[Vision2020] Does Phil Nisbet Practice Anti-Gentilism?

[Nicholas Gier]

Greetings:

Before making the point in the title, I have to explain the delay in 
posting my response to Phil Nisbet's critique of my post "The 
Deceptions of War."  I had to do a lot of fact checking, and then make 
sure that I got in my daily ski run on the golf course and my 
afternoon faculty union recruitment on the UI campus, which I've been 
doing for the last two weeks.  And then there was the exhausting five 
hour City Council meeting on Monday night. Many people left after the 
zoning hearing but I stayed on for the ballfields debate.

In recent post Phil again charged me with the sin of anti-Semitism. By 
the same perverse reasoning, I guess I could call his unfair attack 
on “Deceptions of War” a case of anti-Gentilism, but I will not play a 
silly and demeaning tit for tat game.

But I will make one comment. The implication of Phil’s charge is that 
the many Jewish scholars in the American Academy of Religion, from 
whom I’ve learned much about the Hebrew religion contained in the 
Hebrew Bible, are anti-Semitic as well.  Reductio ad absurdum!

Perhaps Phil still fails to appreciate the distinction between the 
scholarly study of texts on the one hand, and the practice of a 
religion that includes scripture, ritual, and tradition.  For example, 
the former study concludes that there is no evidence for an afterlife 
in the Hebrew Bible, but the latter maintains that belief, at least in 
the tradition of the Pharisees.  Phil must know that prior to the 
Pharisees, the Saducees rejected life after death and the resurrection 
of the body, views consistent with the Hebrew Bible.

Phil joins Biblical absolutists such as Doug Wilson (his new term to 
describe himself) in condemning all Bible scholars who do not agree 
with their traditional view of Jewish or Christian doctrine.

Nick Gier