[Vision2020] In Defense of Ralph Nielsen

[Nicholas Gier]

Greetings:

I believed that Phil Nisbet has been unnecessarily harsh on my good friend Ralph Nielsen.  Ralph has devoted much of his retirement to the study of the Bible from a healthy skeptical perspective.  He has proved time and time again that Christians who claim to know the Bible usually don't know what they are talking about.

Ralph and I have met devout Jews at scholarly conferences who are completely cool with the phrase "Hebrew Bible" and know how to distinguish a scholarly approach from a believer's approach. 

I suppose that Phil would not at all like my paper "Hebrew and Buddhist Concepts of Self," which is currently out for blind review.  It demonstrates that the Hebrew scriptures as they stand (not as they are interpeted by the various schools of Judaism) do not support that idea of a substantial or immortal soul.  Phil quotes a passage from Ecclesiastes and is unaware of the fact that what returns to God is not an immortal soul, but the divine breath that animates all life, including animal life. We and the animals return to the dust or a shadowy existence in Sheol.

I appreciate the Jewish religious very much because it generally does not take scripture literally, and it also takes traditions very seriously.  

If Phil could just stop and realize that Ralph is talking scholarship and he is talking about the Jewish tradition, this blow up could have been avoided.

Nick Gier