, documented reasons" for the "stances" they took, he desperately needs to take a course in elementary logic.
We will go now to Part Three to see what "solid, documented reasons" were contained in the sources that Bobby cited, and then I will return to the quotations from McComiskey and Stuart that I momentarily skipped.
With the exception of the two longer quotations from McComiskey and Stuart, which I will return to shortly, these are all of the citations that Bobby entered into our original debate. (If I skipped any, the oversight was unintentional.) No reasonable person can read these citations, which I quoted in their entireties, and honestly say that they contained "solid, documented reasons" why Bobby's cited "sources" took the stances that they did in the Jehu issue. They contain nothing more than the asserted beliefs of Jones, Craigie, Morris et al, and we could well imagine how unimpressed Bobby would be if I filled my articles with references to what Robert Price thinks or what Dan Barker believes.
I will go back now to the section in Part Two where Bobby "gave the floor" to McComiskey. I will quote everything that Bobby quoted from this source, but I will interrupt from time to time to point out that the quotations contain few if any "solid, documented reasons" for what McComiskey was saying.
(Paqad) is difficult to define. It frequently describes an action that precedes the bestowal of blessing (Gen. 21:1, 50:24-5, Exod. 3:16) or the execution of judgment (Ex. 32:34, 1 Sam. 15:2, Is. 23:7) on the part of God. Since the word may precede an act of blessing, it cannot denote the sole idea of punishment. It is best to understand it as attending to or giving heed to a person, object or situation before responding.
Does anyone see any "solid, documented" reason here why paqad could not have conveyed the sense of punishment in Hosea 1:4? A major point that Bobby argued in the debate was that this word had a variety of applications in the Old Testament, so just because McComiskey found some places where it meant the "bestowal of blessing," which at times it certainly did, does not mean that the word was not being used in Hosea 1:4 to convey the idea of a bestowal of punishment. I quoted 36 English translations that so rendered the verse and found none that supported McComiskey's view, so it looks as if Bobby's source has been trumped on this point.
This concept of mental apprehension is apparent in the frequent association of the word with (remember, see, e.g., Jer. 14:10). There are many other nuances, but in contexts of judgment it describes an action in which God attends to the wrong he observes by intervening with appropriate action. There are many other nuances, but in contexts of judgment it describes an action in which God attends to the wrong he observes by intervening with appropriate action.
Yes, it did convey this concept, but I pointed out in this section of Part Two that the concept of "remembering" conveyed by paqad could be negative or punitive as well as positive and that context always determined which sense it was conveying. Just a click of the mouse button will take readers there, so I don't need to rehash that section here. I'll just ask Bobby to tell us where the "solid, documented reasons" for McComiskey's "stance" can be found in the quotations above. Bobby apparently can't tell the difference in solid evidence and mere assertions.
When (paqad) is collocated with (upon) as well as a direct object and an indirect object (as it is here) in statements of judgment, the direct object is viewed as attending the indirect object. That is, the direct object is brought into the experience of the indirect object.
Did anyone see any "solid, documented" evidence here to support McComiskey's claim? Any reasonable person can see that he was simply asserting an opinion. At any rate, as I also point out below, I showed in this section of Part 2 that the "collocation" McComiskey is quibbling about here was used in a punitive sense several times in the Old Testament.
The collocation (visit upon) cannot denote punishment "for" in this context. The nation will not be punished "for" these destroyers, but "by" them. The direct object (the four destroyers) is to come into the experience of the indirect object (the nation as the object of the preposition upon).
And the "solid, documented" evidence to support this is where? Anyone can see that McComiskey simply made assertions here. Bobby prefaced this quotation from McComiskey with a comment about Jeremiah 15:3, which said that Yahweh would "send" [paqad] three destroyers against Jerusalem: "the sword to kill and the dogs to drag away and the birds of the air and the beasts of the earth to devour and destroy." The claim here was that the verse didn't mention a reason for sending these destroyers, and so the "collocation" couldn't denote "punishment for" in this particular context. I demolished this quibble in this section of Part Two by showing that an analysis of the broader context of this verse will show that in the verses preceding the one that McComiskey cited, Jeremiah clearly stated that Yahweh would "remember their sins and punish their iniquities," so the reason for sending the three "destroyers" was very clearly stated, and the context clearly showed the punitive meaning of paqad.
This sense of the idiom is exists [sic] in every context where (visited upon) has two objects. On the other hand, the translation "punish for" does not apply in every context. We must not assign that sense to the collocation uncritically
In this section of Part Two, I dismantled McComiskey's claim here by analyzing other biblical texts to show that the same collocation was used to convey an obvious sense of "punish for," so in the entire lengthy quotation from McComiskey, there was exactly nothing that could reasonably be construed as "solid, documented" evidence to support his "stance" on the meaning of Hosea 1:4. He did nothing but assert throughout.
So now, we can go through the long quotation from Stuart to see that he too failed to give any "solid, documented" evidence to support his view.
It should be noted that the present oracle does not per se condemn Jehu's coup at Jezreel, called for by Elisha. (Dam yizre'el) could mean "bloodguilt of Jezreel" in the sense of a great, decisive slaughter. The former connotation, "bloodguilt," is found is found [sic] for (dam) in Lev. 20:9, Duet.[sic] 19:10, 2 Sam. 21:1, etc.
Does anyone see any "solid, documented" evidence here to support Stuart's claim that "the present oracle [Hosea] does not per se condemn Jehu's coup at Jezreel"? So far, all he said was that dam yizre'el could have meant "a great, decisive slaughter." Well, I certainly agree. It could well have meant that--and I think that it did mean that--but how does this remove the fact that Hosea said that Yahweh would visit that great, massive slaughter [the blood of Jezreel] upon the house of Jehu? How does this remove the fact that 36 translations rendered this statement in a way that conveyed the idea that Yahweh was going to punish the house of Jehu for that "great, massive slaughter" [the blood of Jezreel]?
Readers can go to this section of Part Two to see a more detailed rebuttal of Stuart's comment quoted above.
But the connotation "killing" or "bloodshed" is also well-attested as in (dam) "bloodshed-of-battle" (1 Kgs. 2:5) or (dam) "unnecessary bloodshed" (1 Kgs. 2:31), etc. Recognition of the use of (dam) in the context, so often associated with requital of justice in the Old Testament, should not lead to the conclusion that Hosea is condemning Jehu for fulfilling God's command.
Any "solid, documented reasons" here? If so, I don't see them. Giving a mere scripture citation isn't "solid, documented" evidence of anything. Those who wish to see a detailed rebuttal of this quotation from Stuart can go to the section of Part Two linked to above.
Instead, Yahweh now announces that he will turn the tables on the house of Jehu because of the real issue, i.e., what has happened in the meantime.
Anyone can see that this statement is nothing but an assertion of Stuart's opinion of what paqad meant in Hosea 1:4, but "solid, documented" reasons for believing the assertion? They just aren't there, and the continuation of Stuart's assertion immediately below also failed to give any "solid, documented reasons" for his "stance." If Bobby thinks that the assertion quoted here is true, I defy him to show us where Hosea said anywhere that the blood of Jezreel was going to be visited onto the house of Jehu, not because of the original massacre but because of what had happened in the meantime.
In the same way that Jehu in 842 had annihilated a dynasty feared for its long history of oppression and apostasy, so Yahweh himself will now put an end to the Jehu dynasty because it, in turn, has grown hopelessly corrupt. (emphasis in original)
Where is the "solid, documented reasons" for Stuart's "stance" asserted here? All I can see is an asserted interpretation of the verse, maybe Bobby can point out to us the "solid reasons" that Stuart gave for his interpretation.
And maybe pigs will fly someday too.
This is all of the quotation from Stuart that Bobby used in his so-called "rebuttal" of my argument, and as I pointed out several times while going through it, there is nothing at all in the entire quotation that can be construed as "solid, documented reasons" for the "stance" that Stuart took on the meaning of Hosea 1:4. Bobby has grabbed for a straw and missed.
Joson:
In the debate he had stated, “We point out that our solution from Hosea
is reckoned by
‘commentators of all stripes.’” The reference to “we” and “our,” of
course, only meant
Turkel.
Turkel:
Yep, McTill and his fans just don't like that plural self-reference I
like. Too bad. I don't
like their haircuts or their writing style.
Till:
Well, I don't know about my fans, but I have the background in English
composition standards
to know that using we, our and us in a singular sense
is an affected style of
writing, which was once popular, but is now considered outmoded by
modern textbooks. It now
ranks alongside the stilted style of some newspaper writers who will
say, "In the opinion of
this writer..." instead of just directly saying, "I think," or, "In my
opinion." This usage,
which is so popular with Bobby, had its origin in the days of royalty,
when kings and queens
used the first person plural to refer to themselves. A problem with the
use of "the royal we"
in writing, however, is that it can result in confusion, because when
someone who uses this
affected style comes to a place where we should be used in its
strictest sense of first
person plural, readers may think that the writer is just referring to
himself. At any rate, I
think that the origin of the usage of the "royal we" and its popularity
with Bobby speaks
volumes about his obviously narcissistic personality. An anecdote
attributed to Admiral Hyman
Rickover claims that he once said to a subordinate who habitually used
the royal we, "Three
groups are permitted that usage: pregnant women, royalty, and
schizophrenics. Which
one are you?"
Bobby doesn't need to answer that question, because most of us know the answer. His habitual use of we when he means himself may very well be symptomatic of a personality disorder. I recently encountered a similar opinion in an article that was commenting on Bobby's views on evolution. The author replying to him referred to Bobby by his phony name "Holding."
I want you to note another of Mr. Holding’s tendencies. In his writing he frequently refers to himself in the first-person plural, “we.” No one, to my knowledge, assists Mr. Holding with his writing or his website (at least he doesn’t credit anyone with such assistance if indeed he is receiving help). Therefore, his use of “we” is somewhat odd when you realize that the word is in reference to himself. I’m not sure what he is trying to do or say when he does this but it makes reading his articles a bit awkward. It is as if you are listening to a person speak who has multiple personalities and that a “dominate” one is doing the speaking for the rest...."
I don't know whether Bobby has multiple personalities, but one can easily see illusions of grandeur in his writing. On the home page of his website, for example, he depicts himself as Superman and the Terminator, and he shamelessly boasts in an article entitled, with typical sarcasm, "Ebonic Plague" that he and Glenn Miller might be modern prophets.
Demanding "more recent prophets" is a demand of laziness and also begs the question that I am not myself (along with others like Glenn Miller) in some sense fulfilling that function for Ebon and others.
There is no conceit in Bobby's family, because he got it all and left none for other relatives.
Joson:
His mention of “commentators of all stripes” was meant to impress his
readership that he had
actually consulted a number of differing commentaries and they all
remarkably agreed with his
point of view.
Turkel:
Um, no. That would be Mojo's paranoia talking. The mention of
"commentators of all stripes"
was meant to forestall McTill's inevitable canard that the answer was
only held by
"fundamentalist" commentators.
Till:
Yeah, right! Early
on, Bobby rushed to tell his readers that he was defending a view
of Hosea 1:4 that is
accepted by "commentators of all stripes."
Many commentators of all stripes have suggested, based on structure and parallelism, that Hosea 1:4 is better read to express the idea that the bloodshed of Jezreel will be visited on the house of Jehu--which is to say, the verse should read, not "punished for the blood of Jezreel," but "punished by"--the reference is to the mode of punishment, rather than the cause of it (emphasis added).
This is a ploy used by inerrantists to make their readers think that what they are defending is recognized by scholars of all kinds, from conservative to liberal. Bobby didn't make his commentators-of-all-stripes remark just to "forestall" any claim that I might make about his position being a fundamentalist one, because he ran the claim by his readers again.
For now, a word about these sources we will be using. We point out that our solution from Hosea is reckoned by "commentators of all stripes" (emphasis added.
He quickly went on to say in the same context.
Of course, regarding those of "all stripes" who do seek to resolve the issue--if Till wishes to assert some harmonic conspiracy at work, that is his prerogative.
Bobby may deny it all that he wants to, but I will never believe that he was just trying to "forestall" an objection from me. I have seen too many inerrantists use this scholars-of-all-kinds ploy too much to believe otherwise.
Turkel:
Since then I have learned that this, as stated, is pointless to note in
discussions with
McTill, since if you quote a moderate or liberal with the same view,
McTill will just say
they are "thinking like an inerrantist". [sic] In other words,
darned if you do,
darned if you don't.
Till:
Turkel apparently did learn a lesson here, because in his
reworking
of his original part
of the debate, he left out references to his "commentators of all
stripes," but that was
no doubt due to my
follow-up
article
in which I showed that his "commentators of all stripes" were just two
primary
sources, both of whom were fundamental inerrantists, and the others
were secondary sources,
who were referred to in McComiskey's and Stuart's books. Some of these
secondary sources
proved to be believers in the very view of Hosea 1:4 that I was
defending. These exposures
no doubt proved too embarrassing for Bobby to repeat his claim that
"commentators of all
stripes" agreed with his position. True to form, then, he deleted
something that he had said
that was later shown to be incorrect.
In addition to eliminating his commentators-of-all-stripes claim from his "reworked" version of the original debate, Bobby removed other embarrassments, such as his claim that he would not reply to anything else that I might write, because I just wasn't worth his time, and his linguistic boo-boo of using the word transliterate where translate was needed. That error, by the way, appeared in a section where he was claiming the ability to recognize Hebrew "nuances" that had eluded me, and he later repeated the same mistake in this same section.
Turkel:
Which is much easier for McTill then getting his sorry hiney out and
doing some digging.
Till:
Yeah, I guess I should "dig" the way Bobby did when he flipped through
two "sources,"
McComiskey and Stuart, and then tried to pass off the secondary
references in their books as
scholars whom he had consulted in his research. At the end of his
"reworked"
version of the
original debate, Bobby listed 17 "sources" whom he had presumably
consulted, but anyone who
knows how to evaluate writing can easily see through his kind of
"research." I spent 30 years
reading and evaluating writing that was supposed to show a
college-level of research skills,
and about 50% of it was the kind that we see in Bobby's articles. The
following excerpt from
Part One
of his "reworking"
of the original debate to eliminate embarrassments gives an idea of
just how superficial his
"research" is.
Some [scholars] of the liberal bent suggest a type of progressive revelation, in which God has set higher standards of action in Hosea's time than were set in Jehu's time, in response to the human need for growth. [see AndFree.Hos, 178; Crai.12P, 12; for reply, see Irv.ThrJez, 499]. Others remain content with seeing contradiction (but seldom offer any detailed work on the subject - see Wolf.Hos, 17-18; May.Hos, 28; Jone.12K, 273). Irvine [Irv.ThrJez, 503] suggests that our 2 Kings passage (10:30-1) is a piece of imperial propaganda that was being refuted by Hosea, which would raise the question of interpolation in 2 Kings or its sources.
We see here that, within a context containing fewer than 100 words, Bobby squeezed in seven "citations" from his 17 sources, and in so doing he gave his readers no in-depth analyses of the issues that we were supposed to be debating. Like so many of my former college students, he thinks that if throws in some bracketed references like those above, his readers will swoon in admiration, but if those bracketed references don't say anything that supports the view being advocated, what good do they do? Anybody can inject [see Smith 321] or [see Jackson 79] into a paper that says nothing as far as real supporting evidence is concerned. I saw this kind of "research" so many times in my teaching career that I finally declared war on it and gave the students who handed in such shoddy work the huge F it deserved.
That's the grade I would give to Bobby if he had handed in a paper as shoddily researched as his part of our debate on the Jehu issue. I showed above that none of the references like those that I just cited said anything at all that could be construed as "solid, documented" evidence, and my analysis of the longer quotations from McComiskey and Stuart showed that they too did nothing but make unsupported assertions about what they thought Hosea 1:4 meant. In "Commentators of All Stripes," I also analyzed Bobby's claim that his "sources" ran the spectrum from liberal to conservative and showed that they didn't. Bobby's commentators of all stripes were for all intents and purposes two evangelical fundamentalists trying to defend their biblical inerrancy views.
Bobby did in the Jehu debate what he has done over and over again in his "apologetic" attempts. He cites writers, usually biblical inerrantists, who agree with him and tries to pass that off as "in-depth scholarship." He tried this ploy in “Evidence of Jericho” by citing fundamentalist "archaeologists" like Bryant Wood to try to prove that archaeological discoveries support the historicity of the account of Jericho's destruction as recorded in the book of Joshua, but in "The Walls of Jericho," a detailed and carefully researched reply, Brett Palmer showed that Bobby's sources were held in low esteem by reputable archaeologists and were entirely too biased to be considered reliable. Readers should go to this article to see Palmer hand Bobby's head to him on a platter.
As frosting on the cake, I will also mention that just as I showed Bobby's ignorance of basic biblical content in "Restroom Visits in Biblical Times" by pointing out how wrong he was in saying that no one in the Bible was ever "recorded as actually using a restroom" so Palmer exposed here more of Bobby's biblical ignorance by showing that he was wrong in saying that the destruction of Jericho had happened during or right after the harvest season. Palmer showed that, if the Bible is inerrant, the conquest of Jericho had happened during the month of Abib, which overlapped March and April.
We will have to wait to see how Bobby tries to wiggle out of this one. And he will try, of course.
Joson:
In fact, in the debate, he stated, “my ‘commentators’ run the spectrum
from conservative to
moderate to liberal.” In the following article, published after the
debate only on the
alt.bible.errancy newgroup (in November of 1998) and unseen by many,
Farrell Till takes a
look at these “commentators of all stripes” to see just how far up and
down the theological
spectrum they actually ran.
Turkel:
Broadly enough, actually. But McTill has his own paranoia to sell; it's
easier to avoid
admitting you have no actual answer that way.
Till:
In the original debate, which is embedded in its entirety in the three
parts of the Jehu
debate, which begins
here,
I answered
Bobby point by point, but he "answered" me only selectively. That is a
matter of record
that anyone can verify by reading the original exchanges. Bobby uses
selective quoting as
a way of trying to avoid admitting that he can't answer the rebuttals
that he skips.
Furthermore, the sections in red print that I
have inserted into
the articles just linked to above clearly show that Bobby has said
nothing in this debate
that I can't easily answer.
It appears time to renew a challenge. If Bobby will post specific points of his, which he thinks I have avoided, I will reply to all of them at once, if he will agree to reply to all points of mine that I think he has skipped and if he will post all of our exchanges on these points on his website and agree to keep them there. Needless to say, I won't hesitate a moment to agree to post them in this forum.
Turkel:
An "open forum" like a public website... compared to the confined
Errancy List with only 150
members...
Till:
Bobby "No Links" Turkel, of course, didn't link his readers to the
Errancy list, so I have
inserted a link so that those who wish to do so will know where to find
this list.
As for the membership of the Errancy list, almost all members are skeptics or atheists, so is Bobby saying that he doesn't want the opportunity to present his case to those who don't believe the Bible? Is he saying that he prefers to preach to those who already agree with him, which is basically what he is doing when he posts articles on his website?
Turkel:
yep...face it, folks: it's all a smokescreen McTill uses to fool the
gullible like Mojo who
hang on his every word. For them, McTill is the Word of God. Bind him
in black covers with
inscribed gold letters and leave him on the shelf.
Till:
This is a case of the pot calling the kettle black, because no one will
find a forum that
tries harder to fool the gullible than Bobby does on his
website, and one has only to read
the
sycophantic references to him in Christian forums like
the Theology Web to see that
the biblically
ignorant think that he created the world in six days and rested on the
seventh.
Joson:
You will also notice that halfway through the article, Till repeats
himself as if recapping
what he had said previously. This is because in the original format,
his responses came in
two different posts that were not connected as they are here.
Turkel:
No, this is because McTill thinks endlessly repeating himself is a way
to distract readers
into thinking he is saying more than he actually is.
Till:
Joson had it right. Anyone who wants to take the time to read the
original 28 posts as they
were sent to alt.bible.errancy can read the version posted on
the
secular web,
where the entire debate was published in e-mail form as it appeared in
the alt.bible.errancy
forum, or even better, go to
the
beginning post of this debate in the alt.bible.errancy archives.
This link will take the readers
to "Reply to Turkel (1)," and then by typing "Reply to Turkel (2)" into
the search window, the
second post can be accessed, then "Reply to Turkel (3)," will access
the third, and so on. If
all 28 posts are read, anyone can see that I ended and began posts with
brief summations for
those who may have not followed the debate from its beginning.
For Bobby to accuse me of "endlessly repeating" myself is again like the pot calling the kettle black. Those who go to the land promise debate and have the fortitude to read through all of the exchanges will see Bobby endlessly repeating sentences and entire paragraphs that he cut and pasted over and over and over and over and over obviously to distract his readers into thinking that he was saying more than he actually was. Bobby's performance in that debate was the most farcical example of evasion that I have encountered in a debating opponent, and I have debated my share of biblical inerrantists.
Turkel:
Do beg pardon, but we will edit that extra trash out.
Till:
Since Bobby routinely edits out arguments and rebuttals that he can't
answer, I would hardly
expect him to do otherwise, but as we will see, he edited out more than
just the summations at
the ends and beginnings of my original posts. I refer to him as Bobby
"No links" Turkel, but
maybe I should call him Bobby "Edits Out" Turkel. Bobby "Skippy" Turkel
sounds
appropriate.
Joson:
I try to maintain that sense of posting by placing a bar between the
first portion Till had
written and the second installment. From this, you will note that my
only involvement with
this article is the formatting I gave it for presentation here.
Turkel:
Other than, uh, the note he adds in the top middle. Yeesh, doesn't Mojo
edit his articles
for consistency?
Till:
The pot calls the kettle black again. In
this
section of
Part One of my compilation of the Jehu debate, I showed how Bobby
brayed that my quoting of
some 30 English translations of Hosea 1:4 was shallow scholarship after
he had in another
article quoted the NIV--just one translation--to try to resolve an
inconsistency between
Genesis 10 and Genesis 11. At the end of that section, I pointed out
that inconsistency is
about the only consistency in Bobby's articles. Then in
this
section
of Part Two of the same series, I caught him appealing again to the NIV
to try to support his
position on the meaning of the Hebrew word paqad in Hosea 1:4.
I again reminded
readers of Bobby's inconsistency and said that consistency doesn't seem
to be one of his
virtues.
Yeesh, doesn't Bobby edit his articles for consistency?
Joson:
In his "rebuttal" of the apparent discrepancy in 2 Kings 10:30 and
Hosea 1:4 concerning
Jehu's massacre at Jezreel, Turkel, who writes under the pseudonym
"James Patrick Holding,"
argued that credence should be given to his resolution of the problem,
because it represented
the thinking of "commentators of all stripes." In other words, he was
claiming that his
resolution represented the views of "commentators" who were liberal and
moderate as well as
conservative.
Turkel:
No, actually, I didn't. I was claiming that this forestalls McTill's
bananas-in-his-ears
attempt to say it's just a solution used by conservatives.
Till:
Readers can scroll up and see where I addressed this denial of his
intentions when he appealed
to "commentators of all stripes." His removal of this expression from
his "reworked" version
of the original debate speaks volumes about what he was trying to do by
his appeals in the
original debate to "commentators of all stripes." If his intentions
were what he is now
claiming that they were, why did he remove this expression from his
"revision." I'll tell
you why he did. My article
"Commentators
of All
Stripes" exposed his duplicity in trying to claim that commentators
of all kinds, from
conservative to moderate to liberal, shared the interpretation of
Hosea 1:4
that he was trying to
dupe his gullible choir members into believing, and after I had shown
that this claim was
clearly not true, his references to "commentators of all stripes"
suddenly disappeared from
his version of the original debate.
He asked above if Joson ever edits his articles for consistency, a question that I showed was another case of the pot calling the kettle black, but I have to wonder if Bobby ever edits his articles for honesty. Apparently he doesn't.
Turkel:
As noted, I now know that McTill doesn't care about this, and will lump
any liberal into
the "inerrantist" category by proxy if necessary.
Till:
No, I don't lump "any liberal into the 'inerrantist' category," because
I know that most
liberal commentators are not inerrantists. What Bobby can't seem to
realize, however, is
that even liberal commentators believe that the Bible is in some sense
a revelation of God's
dealings with men. Hence, they will generally treat the Bible as
favorably as they can.
Samuel Driver, for example, was about as liberal as biblical
commentators can be. He
recognized and admitted that the Book of Daniel was written by a
second-century BC author
rather than a 6th-century BC Jewish official in the Babylonian
government, and he recognized
that in all likelihood "Darius the Mede"
(Dan. 5:31)
was not an actual
historical character, yet when he encountered problem passages in the
Bible, he would
sometimes try to explain them away by using how-it-could-have-been
scenarios that were just
as improbable as those postulated by dyed-in-the-wool inerrantists. In
his commentary,
The Book of Daniel, Driver tried the "approximation" angle to
try to resolve the
chronological discrepancy between
Daniel
1:3-20, which says that Daniel and three of his friends were put
into a three-year training program at the end of which,
they were presented to Nebuchadnezzar, who was so impressed with them
that
he made them members of his court, and
Daniel 2,
which says that
Nebuchadnezzar made Daniel and his friends members of his court during
the second year
of his reign. Driver argued that the time frame in Daniel 1 was only an
approximation, and
so there was no discrepancy.
My point is that even the most liberal of
Bible commentators will as often as not present
views sympathetic to the Bible, but when the commentators are as
flagrantly biased as
we will soon see that McComiskey was, quoting or citing them in support
of an inerrantist
view of the Bible is an obviously ineffective way for an "apologist"
like Bobby to try to
defend his position. If he can't see that, he has more mental problems
than I previously
thought. Maybe I should call him Booby instead of Bobby. He claims that
he is going to
Till:
I replied to this argument in my 28-part response, so there is no need
to show again that
this argument proves nothing for the simple reason that there are many
biblical views that
are shared by liberal, moderate, and conservative Christians. That the
Bible contains errors,
for example, is an opinion that is shared by many liberal and moderate
Christians, as well as
even some conservatives, but I'm sure that Turkel would not see this as
a reason to change
his belief in biblical inerrancy.
Turkel:
No, I wouldn't. And it wasn't a reason given to change a belief about
whether 2 Kings and
Hosea contradict, either. McTill just assumed it was the reason, and
stuck his foot in his
mouth promptly, yea, eagerly saying so.
Till:
As usual, Bobby talks in abstractions that are meaningless to those who
are not mind readers.
He referred to a "reason" why the belief by many liberals, moderates,
and conservatives that
the Bible is not inerrant would not change his mind about inerrancy,
but he gave no explanation
at all of what that reason is but blabbered about how I had stuck my
foot into my mouth by
assuming what his "reason" was. If anyone can make any sense of Bobby's
nonsensical ramblings
like this, please pass it along to me. Obviously what we have in his
statement above is
something that I saw time and time again in student papers while I was
teaching college
writing. Bobby realized that he needed to say something here, but he
didn't know what to
say, so he just threw something together unaware of the writing adage
that says that there is
a difference in having something to say and in having to say something.
Bobby knew that he
had to say something, but he didn't have anything to say, so the
incoherent
nonsense above was
what came out.
Till:
To see just how accurate Turkel's claim is that his view of Hosea 1:4
represents the
theological opinion of "commentators of all stripes," I have been
tracking down the sources
that he cited in the article I replied to, and so I will be taking
these sources one at a
time to see just what kind of "stripes" they are. Turkel relied heavily
on the opinion of
Thomas Edward McComiskey as presented in two works: (1) The Minor
Prophets, vol. 1,
Baker Book House, Grand Rapids, MI, 1992, and (2) "Prophetic Irony in
Hosea 1.4: A Study of
the Collocation [PQD AL] and Its Implications for the Fall of Jehu's
Dynasty," Journal
for the Study of the Old Testament, 58, 1993, pp. 93-101.
I call attention first to the fact that McComiskey's commentary was published by Baker Book House of Grand Rapids, Michigan, and, needless to say, this is not a publisher that is noted for objective biblical scholarship.
Turkel:
"I call attention first to the fact that McTill's material was
published by Prometheus Books
of Buffalo, New York, and, needless to say, this is not a publisher who
is noted for
objective biblical scholarship."
Till:
Uh, where did I quote or cite material that was published by Prometheus
books? I very rarely
quote or cite "sources" in my rebuttal arguments for the very reason
that Bobby can't seem to
understand. I write primarily on biblical issues, and any branch of
religion will have
competing doctrinal views that have been written about and rewritten
about and rewritten about.
I understand that whatever one's doctrinal belief is, he can always
find books, articles, and
commentaries that express that same belief. If one wants to write about
original sin, he can
always find writers who think that the Bible teaches this doctrine, but
if he wants to oppose
the doctrine of original sin, he can also find writers who have opposed
it too. Is preterism
your bag, as it is for Bobby? You can find writers who also believe it.
Are you a full
preterist? You can find writers whom you can quote or cite in support
of this brand of
preterism, which Bobby calls a "heresy." Are you only a partial
preterist, as Bobby is? You
can find writers to quote in support of this view too. There is no
doctrine that one cannot
find advocated or opposed in books and articles. Why can't Booby see
this?
I realize that Bobby was trying to be funny in what he said above, but in his failed attempt at humor, he inadvertently made my point for me. I don't quote or cite as support for my position any materials published by Prometheus books or the American Atheist, because I know that even the most dimwitted of Bible believers will dismiss them as just the opinions of unobjective skeptics or atheists, yet he expects us to swoon when he quotes or cites flagrantly biased fundamentalists like McComiskey.
Yes, I do think that I should call him Booby.
Turkel:
See how easy it is?
Till:
Yes, I do, and that is why I try to delineate my own arguments and
rebuttals rather than
filling my articles with bracketed citations like those that
characterize Bobby's. In my
writing classes, I always emphasized to my students that the quality
of one's sources
is far more important than the quantity. I urged them not to
cite or quote publications
like The National Enquirer or other tabloids or The NRA
Journal, because their
unobjectivity is too widely known. If I were still teaching today, I
would warn them to shy
away from the "fair and balanced" reporting of Fox News. Instructors
must not have taught
this quality-not-quantity principle at Florida State University, or
else Bobby was sleeping
in class when it was presented. If he had ever heard it, he would know
that one—just
one—logical argument is worth a dozen citations from biased
sources.
Turkel:
Much easier than answering McComiskey's arguments,
Till:
Uh, what "arguments" were these? Readers can scroll up and see again
that I took them
through every "source" that Bobby cited in the original debate and
especially through the
long quotation from McComiskey's works to show that he presented no
arguments; he simply
asserted. If Bobby doesn't know that argumentation by assertion is a
logical fallacy, he
should take down his apologetic shingle until he learns a bit more
about how to debate.
I guess it is time to present another proposal to Bobby. If he will identify real arguments in what he quoted or cited from McComiskey in the original debate, I will reply to them at once, if he will agree to (1) answer my rebuttals point by point, and (2) post both my reply and my rebuttal of his rebuttal on his website and keep them there. Needless to say, I will gladly post everything on my website, including any counterrebuttal he might care to write.
Bobby isn't about to accept this proposal, so this will end the matter.
Turkel:
which McTill also did by asking why translations published before
McComiskey's study
didn't agree with him.
Till:
Here Bobby begged the question of whether McComiskey's "study" reached
correct conclusions.
Bobby assumed that it did and that, therefore, any translation of the
Bible made before then
would have incorrectly rendered Hosea 1:4, but I won't let him argue by
assumption. Let him
show us clear evidence that McComiskey's "study" was correct. He hasn't
done that yet. He
has simply cited or quoted where McComiskey said that paqad
in Hosea 1:4 didn't
mean what others have long thought that it did.
On this point, Bobby's claim seems to be that there was a meaning in Hosea 1:4 that had been hidden from all Bible scholars and translators until, voilà, along came McComiskey and removed the veil that had shrouded the meaning of this verse for almost 3,000 years. Of course, the fact that McComiskey, who was employed by a radically fundamentalist institution flagrantly dedicated to biblical inerrancy, as we will soon see, in making this "discovery," just happened to "solve" a discrepancy in the Bible shouldn't be taken into consideration in evaluating the soundness of his "discovery," should it?
At any rate, I showed in this section of the compilation of the original Jehu debate that McComiskey's "collocation" quibble, on which he based his assertion that Hosea 1:4 didn't covey the idea of punishment, was untenable, because McComiskey's claim of a special meaning of paqad here was not supported by comparisons with other texts where the same "collocation" was used, so I have rebutted McComiskey's nonargument. Let's see now if Bobby will answer my rebuttal.
Till:
All that one needs to do to check me on this is visit several
"Christian" book stores and
examine the materials on their shelves.
Turkel:
Ta da, just beg the question of their objectivity.
Till:
No, I am not begging the question of their objectivity. Anyone who
examines such books as
these will see that they always take the position that the Bible is
"God's word" to man, and
I have yet to find one that says, yes, there are indeed errors in the
Bible. As long as this
situation exists, I am not begging the question of the objectivity of
those who write such
books.
The problem in such books as these is parallel to what Ralph Waldo Emerson said about paid preachers in his essay “Self-Reliance.”
If I know your sect, I anticipate your argument. I hear a preacher announce for his text and topic the expediency of one of the institutions of his church. Do I not know beforehand that not possibly can he say a new and spontaneous word? Do I not know that, with all this ostentation of examining the grounds of the institution, he will do no such thing? Do I not know that he is pledged to himself not to look but at one side–-the permitted side, not as a man, but as a parish minister? He is a retained attorney, and these airs of the bench are the emptiest affectation. Well, most men have bound their eyes with one or another handkerchief, and attached themselves to some one of these communities of opinion. This conformity makes them not false in a few particulars, authors of a few lies, but false in all particulars. Their every truth is not quite true.
That is exactly why Bobby's sources like McComiskey are logically flawed. As I will show below, McComiskey is by virtue of his place of employment a "retained attorney," who must defend an inerrant view of the Bible. Hence, anything that he might say on the subject must be viewed with suspicion from the beginning.
Turkel:
"All you have to do is open a Prometheus catalog..."
Till:
Yes, indeed, if you thumb through a Prometheus
catalog, you will find
books that are openly
hostile to the view that the Bible is "God's word," and that is exactly
why I don't quote or
cite them in my rebuttals of inerrantist articles. I appreciate Bobby's
making my point for
me.
My thesis in "Commentators of All Stripes" was that although Bobby claims that commentators from liberal to moderate to conservative agree with his spin on Hosea 1:4, an examination of his "sources" shows that this just isn't true. In the first place, many of his "sources" were only secondary citations that he had found in the books of McComiskey and Stuart, his primary sources, and, secondly, these were obviously fundamentalists trying to support an inerrantist view of the Bible. I assume that everyone has noticed that Bobby is making no effort at all to deny this. He, in effect, is simply resorting to the tu quoque fallacy. This is a Latin term that meant you too, and this fallacy is committed when a debater accuses his opponent of doing the same thing that he has been accused of. In his comments above, for example, Bobby has basically said, "Well, yes, my sources were biased, but sources obtained from Prometheus Books are also biased." Be that as it may, the fact still remains that I have not relied on any sources from Prometheus to support my position. I have not relied on any other sources either. I have formulated my own rebuttal arguments and used those to reply to Bobby and his sources.
Bobby would like very much to paint me with the same brush that I have used to paint him as an unobjective, biased defender of biblical inerrancy, but, unfortunately, the facts do not support that attempt. In the first place, I was once a biblical inerrantist who is now a biblical skeptic, but I doubt that Bobby was ever a biblical skeptic who is now a biblical inerrantist. In other words, I have been on both sides of this issue, and so my background clearly indicates that I have the objectivity to admit when my views of the Bible are wrong. Furthermore, the record I have left will show that I often take issue with skeptics who try to find discrepancies in the Bible where none exist. If Bobby doubts this, he can go here to the Errancy archives, and use the search window to type "McKinsey" + "Red Sea" to go to where a disagreement with Dennis McKinsey, begun earlier before the archive was set up, continued on the Errancy list back in November 2000. The posts identified will show that I, along with other skeptics on the list, firmly disagreed with McKinsey's claim that a geographical error was made in 1 Kings 9:26, which located Ezion Geber on the Red Sea. This is just one example of many in the Errancy and alt.bible.errancy archives that will show that I have disagreed with biblical skeptics who I thought were claiming biblical discrepancies where none really exist.
Now just when has Bobby ever disagreed with biblical inerrantists and said he believes that some of what inerrantists call "alleged discrepancies" are actually real discrepancies? If he can show us such cases, let him do it. If he can't, he should realize that he has no room to accuse skeptics of being unobjective.
Till:
Besides being generally trite, much of it [materials in Christian book
stores] is published
by the evangelical and fundamentalist publishing companies in Grand
Rapids.
Turkel:
Besides being generally boring and beyond my ability to comprehend or
refute, much of it is
published by the atheist and agnostic publishing company in Buffalo.
Till:
I appreciate Bobby's honesty. It wouldn't take too much depth for a
book to be beyond his
ability to comprehend, and I too think that much of what is published
by Prometheus in
Buffalo would be beyond Bobby's ability to refute. Although he
showed again just how
deficient his writing skills are, I understand what he meant, so I will
reply on the basis
of what he meant and not what he actually said. I occasionally cited
such books some years
ago, but for the very reason that Bobby meant, I would not use in a
debate now books or
articles that were published by atheistic companies, because I know
that they would not be
effective in convincing believers to accept my position on the Bible.
The more he resorts to
this tu quoque fallacy to falsely accuse me of using the same
methods that he uses,
the more Bobby shows that he has no sensible reply to my claim that
citing biased sources
is an effective way to debate.
Till:
This, of course, is not intended to mean that McComiskey's view must be
considered wrong by
virtue of what company published it, but....
Turkel:
"I will harp and harp on it anyway like a two-faced hypocrite"
Till:
No, this is just a simple recognition of the logical fact that the
truth or falsity of
propositions is always independent of their source. This logical
principle, however, doesn't
remove the fact that a debater makes a strategic bobble if he relies
only on recognizably
biased sources to support his proposition. After all, what good is it
going to do to cite or
quote sources that may be right if they are going to be viewed
with too much suspicion
to have any appreciable effect on those in the audience whose views are
different from those
of the sources cited?
Between the lines of his tu quoque comments, I can see that Bobby knows that I am right. It no doubt galls him to know that I am right and that he can say nothing logical to defend his cite-several-sources method of debating.
Till:
it does give reason to suspect that the scholarship represented in it
may not be objectively
impartial or as profound as Turkel would have us think.
Turkel:
As objective as, say, uh, an issue of TSR. Of course.
Till:
I do at times link readers to articles that I published in The
Skeptical Review, if
they present the same argument needed to rebut whatever I am answering,
but those articles
are never the cite-an-author-who-agrees-with-me kind. They are articles
in which I delineated
and developed my own arguments. They are not articles that say, "Dan
Barker thinks," or,
"Robert Price believes," or "David Matson suggests," because I realize
that this Robert
Turkel/Everette Hatcher/David Conklin debating method will not impress
those who oppose my
position on whatever proposition is being debated.
As for the objectivity of The Skeptical Review, I would never say that it is in any sense a bastion of objectivity. However, I do think that it is somewhat more objective than, say, Bobby's website and other inerrantist sites and publications. As I pointed out above, I was once a biblical inerrantist--of the dyed-in-the wool kind--but I rejected that position when I could no longer ignore evidence that it was an untenable belief. What can Bobby point to in his life to indicate that he has a comparable objectivity?
Till:
Just as one would hardly expect to find objective scholarship in The
National Enquirer
or the NRA Journal, so one would expect that in all probability
evangelical or
fundamentalist views of the Bible will be found in materials published
in Grand Rapids,
Michigan.
Turkel:
Uh, yeah, apples and oranges.
Till:
Hmm, an "argument" by assertion. What did Bobby--er Booby--say here
that disproves my claim
that "in all probability" fundamentalist views of the Bible will be
found in materials
published in Grand Rapids, Michigan? Is this a false statement? If so,
let Bobby show us
that it is. Why didn't he quote Book X, which was published in Grand
Rapids but nevertheless
presented an errantist view of the Bible? That would have been a far
more effective
argument than just muttering, "Uh, yeah, apples and oranges."
Turkel:
Stuff in the Enquirer and the NRA mag aren't written by people who are
scholars with Ph. D's
in their field like McComiskey has.
Till:
My, my, can Booby really be this simplistically naive? Just how does a
Ph. D. in one's field
guarantee that he is a "scholar" who will objectively follow the
evidence wherever it leads?
I spent 30 years in academia, so I know that a Ph. D. degree is no
guarantee of scholarship.
Bobby often refers to Harding University, my alma mater, as
Bam Bam Bible
College, but if
he will check the website
of its
department of Bible and Religion, he will find that 15 of its faculty
members have their Ph.
D. degrees and two their Th. D. degrees from institutions such as
Virginia Tech, the
University of Nebraska, Boston College, University of St. Andrews,
Baylor, Duke, Hebrew Union
College, University of Arizona, Emory, University of Illinois--long
recognized as one of the
nation's finest--and, believe it or not, even Trinity Evangelical
Divinity School.
Besides these, there are several others with doctor's degrees in
ministry and education. With
an impressive array of Ph. D. professors like these on its religion
staff, I guess Bobby will
now speak about Bam Bam Bible College with a little more respect. I
suppose too that he will
no longer ridicule the Church of Christ and will begin to teach that
baptism is essential for
salvation, instrumental music in worship is unscriptural, loss of
salvation after conversion
is very possible, that preterism and premillennialism are heresies, and
that the Church of
Christ is... well. the church of Christ, because all of these views
have been published in
articles by Harding professors who have Ph. D. degrees.
I found something else on another page of Harding's website that I just can't resist passing along to Bobby. I had noticed before that Bam Bam Bible College was often rated by U. S. News and World Report among the top universities in the South, but I had no idea of just how many consecutive years, it had received that honor.
SEARCY, Ark. - For the 11th consecutive year, U.S. News & World Report magazine has ranked Harding University as one of the South’s best universities. The rankings are in the magazine’s 18th annual America’s Best Colleges issue, which hits newsstands Aug. 23.
The report also named Harding one of the “best values” among universities in the South.
Harding was ranked in the top 25 among regional universities of the South, behind such notable schools as the University of Richmond, James Madison University, Stetson University, Loyola University and The Citadel. This year the University ranked 22nd - compared to 26th last year.
This kind of recognition doesn't surprise me at all, because I have often said that except for the screwball religious ideas that it teaches, Harding was the academically best of the 10 colleges and universities that I attended with the exception of two European universities. I wonder how many years Florida State University has received the kind of recognition that Harding can boast about. At any rate, the fact that a university that Bobby openly ridicules is loaded with faculty members with their Ph. D. degrees, one of whom even received his from McComiskey's school of divinity, clearly obligates him to admit that a Ph. D. degree is no guarantee that one's position in religion is right. One can find professors with Ph. D. degrees in Catholic, Methodist, Presbyterian, Pentecostal, Seven-Day Adventist, Mormon, and all other kinds of religious institutions, so what does having a Ph. D. degree have to do with whether one's doctrinal beliefs are correct?
Turkel:
By the way, McTill passes right over an evaluation of where McComiskey
published his thesis
in JSOT. This is a peer-reviewed academic journal that can hardly be
called "fundamentalist"
or "evangelical". It accepts quality work regardless of the source. An
inerrantist position
on the Bible would be one of those views.
Till:
What is Booby trying to argue here? Is he claiming that if McComiskey
published an article
in a peer-reviewed academic journal, that means that what he said in
the article must be true?
If so, that is a position more idiotic than I would expect even Booby
to take. If someone
with a Ph. D. published an article in this peer-reviewed journal that
took the position that
archaeological evidence indicates that
Jericho
had already been
destroyed by the time that the Bible attributed its destruction to
Joshua, would Booby accept
this as evidence that his defense of the biblical account in
"Evidence of Jericho"
was wrong? If
someone with a Ph. D. published an article in this journal in which he
took the position that
there had never been a worldwide flood, would Booby accept this as
proof that the biblical
record of Noah's flood is at best an exaggeration? If someone with a
Ph. D.... well, my point
should be obvious by now. If someone with a Ph. D. publishes an article
in a peer-reviewed
journal that takes the position that the pastoral epistles were not
written by the apostle
Paul, will Booby fall in line and abandon his claim that they are
authentic epistles of Paul?
If someone with a Ph. D. degree publishes an article in a peer-reviewed
journal that takes
the position that 2 Peter was written in the second century after Peter
was dead, will
Booby abandon his claim that the third chapter of this epistle was
referring to events that
would happen in AD 70? Will pigs fly someday?
My point is that there are peer-reviewed biblical journals all over this and other countries that publish articles by Ph. D. holders that Booby would never agree with. There are peer-reviewed journals in which writers with Ph. D. degrees blast the doctrine of preterism from here to kingdom come, but that doesn't faze Booby in the least. There are also peer-reviewed scientific journals around the world that publish articles by people with advanced degrees and impeccable scientific credentials and lifetime experience in evolutionary biology, who defend the theory of evolution, but does Booby accept what these articles say? No, he doesn't. He prefers to accept instead the "scientific" opinions of someone at Answers in Genesis who has a Ph. D. degree.
As the scientific aspects of Creation and Flood our [sic] outside Tekton's purview, I've asked a Ph.D. scientist from Answers in Genesis for comment. So if any SAB has any complaints on those particulars, take it [sic] up with them!
The longer Booby writes, the more he exposes his incredible ignorance.
Turkel:
"An errantist position..." Get it?
Till:
No, really I don't get it. This sounds like something that was written
by Booby in one of
those moments when he knew that he had to say something but didn't have
anything to
say.
Turkel:
McTill is toast.
Till:
I think that readers will have no difficulty seeing just who is being
toasted, only I think
that roasted would be a better term. Jimmy Pee Holdingtank is
now being flushed down
the drain.
Turkel:
Now Mojo has a few words to bark:
Joson:
I would like to comment here before Till’s article continues. In the
time since this
examination of Turkel’s sources was published, Turkel has written that
this line of argument
is fallacious.
Turkel:
Not sure where this is,
Till:
Oh, really? Well let me refresh Booby's memory. He has apparently
forgotten that he actually
opposed this line of argumentation before the Jehu debate when he sent
a post to the now
defunct CCBE internet list in response to a reference I had made on the
"The brother of Moses, by the divine command, smote with his rod upon the river, and immediately, throughout its whole course, from Ethiopia down to the sea, it is changed into blood and simultaneously with its change, all the lakes, and ditches, and fountains, and wells, and springs, and every particle of water in all Egypt, was changed into blood, so that, for want of drink, they digged round about the banks of the river, but the streams that came up were like veins of the body in a hemorrhage, and spurted up channels of blood like springs, no transparent water being seen anywhere" (The Complete Works of Philo, Hendrickson: Peabody, MA, 1993, p. 468, emphasis added).
It turned out that Booby sent the CCBE list a response to this in which he said the following:
That's nice, but Philo is simply reading into the text what is not there. So if I find a Jewish commentator of equal worth that says the opposite, is it a draw? If I find two, do I win? Remember that Philo is trying to promote Moses and Aaron here and would maximize their feat to the greatest extent possible.
Booby clearly indicated here a recognition that (1) a writer with a biased opinion is an ineffective source to quote in support of a position and (2) writers with opposite views are readily available to quote. He has now spent years trying to backpedal on this comment, because he wants so badly to continue his practice of citing "sources" as proof of whatever doctrine du jour he is trying to peddle.
Oh, yes, I just have to say here that the fellow who set up the CCBE (Christians Combating Biblical Errancy) list specifically to enlist the help of other Bible believers in answering examples of biblical discrepancy being posted on the Errancy list and the old alt.bible.errancy forum has since come to admit that there are errors in the Bible. He shifted to the errant-but-still-the-word-of-God position, but he did at least abandon the untenable belief that the Bible is inerrant. Booby, on the other hand, has shown that he is a slow learner. Of course, there is no money in educating people to the truth about the origins of the Bible. Who is going to click PayPal and send a contribution to someone who shows that there are errors in the Bible? Booby seems to be very familiar with the old adage about knowing the side on which one's bread is buttered.
Turkel:
but I agree that what McTill thought I said is fallacious.
Till:
This isn't a matter of "thinking" what Booby said. The quotation above
is verifiable. If
Booby denies that he said it, I will present the evidence that he did.
I didn't just make up
this quotation.
I also recall seeing Booby admit that citing sources is not a sound way of supporting a position, but I don't remember where he said this. If I can find time to search for it, I will, but its relevance isn't worth the investment of more than a few minutes.
Joson:
He claims that simply because an author is published by a certain
publishing house, that
should not affect his scholarship. While true, I wonder how he would
feel if a skeptic quoted in
refutation of his material authors published by Prometheus or Shambala?
Turkel:
I wouldn't care one bit. I did make fun of Acharya S for publishing
with a company that also
does books on Atlantis, but that highlighted the uncritical nature of
her publisher, not
her.
Till:
Booby can say that he "wouldn't care one bit" if an opponent quoted
authors published by
Prometheus or Shambala, but not caring is different from viewing them
with any degree of
respect. Booby has already indicated in his ridiculing of Prometheus
Books above that he
would consider any references to them in a serious article to be devoid
of all
credibility.
Joson:
And does he really think that his own self-financed venture–-Tektonic
Plates—-is an unbiased
source for material related to biblical inerrancy? I thought not.
Turkel:
It would be right to think not, since T. Plates hasn't done a book on
Biblical inerrancy. The
one on Mormonism is "it" and that book doesn't say a word about
inerrancy. As for Mormonism,
is it an unbiased source on that subject? So far, the vasy [sic]
majority of my Mormon
contacts think so. They do not agree with my arguments, of course, but
their best apologists
have seen it, and "bias" isn't one of their accusations -- not that I
have yet to hear, and
not even in the negative review I refer to here. In fact my own former
"worst enemy" in the
Mormon camp, Kevin Graham, was so pleased by my objectivity and
fairness that he offered to
pass out copies of the book at the main Mormon apologetics conference.
Seems that the LDS are
a lot more mature as a whole than the Skeppies are.
Till:
I am aware that Jimmy Pee Holdingtank published a book on Mormonism,
but I have never read it
or even had it available to browse through, so I can't comment on its
objectivity. If Booby's
description of it is anywhere close to being accurate, I commend him
and suggest that he would
do well to try a little bit more of that civility and objectivity in
his website articles. As
I have said before, if he ever decides to use a civil approach in his
articles about me and
other skeptics, he will find me ready to reciprocate, but if he
continues to give us just more
of the same, I will continue to reply to him in kind.
Turkel:
Even with the reviewer noted, they know better than to use stupid
arguments like, "It was
published in Grand Rapids!" and we don't use stupid arguments back
like, "It was published
in Salt Lake City"!
Till:
Booby seems to forget that I have said before that the truth or falsity
of propositions is
always independent of their sources. The fact that a book was published
in Grand Rapids,
Michigan, or Salt Lake City in no way proves that the premises defended
in the book are
false. However, that does not negate the fact that the source of
propositions do affect
their credibility. If Booby sees a book--or more probably a
booklet--published by
The Watchtower, his initial reaction to it is not going to be,
"Ah, I should read this,
because this publisher puts out some good, objective, unbiased,
impartial materials." I also
doubt that he would expect to encounter an unbiased view of Mormonism
in a book written by a
Ph. D. professor at Brigham Young University. He knows that I am right
about this, so
nothing more needs to be said about it.
Turkel:
It's even more amazing that Paranoia McTill and Mojo think they can
justify such a stupid
tactic by saying, "Yeah, well, you'd do it too!"
Till:
Hmm, I believe that I showed above that Booby is the one who tried to
answer my comments
with the tu quoque [you too] fallacy. I have long known that he
can't remember from
one article to another what position he has taken on issues, but he
seems to have trouble
remembering even from one paragraph to another what he has said.
Till:
An examination of McComiskey's commentary increases suspicion that this
just may not be an
objective biblical reference work, because it turns out that McComiskey
is a "professor of
Old Testament Exegesis and Biblical Theology" at Trinity Evangelical
Divinity School in
Deerfield, Illinois.
Turkel:
Which of course entirely annuls any argument he makes.
Till:
As I pointed out above, his employment by a fundamentalist institution
dedicated to furthering
the doctrine of biblical inerrancy makes it very unlikely that he would
ever publish anything
that is contrary to the inerrantist position. My report below of what
Trinity's website says
in its "statement of faith" and its "mission statement" provides
additional support for my
suspicion of McComiskey's "objectivity." If Booby continues to claim
that he can't see my
point, I will have to believe that in addition to his own lack of
intellectual honesty, he
is also a liar.
Till:
For those who may not know, this is the same "divinity school" where
Gleason Archer teaches.
Archer, as many reading this will recognize, is probably the chief guru
of biblical inerrancy,
and is known primarily for his book Encyclopedia of Bible
Difficulties, a work that is
heavily relied on by biblical fundamentalists looking for "solutions"
to Bible discrepancies.
Turkel:
Psst, and McTill once shook hands with Al Sharpton. Pass it on!
Till:
Well, I never have met Al Sharpton, but I would like to. I find his
political humor to be
a refreshing change from the pseudoseriousness of most politicians. I
still remember a short
comment that he made in the presidential debates: "If Bush didn't know
he was lying [about
WMDs in Iraq], that's even worse." Anyway, Booby's attempt at humor
here speaks volumes about
his "Christian attitude" towards a minority group. I noticed in another
article of his
that he found humor in the
tragic
breakup of the Columbia space shuttle over Texas. He also used
children with
muscular dystrophy
as a source of
"humor." In a word, he has a strange concept of humor.
His comment above about Al Sharpton did absolutely nothing to gainsay my claim that McComiskey's employment by Trinity University Divinity School in Deerfield, Illinois, casts tons of suspicion on his biblical objectivity. I have long known about this institution through my personal correspondence with Gleason Archer, the guru of biblical inerrancy, who taught there and was probably an associate of McComiskey. I took the time to examine Trinity's website to see if it would give any indication of biblical objectivity and impartiality. I found this Statement of Faith on it.
This "statement of faith" clearly presents a fundamentalist view of the Bible. Furthermore, item 11 presents an undeniable view of the second coming of Jesus that is in dire conflict with Bobby's preterist belief, so I would venture to say that McComiskey does not share Bobby's belief in preterism. Since McComiskey has a Ph. D. degree, however, and has published in a peer-reviewed biblical journal, wouldn't Bobby by the line of reasoning that he tries to peddle in his cite-the-scholars articles be obligated to renounce his belief in preterism?
On another page of the website, I also found this Mission Statement of Trinity University.
Trinity's calling is to glorify the Triune God as a learning community “entrusted with the gospel.” The university serves the church by preparing students to fulfill their divine calling through the study of his Word and his world. Trinity is committed to the Christian vision that laid the foundations of the great Western universities: that all knowledge is unified in Jesus Christ, since it was through him that all things were made. Trinity's schools, each with distinct educational missions, are united by their commitment to this vision for the Christian university:
A Christ-centered community. Jesus Christ is the center of our learning and our common life as we enable men and women to serve God in their families, the church, their respective callings, and their culture.
The authority of God's inerrant Word, Holy Scripture. His Word is our final authority in all matters—his own nature, and the world he has made—and therefore the authority for all human understanding and inquiry.
Now how likely is it that someone employed by an institution like this is going to take any position about the Bible that would even suggest that it may have discrepancies in it? I recall the firing of an international relations instructor--who had a Ph. D.--at Harding College while I was a student there for saying in his class that in a war God is on the side that has the most guns. Bobby may think what he wants to about the "objectivity" of writers like McComiskey, but anyone who has had actual educational experience at fundamentalist colleges like Trinity know that deviation from the strict view of the Bible is not going to be tolerated.
Till:
In the introduction to this work, Archer gave the following advice to
his readers who
encounter problem passages in the Bible:
Be fully persuaded in your own mind that an adequate explanation exists, even though you have not yet found it.
Turkel:
Sounds like the sort of advice a history professor might give to a
student stumped by a
difficulty in Tacitus... anyway...
Till:
Hardly! I doubt that any history professor who knows diddly about
historiography would tell
his/her students to accept on faith the accuracy of a passage in
Tacitus that openly
conflicted with other passages or with historical facts known from
other sources. Historical
inerrancy just isn't an educational doctrine that is taught in colleges
and universities.
Maybe the history professors at Florida State University teach this, so
that may account
for Booby's confusion here.
Till [still
quoting Archer]:
In other words, Archer's advice to his readers is that they approach the Bible with the assumption that it is inerrant,
Turkel:
"The professor's advice is to approach Tacitus with the assumption that
he deserves the
benefit of the doubt..."
Till:
But do these history professors tell their students to continue giving
Tacitus the benefit
of the doubt after every consideration of doubt given to him still
leaves them with textual
conflicts that defy rational explanation? Do they tell them that no
matter how perplexing
inconsistencies in Tacitus may be, they must still consider his work
historically inerrant,
because he is, after all, Tacitus?
Till [still
quoting Archer]:
and even when they can see no explanation to an apparent discrepancy, they should still assume inerrancy.
Turkel:
"...and even when they see no solution to the problem, to assume that
Tacitus, because he was
actually there, knew what he was talking about, whereas we were not
there and cannot simply
assume it." Common textual courtesy.
Till:
Hmm, why would a history professor with any semblance of historiography
at all tell his/her
students a thing like this? Tacitus obviously was not "there" when
everything that he wrote
about was happening. Has Booby ever bothered to read Tacitus? Tacitus
was born in AD
ca. 56 and wrote from around 98 to 138, yet in his Annals,
he wrote about the
founding of Rome in 753 BC, the reigns of Augustus, Tiberius, Gaius
(Caligula), and
Claudius, who all lived and reigned before Tacitus was born. Anyone who
reads his works will
see that he obviously wrote about things that happened when he wasn't
"there," so what history
professor who knows anything at all about historiography would tell
his/her students to give
Tacitus the benefit of the doubt because "he was actually there"?
Booby's purpose in saying this was to beg the question of firsthand knowledge that biblical authors had about what they wrote in their books. "They were there," these inerrantists say, "so they knew what they were talking about." This is such an asinine argument that it hardly deserves comment. "Moses" [snicker, snicker] wrote about the creation, the flood, the adventures of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and others, but he certainly wasn't "there," so he had no firsthand knowledge of what he was writing about in telling these tales, and the same was true of other biblical writers.
Till:
Now it may be that McComiskey does not share Archer's view of the
Bible, but I suspect that
he does, because it would be unlikely that he would be on the staff of
Trinity Evangelical
Divinity School unless he did accept the premise of biblical inerrancy.
Turkel:
And it would also be hard for McTill to argue guilt by assoication [sic]
fallaciously
to stack on top of that fallacious argument by ad hominem.
Till:
I am not arguing guilt by association. I am simply stating the obvious.
Someone who
teaches at a religious institution that declares its strict adherence
to belief in the
inerrancy as the Bible--as the "statement of faith" and "mission
statement" that I quoted
above from Trinity's own website--is not going to publish books and
articles that disagree
with those statements. The issue here is as simple as what Brett Palmer
pointed out to
Booby in this
section
of "The Walls of Jericho," where he showed the absurdity of Booby's
acceptance of the
archaeological opinions of the avowed inerrantist Bryant Wood on the
dating of the destruction
of Jericho. An inerrantist is an inerrantist, and I know from personal
experience with them,
when I was also one of their cohorts, that they will twist themselves
into verbal pretzels to
try to make the Bible inerrant.
I will just ask Booby to answer a simple question. If I can find commentators with Ph. D. degrees who say that Hosea 1:4 was declaring that the house of Jehu would be punished for Jehu's massacre at Jezreel, will he then say, "Well, I guess that settles it; I was wrong"? Of course, he won't do this, but he expects everyone else to fall in line and swoon over whatever "sources" he cites in support of his positions.
Turkel:
All of which is much easier than finding out about the nuances of
Hebrew.
Till:
This comment has become too idiotic to deserve further comment, so I
will just remind Booby
of the challenge that I have issued to him several times. Will he
submit to a test administered
by an expert in Hebrew to determine just how much he knows about
Hebrew? This guy obviously
is ignorant of many of the nuances in English, such as the difference
in on and
onto, in and into, transliterate and translate,
cannot
and can not, cite and citation, datum
and data,
remand and refer, it's and its, women's
and womens'
[which isn't even a word], signatories and signators
[which is also not a word],
which and who, complimentary and complementary,
and too many
others to list. He also doesn't understand that English prefixes like re-,
non-,
post-, are inseparably added to root words without hyphenation,
and... well, it would
take an entire article to identify what Booby doesn't know about his
own native language, so
how likely is it that he knows as much about Hebrew "nuances" as he
pretends?
Till:
In examining his commentary, I saw no suggestion at all that he is not
a biblical inerrantist.
Indeed, everything seemed to be written on the premise that he was
commenting on a book that
contained God's dealings with his chosen people.
Turkel:
"In his newsletter, I saw no suggestion that McTill is not a Biblical
errantist..."