An Unread Letter

In hopes of resolving some of our disputes, I wrote a letter to Nehemia Gordon with several morphological issues related to the Tetragrammaton as it is found in the manuscripts. Mr. Gordon returned my mail with his intentions of having no contact with me because I suggested on CARM that, given the obviousness of the problems with his position, I am driven to conclude that he maintains his positions because of the following that he has amassed (he’s married to the position now) and that he depends on the income from the books and speaking engagements that he sells those who have started to follow him. Because of this, I will not have any chance to engage Mr. Gordon and sway him from this Yehovah nonsense.

First off, I may have been harsher in the form of my statement because I mentioned this in the midst of a heated discussion with an unreasonable interlocutor. I should think that Nehemia himself would be more sensible and civil than those who defend his positions on various forums on the Web. Steven Avery, who put me in touch with a lot of materials on the Jehovist position, got me riled up on CARM’s biblical languages forum, and I probably came across as harsher than I intended with regard to Nehemia’s motivation.

It is not a shameful thing for a scholar to write for the laity. Not at all! Some of my greatest intellectual heroes write lay literature that I think is amazing. I admire the work of Dr. Neil deGrasse Tyson, for example, in both what he writes for public consumption (which is certainly a diluted version of what he knows) and what he has put together in the remake of the television show Cosmos. I think it’s important to buy the books of authors that we agree with and wish to support – and I think it is certainly worthwhile to encourage them to write more.

I do not think it an unworthy thing that Mr. Gordon writes books and gets money from it – or that he should expect to earn a living from the things that he writes. Writing is work. Writing for lay audiences is an art. Nehemia Gordon has every right to write what he thinks, to get money for what he creates, and to make a living from it – if people like what he writes and want to put money into it. That’s his right, and I don’t think it’s a bad thing.

What is unhealthy for an academic is to become married to a position even after the position has become untenable. The idea that the Tetragrammaton should be read as Yehovah is unjustifiable for so many reasons. If Mr. Gordon has become attached to this position because of the books that he’s already written, because of the lectures he’s already given, because of the money that he needs to live (justifiably), he’s not in a good position to be critical and to weigh his conclusions anew.

That said, here is the letter that I sent to Nehemia Gordon in hopes of opening a dialog about these issues. His response was simply that I should be ashamed of myself for calling his motivation into question. I don’t know what other position I could take. It cannot be that I am the first person to point these things out to him, yet he holds to a wrong and ridiculous way of thinking.