Last month I posted a link to Bernard Lamborelle’s grilling by two Assyriologists and an Egyptologist. As I said in that post, while they did not find his thesis compelling Lamborelle did a good job of fielding the questions and taking their constructive criticism well. And just recently he has posted a response to some of the objections raised in that peer review session that I think are pretty interesting. He concludes,
If anything can be said about this exercise, it is that no decisive conclusion can be drawn at this time. Excellent questions were raised that show my work remains fragile and that the amount of energy required to fact check it goes beyond what can be expected from a casual reading and discussion.
I view the fact that everyone saluted the amount of research and effort and that no decisive rebuttal was provided as something extremely positive. It encourages me to seek additional feedback and perspectives. More scholars need to look into it before it can be properly validated or refuted.
Once again, I want to thank Dr. Bryson, Dr. Bowen and Megan for taking the time to read my work, to reflect on it and to share their invaluable feedback on it. If I somehow misrepresented their thoughts or was biased in the way I reported their overall appreciation of my work, please let me know. I will be happy to make the necessary corrections.
This is what I call being careful about your claims. Lamborelle was willing to put his work to the test, recognized some flaws, and was very grateful to those experts that disagreed with him. He knows he has more work to do and he plans on working on it. He is a testament to what true scholarship should look like.
I am currently reading his book The Covenant and plan on reviewing it piece-by-piece here on the blog. So far I’ve enjoyed it though I have questions that I’ll explore as I blog.
Check out the rest of his post on peer review here.
Featured image: By Attributed to Colin Nouailher – Marie-Lan Nguyen (2009); cropped by Beyond My Ken (talk) 18:01, 10 November 2010 (UTC), Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=12016136
The Amateur Exegete 