Page 251 - Coincidences in the Bible and in Biblical Hebrew

COINCIDENCES IN THE BIBLE AND IN BIBLICAL HEBREW
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230 COINCIDENCES IN THE BIBLE AND IN BIBLICAL HEBREW
In unfolding this new interpretation of the tree of knowledge, a whole new

biblical theory of knowledge seems to be unveiled. Furthermore, the “new”

interpretation of what knowledge actually means seems to be surprisingly (that
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is, by coincidence) compatible with Hegel s theory of how human knowledge
progressively evolves.
In the next section, 17.2, we explore how the Bible relates to the concepts
1
3
of good (tov) and bad (ra). In section 17.3, we further explore the concepts
of knowing and knowledge in the Bible, as materialized in their various usages.
Section 17.4 outlines briefly Hegel s theory of knowledge. The last section, 17.5,

’
summarizes, based on the previous sections, biblical perception of the theory of

knowledge and its relationship to Hegel’s theory about the development of human
knowledge.

17.2 “Good” and “Bad”

A useful departure point for a discussion of what “good” and “bad” may possibly
mean in relation to knowledge in the Bible might be to borrow these very same
concepts from modern quality engineering (of which the author perceives himself
to be somewhat knowledgeable, a perception hopefully shared by a few others).
In modern quality engineering, the quality of a product is judged to be good
or bad according to one criterion: conformance to requirements. The require-
ments are determined by the end-user of the product, and if the latter meets the

requirements of the former, then the product is classified as being of high quality,
or good. Conversely, if requirements are not met (however these requirements are
defined), then the product is judged to be of low quality, or bad. In the prehis-

tory of quality engineering (that is, about fifty years ago), when the market was a

producers’ market, conformance to requirements had only one meaning: confor-
mance to specifications. The design of the product was solely determined by the

manufacturer and translated into technological specifications , which determined
the “laws” that the manufacturing of the product needed to comply with.
With the quality revolution in the mid-eighties of the last century, and the
gradual change of market into a consumers’ market, the rules of the game have
changed. No longer does the product’s manufacturer alone determine what the
requirements are; now, the product has to fulfill the true requirements of the end-

user. This has enormous ramifications. For example, the product could be perfectly

consistent with the defined specifications , yet be considered of low quality (bad),
because the true requirements of the end-user were not adequately translated into
proper specifications in the design of the product. Conversely, a product could

be inconsistent with, or not fully conforming to, all specifications, and yet fulfill