Curses! I am obssesed and angry because J. P. Holding has caught Farrell Till, my lord and master, in a huge and hypocritical moral bungle. I therefore thought this latest tid-bit from Holding was another appropriate place for me to apply spin to show the desperation I am turning to in order to divert attention away from my own inability to answer Holding's material and for my god Till to do the same.

Snork snork, ha ha! Hey, fellas! Guess who this is! Yeah, it's me! Steve Urkel! Snork, snork, snork. I was just passing by and my big buddy Carl said that Mojo Jojo was having a fit again. Don't tell him I'm here, he doesn't know! I'm going to have some things to say in response to this latest temper tantrum that frustrated monkey throws about Holding giving Farrell Till a taste of his own medicine. Grab some popcorn, Laura, my pet! Snork, snork!

In typical “J.P.-the-fault-never-is-mine-but-I’ll-point-out-what-I-believe-are-faults-in-others-Holding” fashion, ol’ “J.P. Holding” has tried again to take the heat out from under his own seat and place it under the chair of another. All he has managed to do, however, is turn the flames up under his own roasting keister.

 

Yeah, yeah! In typical “Farrell-the-fault-never-is-mine-but-I’ll-point-out-what-I-believe-are-faults-in-others-Till” fashion, ol’ “C. Farris McTill” has tried again to evade another blatant error and refused to apologize for it. Ha ha, I see that even Mojo admits that maybe McTill should have apologized! As for Holding, he has a keister made of iron -- that's why Mojo and his buddies keep injuring themselves trying to kick it! Snork, snork!

I had pointed out in another article Holding’s software blunder where he had used a computer program called Quickverse to find Greek words from the New Testament in a debate with Farrell Till. In using this program, it doubled up two of the words Holding was using in his defense and then claimed that this doubling was the biblical writer’s way of showing “emphasis” for what these words meant. Till learned of this boo-boo when he compared the text that Holding was analyzing with a printed Greek version of the New Testament. Till found that indeed the words had not been doubled in the text and brought this to Holding’s attention in the debate. Subsequently, Holding (reluctantly) admitted to the error and Till commended him for recognizing his mistake but pointed out that this proved Holding was not the subtle “expert” in ancient languages that he pretends to be. Now, Holding has squawked that he never said in any of his writings that he is an “expert” in either Greek or Hebrew. While true, anyone reading Holding’s work would never know that when he cuts and pastes material from his bug-ridden software programs and then proceeds to comment on them (like claiming that the erroneous doubling of certain words was done “for emphasis” by the biblical writer) that this knowledge does not come from Holding’s own experience and education. Holding does not let his readers know where he is getting his information and thus the impression is left that he is getting it from self-contained knowledge. It doesn’t matter that Holding has never directly stated that he is an “expert” in Greek or Hebrew. His lack of giving credit to his sources is the reason people get the impression that he is some sort of self-taught expert. It wasn’t until the software error crept up in his debate with Till that he admitted having used the program.

Snork! Heh heh, Mojo is a really paranoid monkey, Carl! You see that? Yeah, Holding cites Strong's as his source only, what, 60 times on his website? Maybe Mojo was too busy sticking bananas in his ear to notice. Maybe he's just paranoid, heh heh, heh heh! Maybe he's just insecure and worried about his own ignorance and inability, huh? Hey, that reminds me, who says it matters where information comes from anyway? Is McTill responsible for knuckleheads who mistakenly assume that he is more qualified than he is? Ha ha, ha ha! Get that, we're responsible for what people in their own gullibility and ignorance erroneously think about US based on almost nothing and not even when they could ask. I wanna know what world Mojo lives on. Maybe Betelgeuse, heh heh, heh heh!

 

Now, using software or books to help get an understanding of a subject that one is unfamiliar with is perfectly legitimate. However, it is common courtesy and academic honesty that the person using such material make references to it if indeed they have no intimate knowledge of the subject themselves and have used such material to gain that knowledge. Giving credit where credit is due (because the authors of books and of software programs are the ones who have done all the hard work, not the one with simply possesses an intimate knowledge of the Dewey Decimal System) is a sign of integrity. This is one of the things Holding failed to do and it wasn’t until Farrell Till caught Holding’s software blunder that Holding came forward with the admission that Quickverse was the program he was using to cull his Greek “knowledge.” As stated, he simply cuts and pastes from his software programs and then comments on his search results. He does not inform his readers that a software program was used and that his research came as a result of a keyword search.

Golly! References to it? Holding has only referred to himself using a Strong's 60 times! Not every article he writes requires looking into the original languages, but do you think that's enough for any moron to figure out? Snork, snork! Maybe the problem is that Mojo assumed he could be an expert on what Holding "claimed" of himself after reading less than 1% of his website and just listening to what his "god" McTill said uncritcally. Or maybe Mojo isn't your average moron, but below average, huh? Heh heh, heh heh!

 

Since I published my article exposing Holding’s error, he’s been madder than a hornet missing wings. He has done everything to find some material on Farrell Till to discredit his opponent in the way that my article discredited him. Following is the latest effort Holding has put forth to mud sling Till.

Wow, lookit Mojo! By this analysis that means his entire "Exposed" website proves that he's madder than a nest of hornets that have had their thoraxes kicked off. But hey, try to hold McTill to the same standard McTill holds others to, and what happens? Hee hee, heh heh! Sure! How many times has McTill harped on some error in spelling, typing, or punctuation and said, "If so and so can't manage his own language, how can he be trusted on this other subject?" How many times has McTill tried to manipulate debates with such infantile tactics? Yeah, sure! McTill can rag on about other people's mistakes and make issues of them, but when it's time to return the favor, it's no way jose, Carl! Snork, snork!

 

After Holding recapped his explanation for how he botched use of the software program, he wrote,

 

The results of this: Quickverse is now "fired" as my primary source for the Greek text, and I neither make bones nor take blame for the misunderstanding. This is a typical "indexing" error that is found in reference sources, both online and in print.

 

Notice how Holding refused to take responsibility for CHOOSING this program and for being unfamiliar with how it operated. However, I am still waiting for Holding to explain how “a typical ‘indexing’ error” should take the blame for his misunderstanding this error and using it as a key point in his argument (the word was used twice [an “indexing error”] for emphasis [Holding’s interpretation of the “indexing error”]). However, I fear that Holding has expanded his “inerrancy” doctrine to not only cover the Bible, but also his own writings. Holding feels that God has inspired the Bible to have been written without error, and with these dodges and weaves to avoid responsibility for errors in his own text, it seems Holding believes his own writing is “from above” while any mistakes therein are likely to be “copyist” errors (poor electronic spellcheckers, buggy software, etc.).

Yeah! Notice also how McTill will refuse to take responsibility for being unfamiliar with B Greek, and THEN saying something disparaging about someone who used it. Choosing the program? Gee, how is Holding going to know what's in the box until he buys it, Mojo? Now how can an indexing error take the blame? Snork, that's right, monkeys can't read. Put it this way: If you need a citation for an article, and you use a source that gives the wrong page number, and see no reason to question the validity of the source which has an excellent reputation for accuracy, who is responsible for the error? Now as for it being a key point, gee, I'm just a nerd and I can see that it wasn't used as a key point! Mojo can't produce any statement where Holding says, "The word was used twice, therefore this argument is true." Nah, he can't do that! He's too busy spreading paranoia out of his own insecurities! Snork, snork! Hey, as for copyist errors, Mojo sure won't get off his pedestal to debate that with Holding -- huh? Nah. Since monkeys can't read, they also can't do textual criticism!

 

And let us make the point as well that despite what fuss Farrell will make, and the snide remarks about alleged claims by me to have expertise in Greek (which I have still never made), not one point of the essay relies on the idea that a word was used twice rather than once –

This is Holding’s attempt at damage control. If a word having been used twice rather than once was so unimportant, why mention it? Here is what Holding wrote in his original essay:

Heh heh, heh heh. See? Mojo can't produce a "therefore" statement and there isn't one. Why mention it? Because that's what the text seemed to say and it required mention.

 

The words are "rise again from the dead" -- "rise again" is the Greek anistemi used twice for emphasis. 

 

I don’t know about anyone else, but saying the word was “used twice for emphasis” sounds to me like his essay relied at least in part on what turned out to be a software error, otherwise why mention it and then give an uneducated reason as to why the word appeared twice? It doesn’t matter that “not one point of [Holding’s] essay” relied on the word being used “twice rather than once.”

Huh? Mojo in one sentence says that he sees it as meaning that some part of the essay "relied on" this -- even tho' he never produces a "therefore" statement or something in the article that depends on the point -- then says in the next breath that it "doesn't matter"? Is Mojo taking pills for those delusions? Ha ha, ha ha!

The fact is, Holding copied the error from his software program (which, if Holding had simply admitted outright that he was using a software program as his source and not simply passing the Greek information off as self-knowledge, would not have gotten the reaction that it did) and then commented on it in such a way that the reader was left with the impression that Holding was saying the error was in fact a literary feature used by the biblical author to stress the emphasis of what that error was referring to!

Wow, there's Mojo being paranoid again. Now he's back on the "does matter" side. That little monkey has more ups and downs than Carl's belly after eating a bunch of donuts. Hee hee, hee hee!

Why, if the matter wasn’t important, say that the double usage had been done “for emphasis”? Comments such as these (copying Greek or Hebrew text from a software program without mentioning the source and then making an “educated-sounding” remark regarding the software program search results) that make readers think that Holding is some kind of self-taught expert in ancient languages.

Wow! Mojo really is paranoid and insecure, isn't he! All those people making "educated-sounding" remarks to fool him. And look at how he repeats the same thing over and over again! He sure is learning well from his master god McTill how to repat yourself when you can't actually produce an argument -- in this case, the "therefore" missing from Holding's article. Ha ha, ha ha!

Holding doesn’t have to directly state that he is an expert in these dead tongues. Without blunders like these that are caught in Internet debates, no one would ever know Holding’s knowledge of Greek and Hebrew comes from buggy software and uneducated assumptions. Holding can dodge and weave all he wants but those of us watching him are not being fooled. Holding may think he his cleaning up his act but instead his audience is simply being given some fancy footwork that rivals Riverdance.

Nah, Holding doesn't need to state anything. Mojo's paranoid insecurities and ignorance will lead him to decide what he thinks Holding is saying. Then it makes him feel better when he "discovers" the "truth" that was never a secret to the informed in the first place. It's a great way to build up self-esteem, heh heh, heh heh!

 

and I would rather err in this sort of thing than in the areas where McTill makes his blunders,

 

Of course he would. Holding has already (in his own mind) sanitized his error. He is now about to try and sully Till’s.

Hey, McTill tried his own "sanitation" by pointing to his own education in the regular Greek convention. But that's OK, see, that's not what Holding was on about. Explaining WHY you made a mistake is no big deal. His point was that McTill didn't apologize for his callous remarks about it being a mistake a first-year Greek student wouldn't make -- and Holding sure as heck didn't make such a comment to anyone with reference to the Quickverse thing. And later Mojo admits that maybe McTill should have apologized. So we're still waiting for his own "sanitation" crew to show up, huh? Or is the job too big even for those elephant cleaner-uppers, huh? Snork, snork!

 

and would also like to see if McTill has the guts to admit when he makes such blatant errors. As it happens, he doesn't. Let's take a very pertinent, recent example.

 

Notice Holding is calling Farrell, “McTill.” Holding cannot write an essay that doesn’t drip with sarcasm and ad hominems. These are signs of a weak mind trying to maintain a weak position. It’s fun to watch him squirm like this!

Yeah, by that idea, Mojo's "Exposed" site means he's squirming like Majin Buu and has a mind weaker than a slug in a salt field, he he, he he! I wonder if Mojo even knows WHY Holding uses the name "McTill". Hey, I can hear Boss Tweed saying of Thomas Nast now: "Nast cannot draw a cartoon that doesn't drip with sarcasm and ad hominems. These are signs of a weak mind trying to maintain a weak position." Hey, waitaminnit! I think Mojo is trying to make us think he is an expert psychologist! He doesn't have to directly state it! Heh heh, snork!

 

Also, note if the “error” Till makes has any direct relevance to any point he is trying to convey in a debate. Did Till “emphasize” his “error” to further some exegetical review?

Nope. And neither did Holding, unless Mojo can dig up that naaaasty "therefore" statement! He he he, heh heh!

 

One of our readers

 

For some reason Holding wants to protect the identity of this “reader.” His name is XXXX (if indeed this is not a pseudonym like “James Patrick Holding”) and xxxx freely gives his name on the II Errancy list.

Hide? Boy, Mojo has enough paranoia to power Wrigley Field, doesn't he? Nah, Holding does that on his own as a courtesy to the contributor, just like he did here. Unlike McTill's lackeys, Holding respects the privacy of others.

 

recently participated in discussion on McTill's "errancy" list and posed an extended question, of which, we need only post part to get the idea.

 

Two things to note here. Holding has never once stepped onto Till’s II Errancy list. Instead, he relies on “spies” to it for him. This is the ultimate sign of a coward.

Hmm, ha! Now with that in mind, what about the "spies" or "spy" McTill placed on the old CCBE board who got him that "Philo" quote he likes to sleep with like a teddy bear? So is that a sign McTill is a coward? But nah, Holding didn't place "spies". XXXX came to Holding of his own accord.

Holding doesn’t dare expose his weak apologetics to an informed cast. He’d rather cower behind his closed website and shot spit wads at his enemies.

Hey, since when is a public wesbite "closed"?? What's the password to get in and what are the annual fees? I guess the "informed cast" isn't informed enough to get on the website? Hmph! Some "informed" cast! Snork, snork! Get real! Right now Holding has 50K people using his website a month. McTill's little errancy list has only about 150 members. Who's the one hiding behind a "closed-er" forum, huh?

If engaged in a debate where his apologetics are being ripped to shreds, and if he has agreed to “host” that material on his website, he’ll do his best to keep his readers from seeing it by zipping the contents into a compressed file, thereby making it even harder for some folks (that don’t have WinZip or know how to use it) to view it.

Oh, yeah! All those websites that put stuff in pdf format are trying to stop people from seeing it, right? And Holding knows that the people without unzip programs are the same people he doesn't want to see the article. Oh, man, that is just so hard and so inaccessible! I had to run around the block 500 times, lift a 3 ton weight, and sneak a kiss from Laura just to get to it! Paranoid monkey, heh heh, heh heh!

Secondly, notice how Holding slides in the fact that he is only going to reprint “part” of the post in order for his readers to “get the idea” of the larger issue. Yes, the idea Holding wants to get to his readers is the idea that only Holding possesses, not the whole issue. Fortunately, the issue that Holding is trying to dredge up to defame Till is still in archive and the entirety of the matter can be found, in spite of Holding’s attempt to chop it up into convenient bite size pieces he can spoon feed to his readers.

Um, yeah, so? None of what was left out affects the issue at hand. Mojo acts like Holding left out the secret formula to changing lead into gold or something! In the end he doesn't even explain what was compromised by the summation! So let's just get down to where it matters, again:

Yep, check it. This B-Greek list is dedicated to the discussion of the translation of the NT, and is packed full of experts. Maybe McTill should go over to the B-Greek list to explain to the experts there how they're making "fundamental mistakes that even a first-year student of Greek would know not to make."

 

I hate to jump ahead here, but Till does end up acknowledging these conventions in a follow-up reply reprinted below. I will save further comment on Till’s response until later. However, here I want to note a couple of things. First, Till does not have a young person’s knowledge of the Internet. From knowledge of Till’s responses on the II Errancy list, and in articles posted on the Secular Web, Till uses the Internet sparingly and mostly out of convenience. He has others helping him get his material on the Web and so if he did not know about Internet conventions for transliterating Greek, he can hardly be held at fault.

Who cares what knowledge McTill has, snork! What "knowledge" he had wasn't the issue. The issue was that McTill assumed he knew enough to make an insulting comment accusing xxx of making a huge, honking error! If McTill wondered what was going on, he should have said, "Hmm, xxx, that doesn't look like the way to transliterate Greek, as I learned it. Can you explain this?" Nah! McTill just hauled off an called it a mistake and insulted xxx off the bat. Carl would put him in the slammer for slander! Hey, we'll look at what that B-Greek list says about itself, then keep going:

 

Secondly, while understanding Till’s lack of Internet experience, note what is stated on the B-Greek website referenced in Joe Alward’s reply above: The Biblical Greek Mailing List (B-Greek) is a mailing list for discussing the Greek text and language of the Bible. Anyone interested in New Testament Studies is invited to subscribe, but the list assumes a working knowledge of Biblical Greek.

 

B-Greek was started by David Marotta at the the [sic] Center for Christian Study, an independent Christian ministry at the University of Virginia.

 

Reading messages is simple - they arrive as e-mail messages, and you read them with your e-mail program. However, most e-mail programs can't handle Greek characters, so we use capital ASCII characters instead. For instance, you might receive a message that contains a Greek phrase that looks like this: EN ARCH HN hO LOGOS, KAI hO LOGOS HN PROS TON QEON, KAI QEOS HN hO LOGOS. To convert this to Greek letters, use the following key:

There are two good reasons for using capitals: it makes it easier to spot the Greek in a text, and it allows us to use lowercase 'h' for rough breathing. However, you can also use lowercase, especially if you use quotes or separate paragraphs to separate the Greek from your English text. This is just one way to transliterate Greek, and members of this list use several different schemes, but we always manage to figure out what is meant.

 

Till’s lack of computer savvy and the fact that this B-Greek is used by a newsgroup in e-mail correspondence pretty much accounts for why Till jumped to the conclusion that he did. How was Till supposed to know that xxx’s transliteration was the result of trying to render the Greek into ASCII?

He wasn't. But he WAS supposed to have the humility not to simply assume at once that xxx was making a mistake a first-year student of Greek would not make. Heck, Holding says this as clear as Laura's beautiful complexion...sigh:

 

What this goes to show is that McTill is willing to mouth off without any idea what he is talking about, and can't be trusted to be reliable just because he mouths off.

 

The irony of this last statement is surely lost on Holding and his gaggle of fans.

It might be found at Lost and Found. There's no irony here. Notice! This is the clearest statement of what Holding is trying to say, and Mojo doesn't have any real response! All the more ironic, because at the end, again he admits that maybe McTill should have apologized for the very mistake Holding points out as clear as spring water right here!

 

I have seen this B-Greek used before; rather than assume it was some sort of error, though, I merely assumed (rightly, as it turns out) that it was some sort of acceptable variation for representing Greek.

 

Why do I find this statement hard to believe? I doubt that Holding has “seen this B-Greek used before” and I doubt that he would have the restraint to keep himself from commenting on a perceived error. I guess it’s because I’ve seen this guy cry “wolf” too many times. He has a track record for stretching the truth. But, of course, it may just be my own cynicism.

Nah, more like ignorance and delusion. Want to see where Holding saw this B-Greek used before? Go to this article on the Secular Web by Robert Price. Holding answered that article years ago, and the SecWeb has since converted some of this into Greek characters, but long ago before they had that they used B-Greek, and here is the part Holding had in mind, which is still in B-Greek:

Craig spends a lot of time in his essay "The Bodily Resurrection of Jesus" addressing details of 1 Corinthians 15 and the history of its interpretation in a reasonable and credible way.[12] I have no quarrel with his rejection of Bultmann's existentializing reading of swma as "selfhood," when it must mean body in a substantial sense...

In "regular" Greek swma is transliterated as soma. Here, Price or maybe the Sec Web editor used B-Greek. So much for poor Mojo's paranoia! Instead of crying wolf, how about eating crow?

 

McTill, had he any humility or conscience, would either do the same, or else would have privately asked our reader what the "problem" was. But no! That's not how McTill operates, and he is far more concerned with trying to achieve smears than with getting to the bottom of things.

 

Another group of statements dripping with irony. I wonder if Holding has ever looked into investing in black pots or kettles?

Yeah! Another statement Mojo misses the point of. Yet more clear explanation of what Holding says was McTill's error, and Mojo STILL thought Holding was slamming McTill for just not knowing B-Greek! No wonder this guy follows McTill nose to tail, his reading is just as bad! Heh heh, heh heh! And when has Holding ever blithely assumed such ignorance on anyone and referred to what they said as the work of an amateur? What's that, Mojo? Hee hee!

 

And unlike me, McTill has never acknowledged his error, and did not apologize to our reader for this misapprehension and implied insult.

 

Oh yes, here we go with Holding’s view of himself as the ever self-correcting and self-effacing apologist who humbly accepts when others point-out mistakes he has made. Yes, that farcical “Chicken Challenge” of his where he dares people to disagree with him and his gallery of “Rouges” (skeptics Holding believes he has buried by his apologetics) is the epitome of humility.

Yeah, mistakes like putting a hyphen in "point-out" which McTill would say is reason not to ever trust anything you say: "If Mojo can't master the basics of English, blah blah blah, etc etc." And worse, Mojo's grammar implies that Holding has a problem with people who disagree with the "Rogues" themselves! One mixed up monkey! Little wonder he won't come out of the bushes, hee hee!

When did Holding ever apologize for the software blunder?

When did Holding's blunder insult someone?

He never even took acceptance for the fault. He simply kicked his “garbage-in garbage-out” software package and then “fired” it without ever apologizing to his audience for having entrusted his inexperience of the Greek language to an $80 computer program. Come to think of it, when has Holding ever apologized for name-calling, even when others he has smeared have continued to be civil to him and not sink to his level of juvenile pranks (you have no idea the restraint it takes not to drop the “T” from his last name and start referring to him as the nerdy-know-it-all kid from that early 1990’s sitcom)?

Ha ha! Holding says he's honored to take the namesake! I'm honored Mojo remembers me! Heh heh, snork! Now who is that that Mojo thinks has "continued to be civil"? Does he mean them guys like Brooks Trubee who coat their condescension with a chocolate candy shell? And we're still waiting for an explanation of that missing "therefore" qualification that actually affected the point. In other words, "inexperience" meant nothing here. Nada, nope! That computer program is used by tens of thousands of satisified customers. It had a bug in indexing that Holding was unaware of. The parallel would be if Holding came to someone and called them uneducated for not knowing that there were doubled words in the text.

When has Holding ever taken the high road and been a gentleman in any discussion with a skeptic? Holding’s habit is to spit first, make up excuses later. I can’t believe he is trying to pass himself off as some kind of Internet patron saint of Christian apologetics. Then again, self-deception is Holding’s specialty.

Golly, when will Mojo ever be able to say anything without saying it 7,938,838 times? When will Mojo actually move beyond vague generalization accusations? When will he stop erecting a straw man of excess? When will he actually get out of the bushes? The answer to all of those is NEVER and I don't blame him, nah!

 

But, more directly to Holding’s charge, we are about to see if Till ever acknowledged his “error.”

 

He only threw out this excuse: "Okay. In Greek classes that I took at the Bible college we attended, we were taught to represent the Greek alphabetic characters with the closest equivalent in the English alphabet." No admission of error.

 

What admission of error? As Holding claims above, he would not have jumped to the same conclusion as Till because he had at least a passing familiarity with this “B-Greek” convention that Till admits he did not have! Is it an error to be unfamiliar with an Internet convention?

Argh! What admission of error?? The error in jumping to a conclusion -- which Mojo admits McTill did! -- and THEN insulting someone based on that jumped conclusion! What, is Mojo brain-locked with B-Greek in the crevices?

 

No taking back what he said about "first year students in Greek" being the only ones to make such a mistake. On that note, let me quote one of McTill's own, with some modifications: "I wonder if Till's fans are changing their mind [about him] now? I doubt it, but this is good stuff, folks. Really good."

 

Yep. That last shot was at me since Holding modified what was the concluding statement in my original article highlighting his software blunder. With that remark and the smug smiley, I know my original article has gotten under his skin!

Heh heh, heh heh. By that account Mojo's "Exposed" site shows that Holding has gotten under his skin, peeled it off, and used it as a parasail! Heh heh, heh heh!

It is becoming increasingly apparent that Holding does not like to be shown up in worldwide media. I wonder what this current article is going to do? Get another “satirical” essay about me using his favorite cartoon show as a source of ammunition?

Hey, with this remark, we know Holding has gotten under Mojo's skin, right? Ha heh, heh heh! Nah, Holding says he's having a great time! Notice also how Mojo skips over commenting on the big part: No taking back of the remark by McTill! But watch, he does pull a distraction.

 

But, in Holding’s disingenuous habit to cut and paste only as much of the conversation as he’d like, he omitted a very large portion.

A large portion of what?? In what follows Mojo relates more of the discussion in which xxx was accused by another of McTill's fans of cutting and pasting from an Internet source. The answer in context is, So what, and what relevance is that to McTill making a rude remark in his ignorance! As it happens xxx is a student who uses the Internet regularly and so used the B Greek method in his comments. But hey, the fan fits right in with Mojo, McTill, and the Paranoia Plot -- they could never imagine someone using B Greek on their own, no sir! They had to copy it from somewhere, as though that made a difference in the argument! Watch this:

 

One of the other members of Till’s list, xxxxxx, had pointed out after Till’s response to xxx,

 

xxx did not transliterate the Greek. What he did, and what the chart on the web site you listed does, is attempt to represent the Greek alphabet using the Latin letters that look the most like the Greek letters.

Personally I don't care for the use of Q to represent theta, H to represent eta, and W to represent omega, but this method is used to reproduce large portions of Greek texts without the use of the Greek alphabet. Symbols are also needed to indicate accents and breathings.

When transliterating the Greek alphabet, the goal is to use Latin letter or group of letters that has the equivalent or near equivalent sound. Theta is written as "th" because that is the closest the Romans could come to the Greek sound. Rho is written as r or rh depending on whether it has a rough breathing.

My personal preference on the Internet, where it is not expedient to use macrons (macra for you purists) to indicate long vowels, is to write the long vowels with upper case letters but, otherwise, to use standard transliteration.

I would guess that Tim cut and pasted his Greek text from an Internet source. He certainly didn't transliterate it.

 

Once this convention was pointed out, Till indeed did respond with,

 

Okay. In Greek classes that I took at the Bible college we attended, we were taught to represent the Greek alphabetic characters with the closest equivalent in the English alphabet.

 

What does Till have to apologize for? Farrell Till is nearing his 70’s and has about as much knowledge of Internet conventions as any other person his age.

The issue isn't McTill's knowledge of Internet conventions! The issue is -- again! -- he insulted someone in ignorance and didn't apologize for it or take back the remark.

His computer savvy is not on par with a generation that cut their teeth on the machines—a fact that Holding points out with disrespectful glee frequently.

Nah, what Holding points out is that McTill can't do a competent search of ANY kind like search for something by title! This isn't even a computer issue because it's the same principle used to find things in your old card catalog, like the one down at my school. Heh heh!

Till also readily (and repeatedly) acknowledges that his understanding of Greek is limited to the courses he took decades ago. In no way does Till’s lack of familiarity with how Greek words are rendered for Internet viewing equate with Holding’s software blunder. Till’s error was the result of prior knowledge that, outside the Internet, is still valid!

Nah, it's worse than Holding's blunder! McTill actually insulted someone in ignorance and didn't admit that the insult was misplaced! Explaining his own ignorance is step one and was not enough.

Even in Till’s first post he admitted he was no expert in Greek. Holding’s screw up did not come with such a disclosure (such as, “I am not an expert in Greek, but I looked up the Greek word anistemi using a favorite software program, Quickverse, and found that it was used twice. The double usage may have been intended by the gospel writer for emphasis.”).

If McTill was no expert in Greek then he should have kept his mouth shut and not insulted xxx! As for the rest, that's just Mojo being ignorant and paranoid again, snork snork! He doesn't know that Holding regularly disclosed his source as Strong's -- that it was software isn't relevant.

Holding simply cut and pasted from his bug-ridden program, did not acknowledge where his material had come from, and then keyed into that error to stress a point.

Get that! One indexing error makes the whole thing "bug-ridden". Mojo sure has picked up on McTill's "if he can't spell one word right, all he says is not trustworthy" routine! Too bad he can't apply it to himself! Now if he missed blatantly the point of Holding's article here, then...

In Till’s error, he was simply using his understanding of transliterating Greek letters into English and noticing that this is something that xxx didn’t follow. When someone with more computer experience pointed out to Till xxx’s convention, Till readily acknowledged that the error was due to his inexperience with Internet conventions.

Oh, yeah! That's what McTill said, all right: "XXX, my understanding of transliterating Greek letters into English is Y, and I was noticing that this is something that you didn’t follow. Can you explain?" Nah, McTill didn't say anything about it being a mistake a first-year Greek student wouldn't make, did he? Nah! Not with that ego inflatable to 1300 psi!

 

Till had NEVER used his knowledge to stress any point directly related to the subject under discussion (the nature of Judas’ death). For example, Till never once claimed that GENOMENOS had been used “twice” by the biblical writer “for emphasis.”

We're still waiting for Mojo to explain to us how that "directly related" point had a "therefore" that afffected Holding's argument. Yeah, McTill never claimed that, he just insulted XXX by saying he made a mistake a first-year student in Greek wouldn't make.

 

Holding claims that Till “never acknowledged his error,” but from the above quote this isn’t exactly true. When xxxx had pointed out to Till where xxx had likely got his renderings, Till acknowledged “Okay,” and then proceeded to explain why he had thought xxx had erred.

Last prize! That isn't an acknowledgement that McTill erred in insulting xxx. Get it right! Holding is pointing to McTill's moral error, not his technical one!

And, in Till’s experience and knowledge of Greek (as taught in classes long before the advent of the Internet – and how it still likely is taught in seminary classrooms), xxx’s transliteration was false. If one is trying to transliterate a Greek word using English letters and is not doing so for Internet presentation, Till’s formula still applies. Till didn’t err at all, he simply misunderstood an alternative way of transliterating the Greek into English. This does not, by any stretch of the imagination, equate with assuming a software blunder was actually something intended by a biblical writer “for emphasis.”

A misunderstanding isn't an error? Snork, snork, who's covering a butt now, Mojo? Ha ha! He he! OK, so Holding then "misunderstood" the report of the software as an "alternative way" of reporting the content of the text. How's that sound? But it's still not that misunderstanding that Holding is making an issue of. It's the issue that McTill never withdrew his insulting comment to xxx, which shows how he steps into things without knowing what he is talking about!

 

To verify a suspicion that I had that this “B-Greek” is something not taught in seminary classrooms (and thus a convention not likely used by “first year student[s] of Greek), I wrote to Polly Coote, Associate Professor of Biblical Greek at San Francisco Theological Seminary, and asked her if she’d ever heard of “B-Greek.” In my correspondence with her, I included xxx's original transliteration of the Greek “falling headlong,” PRHNHS GENOMENOS. I also asked if anyone in her seminary community of students/teachers were familiar with “B-Greek.” In the e-mail, I explained how Farrell understood biblical Greek to be transliterated from his courses of many years ago: using the closest English letter equivalent to the Greek. Here is how she replied:

Word in order: Coote you'll see displayed the kind of humility McTill didn't. She also figured it out real easy just by looking at her keyboard, a simple thing McTill didn't think of. It's also not an issue of whether the convention is or is not used by first year students in Greek.

 

B-Greek is new to me -- it sounds Mycenaean somehow (Linear B comes to mind). As far as I know it is not familiar to my seminary community. 

Coote's seminary community may not be that large, but Holding received this from a seminary student lately who said: "One issue would be that B-Greek is the list associated with SBL, the Society for Biblical Literature." But Coote may not have active SBL membership. Either way it took her all of 2 seconds to figure it out:

 

Your PRHNHS transliteration looks as though the H appears for eta, due to the resemblance of the capital eta to an H --no?  The Greek fonts I have on my computer use the h key for eta.

 

In teaching Greek I go straight for the Greek alphabet without transliteration. It's true --I have found it difficult to communicate electronically with students and others about Greek because of the font problem, but I have not resorted to transliteration very often.  We have encouraged students to download a Greek font so that they can at least read messages with Greek text in them.  If I were transliterating, I would, I suppose, follow the principles mentioned by your correspondent who took Greek so long ago -- go with the closest resemblance in English.

 

I wonder if Holding would think Professor Coote a fool for not recognizing “B-Greek” (thinking it sounded “Mycenaean somehow”!) when it is brought to her attention?

Nah. Holding would think her a fool if she insulted someone in ignorance about it. She didn't. She figured it out and stated her preference, saying nothing disparaging at all.

Of course, without the “key” provided above, Prof. Coote had no idea what xxx’s transliterated “H” really stood for in the original Greek. She would have been as equally baffled as Till was by what xxx wrote. She admits that she goes “straight for the Greek alphabet without transliterating” any given text to English, but says if she were to transliterate, she would use Till’s convention, not the B-Greek.

That's fine. It's also of no relevance, snork snork. And actually, she wasn't baffled at all. She looked at a keyboard and figured it out at once.

 

Now, perhaps Holding has a point in stating that Till should have offered an apology to XXX for jumping to an otherwise understandable conclusion.

Perhaps??? That WAS the whole point, and now Mojo admits it! McTill should have apologized for the comment, period! He didn't. End of point, heh heh!

But is Holding one to dispense advice on how someone ought not to be rude? Holding needs to hurry and invest in the stock of “Black Pot and Kettle Co.” In addition, perhaps this latest exposure will help Holding realize that when he “mouth[s] off without any idea what he is talking about” he loses what little credibility he has. Holding needs to understand that he “can't be trusted to be reliable just because he mouths off.”

Yeah, Holding sure is one to dispense advice on how not to be rude when you don't know your topic well enough and are just dispensing gratuitous insults for no other reason than being obnoxious. Mojo of course is deluded just like all of McTill's fans into thinking Holding has done the same, and medication will be of no help to them. As for credibility, when Mojo gets as many as 45K visitors a month to his "Exposed" website, then maybe he can speak with some authority about "credibility". Holding mouths off with credible and scholarly sources -- not with bravado rooted in his own ignorance.

 

So, once again, Holding has provided ample entertainment for the skeptical community. This is good stuff, folks. Really good!

Yeah, these guys need entertainment since they ran out of babies to steal candy from. What can I say, guys? Carl says Mojo needs some corrective reading lessons when he's through with his delusional psychotherapy. He may also need a new hiding place, heh heh, heh heh!