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Re: orion re: minimalism
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I pointed out in a talk given in the context of the Dublin SBL two years
ago that this "minimalist-maximalist" nonsense is pointless, and I wish
people would consider better what they say. The implication of the notion
of being a so-called "minimalist" is that one accepts as true fewer
statements, hence a minimum, about the past depicted in the HB, than a
"maximalist" does. The problem is, the HB is, mirabile dictu, not an
anthology of *statements* about the past, but a congeries of legal
materials, narratives, oracles, prophecies, poems, proverbs, metaphors,
etc. Any historian worth his salt can frame *any amount* of hypothetical
statements on the basis of such materials. I am often called a
"minimalist", but I´ll stake my imagination against that of any so-called
"maximalist", meaning that I´m quite confident I could produce thousands
more testable hypotheses on the basis of the texts that he can.
Fred Cryer