{"id":86,"date":"2005-07-21T00:09:46","date_gmt":"2005-07-21T07:09:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/toddbolen.com\/?p=86"},"modified":"2005-07-21T00:09:46","modified_gmt":"2005-07-21T07:09:46","slug":"do-liberals-ever-agree","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/toddbolen.com\/blog\/2005\/07\/21\/do-liberals-ever-agree\/","title":{"rendered":"Do liberals ever agree?"},"content":{"rendered":"
Jim West<\/a> gives his “Quote of the Day<\/a>“:<\/font><\/div>\n
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“No one would assert that the [Gideon cycle in Judges] is a poetic fiction. There cannot be the slightest doubt that Gideon defeated the Midianites” — Gerhard von Rad. <\/font><\/div>\n
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West’s comment: “It’s the quote of the day because I find it so utterly remarkable, and so utterly remarkably wrong for such a gifted and learned exegete.”<\/font><\/font><\/div>\n
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My comment: It is striking how the liberals can so profoundly disagree.  The point: there is NO standard for evaluating whether a narrative is historical or not.  One can say there is not “the slightest doubt” while another obviously believes there there is not the slightest doubt for the opposite conclusion.  So which is it and why?  And if 50 years ago we decided that the story really happened, and today we know that it didn’t, could we decide 50 years from now that it actually did happen?  And if so, what’s the point of all this study?<\/font><\/div>\n
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Elsewhere<\/a>, West writes, “If anything, archaeology has shown that the biblical narrative is distinctively different than the archaeological evidence.”  I can only shake my head and wonder how someone could make such a statement.  It hardly seems that he could read the same books or visit the same ancient sites that I do.  He is a Baptist pastor and scholar.<\/font><\/div>\n
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A running item on West’s blog is his Vacation Bible School; bet you wish you could send your kids to his program, don’t you?<\/font><\/div>\n
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Book plug: if you’re at all interested in these sorts of things, I highly recommend Provan, Long and Longman, A Biblical History of Israel.  At least the first 100 pages.<\/font><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Jim West gives his “Quote of the Day“:   “No one would assert that the [Gideon cycle in Judges] is a poetic fiction. There cannot be the slightest doubt that Gideon defeated the Midianites” — Gerhard von Rad.   West’s comment: “It’s the quote of the day because I find it so utterly remarkable, and so utterly\u2026 Read More »<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-86","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/toddbolen.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/86","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/toddbolen.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/toddbolen.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/toddbolen.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/toddbolen.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=86"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/toddbolen.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/86\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/toddbolen.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=86"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/toddbolen.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=86"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/toddbolen.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=86"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}