I don't think I'm going to have time in the near future to make as substantive as a reply as I like, so let me just make a few more observations:
1. Benner in general has his basic methodology ALL wrong. He is absolutely convinced that every word has only one meaning. He even has a "translation" of the OT built on this premise. He calls it "mechanical translation." His ideas yield this "translation" of Gen1:1-2
- In the summit, Powers fattened the sky and the land, and the land had existed in confusion and was unfilled and darkness was upon the face of the deep sea and the "wind of Powers" was much fluttering upon the face of the water.
Now, we could walk through that one verse alone, I think, and try to give it a proper analysis as to why it's just ridiculous. But I just don't think I have the energy for that. I'm content to let the reader see the fruits of Benner's labor and decide for himself the validity of his methodology. I mean, if that's what his method gives you, and if you think that's as absurd as I do, then the entire method is (rightly) discredited.
2. His entire approach is also built on a popular but just incorrect idea that Hebrew thought was "concrete" and Greek thought was "abstract." In fact, there is a lot of overlap between the languages, and all the more if we consider Koine Greek and compare it to Hebrew. Anyone who has looked at the LXX' rendering of the Pentateuch can see a remarkably wooden translation, but one that reads just fine in Greek. And scholars have long noted that much of the NT--especially the gospels--can be very easily translated into Hebrew. All that shows is that the languages are just that--languages. To suggest that the Hebrew mind is in some way fundamentally different from the Greek mind is to suggest that the Hebrews and Greeks have different
minds. But that can't be true, because both the Hebrew and Greek are human beings with the same nature and intellectual capabilities.
It would be more right to say that the Hebrew and Semitic
worldview was more theistic--their ethics tended to be directly derived from their view of God. The Greeks, on the other hand, seem to me to have had a more standard pagan worldview that was essentially atheistic in its ethics. So the difference between the two is captured by Euthyphro -- Semitic thought opts for Divine Command Theory (in fact, Muslims still do even today) whereas pagan though opted for the other horn. It took revelation, starting in the OT but really demonstrated in the New, to show us the way out.
Now we expect people with different worldviews to express themselves differently, but even then, we shouldn't read too much into it. Hebrew has different idioms than Greek does, but they are just that: idioms. Every language, Greek included, has them. Moreover, the grammar of Hebrew is
much simpler than Greek, so it is very possible if not extremely likely that what people like Benner mistake for a "concrete" language is nothing more than trying to do every job with a single tool. So, for instance, whereas Greek is highly inflected (I mean, take the cases alone: nominative, vocative, genitive, dative, and accusative; and that's the five-case system rather than the eight; there is no such parallel in Hebrew -- there are just nouns), Hebrew just isn't. It has some inflection, particularly in its verbal system, but even that is nothing compared to the Greek verbal inflection. So Greek is just, by its nature, a more nuanced language. To try to suggest, though, that because a person writing or speaking in Greek was more abstract and philosophical in himself because he was able to so express himself than someone writing or speaking in Hebrew because the language lacked the necessary tools should be offensive to anyone who actually takes Hebrew seriously. What, after all, is poetry if not abstraction? And some of the world's best poetry is Hebrew!
So, no, Benner is wrong here. There is no basis for the claim that Hebrew thought is "concrete" and Greek thought is "abstract." His "translation" of Genesis 1:1 proves his error.
Bereyshith can't mean "in the beginning," he says, because "the beginning" is abstract. So it refers to the "summit," and that leads him to deny creation
ex nihilo. He is just wrong all the way around.
And so we see the same mistakes with his argument about faith. Yes, the word he refers to can refer to "support." The word is used to describe the temple pillars. But he's just wrong because he's trying to do the "concrete" thing and thinks that all words have only one meaning. In fact, the Hebrew word for "faith" just means "to consider something reliable." Of course, Benner thinks that is "too abstract" and continues his slander of the Jewish mind. But he's wrong. The temple pillars were "faithful" because they were "reliable" -- they were able to support the weight of the building. And so we can have faith in God because He is reliable. We don't support Him. He supports us, and we recognize that fact -- to recognize that is to have faith in Him.
It is, in a word, to say "Amen" (which comes from the Hebrew word
aman, which is at the root of the word Benner wants to talk about in your OP). That's faith -- to say our "amen" to God -- to say that He can and will do what He has said He can and will do. So Jesus says He saves everyone who believes in Him, who gives Him their amen. And we do. We recognize that He is reliable to do what He promises, and in so recognizing, we are justified.
Anyone, then, Benner included, who invents "linguistic" or any other type arguments that invalidate the gospel just show in yet another way why they are wrong. We don't support Jesus. That's not the meaning of faith.
And all of that is a very small sample of why you have to be extremely careful of internet resources, ESPECIALLY when reading self-proclaimed experts who not only have absolutely no formal education but who, more importantly, rely on the scholarship of real experts and then come to drastically different conclusions than those same experts, as if he understands their own scholarship better than they do, and that with no training!
edit:
BW, here's a link to an Amazon review and a thread based on it that you may find helpful. The reviewer, a Mr. Paul Stevenson, actually has formal linguistic training and makes some excellent comments about Mr. Benner's abysmal attempts at understanding Hebrew.
http://www.amazon.com/review/R3DNQ6FGTJ ... Q6FGTJ81Z0
