Subject: Re: request for review
Since I am the scholar who supposedly wrote in an ad hominem manner--to me it was ad rem, since it dealt with the heart of the matter, Salibi's abysmal ignorance--I feel that a few more words are in order. The purpose of a network such as this is the promulgation of knowledge, not of nonsense. It is not meant to expose someones baseless ideas,and theAne network manages to keep that standard on the whole. I am of the generation--taught by Goetze, Landsberger, Albright, Oppenheim, Kramer,Bickerman, Speiser, and others to apply strict standards to our own work and to that of others.I am not the only one who feels that there has been a falling off from these standards.
The reviews of Salibi's works were not "denunciations" but critical reviews, unanimously decrying the author's free and easy way with the text, with historical geography, with the Hebrew language,etc.
One of the sharpest reviews, and most sarcastic, was written by a leading Sa'udi schaolar [sic] in Arabic.
Any attempt "to show me where I am wrong" his phrase quoted in Dahlberg's letter is a sure waste of time. He was shown where he was wrong. There is no doubt that he had a distinguished career as a historian of Lebanon, I heard him lecture some 25 years ago when I was a professor at UC Berkeley and met him then.He hadn't taken up theBible yet.
To call what he does "biblical studies" makes our field in the broadest sense a travesty, and one may truly wonder about good Fulbrightmoney being spent in this manner. It is also a bit ridiculous to say that he couldn't have contact with scholars in Beirut then, since Bill Ward was at the AUB, and there were indeed others there. One wonders.
For whatever it is worth I have had over a dozen e-mail letters thanking me for speaking up.
Let me correct my reference to the review by Sarkis. the correct name is H. Salame-Sarkis, "Et si la Bible venait d'Arabie? A propos du livre de Kamal Salibi" Berytus XXXIII (1985)pp. 143-165. Two other 'reviews' are P. Cardinal, La Bible et l"Arabie" Revue des Etudes Palestiniennes 26, 1986, 63-70; E-M Laperrousaz, in the Parisian daily Liberation 2 Nov. 1984. etc. etc.
For the commonweal, Jonas Greenfield