by cwconrad » May 27th, 2011, 5:44 am
Just to set the record straight, "Ancient Hebrew Poetry" is not a discussion list but rather is John Hobbins' own blog and its blog entries are directly controlled by the blogger. Blogs generally do invite reader comments, and such comments sometimes entail a good deal of dialogue about the original blog entry. I don't by any means agree with John Hobbins' perspectives on some matters, but I think his deeply-informed, often extensive essays (his specialty is Biblical Hebrew) are very thoughtful and provocative, although probably not everybody's cup of tea. But a blog is a personal sounding board that may invite dialogue; it is NOT to be confounded with a content-regulated well-moderated discussion list, where an initial post may be inappropriate for the list's parameters or a reply in the course of the dialogue may cross the line of the list's parameters and invoke other polemical responses. The extent to which any blog is wide-open to controversy is controlled by the blogger him/herself. Bloggers themselves and the blogs which they publish on the internet run the whole gamut of the good, the bad, and the ugly. I personally think that John Hobbins' "Ancient Hebrew Poetry" is one of the more interesting and useful among the dozens of existing so-called "Biblioblogs."
Carl W. Conrad
Department of Classics, Washington University (Retired)