I know … not the sort of “academic” title you’re used to seeing here. It’s prompted by some recent feedback I’ve gotten for my post “Can We Please Stop Appealing to Rabbis for Biblical and Ancient Text Interpretation?” You guessed it. There’s fear that my words...
antisemitism
Mike Will No Longer Be Appearing on Paul E. Stevenson’s Revolutions Radio Show
[Addendum: It’s been a while since posting this, and Mr. Stevenson has apologized to me. Consequently, I may at some point in the future do something “on air” with him, thought not on this show. In short, he did the right thing. That’s all I...
Anti-Semitic Bible Study
I often get asked about the "true pronunciation of the divine name" or "the authentic meaning of YHWH, the Tetragrammaton." I've often wondered why people care -- why is it that they can't be content with the scholarly convention of "Yahweh" in this regard, especially...
Is the Book of Genesis Plagiarized from Sumerian and Akkadian (Mesopotamian) Sources?
This is a common claim by Zecharia Sitchin and those who adore him, like his webmaster Erik Parker, and Jason Martell. As I have blogged here before ( here and here ), this idea was common fare toward the end of the 19th century, due primarily to two historical...
The Bias of 19th Century German Biblical and Assyriological Scholarship
Turns out even real scholars can be guilty of paleobabble when motivated by biases. They simply filter the data through a preconceived grid. I’ve blogged before about how F. Delitzsch was influenced by racial theories of his day toward anti-Semitism, which in...
Is Zecharia Sitchin Anti-Semitic?
I don’t believe so (Sitchin is Jewish). That said, it seems Sitchin and his followers don’t realize how his ideas open themselves to that charge. How? Aside from pure imagination, a lot of Sitchin’s ideas presuppose a dependence of the Hebrew Bible...