Douglas Yoder is a scholar of philosophy and biblical studies.
He grew up on a dairy farm in Pennsylvania and studied engineering science (B.S.) at Penn State before declining a National Science Foundation fellowship for doctoral studies in solid-state physics at MIT in order to study philosophy, politics, and economics (B.A. and M.A.) at
Douglas Yoder is a scholar of philosophy and biblical studies.
He grew up on a dairy farm in Pennsylvania and studied engineering science (B.S.) at Penn State before declining a National Science Foundation fellowship for doctoral studies in solid-state physics at MIT in order to study philosophy, politics, and economics (B.A. and M.A.) at the University of Oxford on a Marshall Scholarship, classical piano (Artist Certificate) at the Chopin Academy of Music in Warsaw, and biblical studies (M.Div. Fuller) and the philosophy of religion and theology (Ph.D. Claremont Graduate University) in California.
Douglas lives with his wife and three sons in Los Angeles, where he teaches classical piano and writes.
This 2007 study was the first to conceive of or examine Tanakh epistemology.
In keeping with the necessarily interdisciplinary study of epistemology in the Tanakh, committee members were biblical scholar Marvin A. Sweeney (supervisor), continental philosopher of religion Frederick Sontag, and analytic philosopher Amy Kind.
Here is the disse
This 2007 study was the first to conceive of or examine Tanakh epistemology.
In keeping with the necessarily interdisciplinary study of epistemology in the Tanakh, committee members were biblical scholar Marvin A. Sweeney (supervisor), continental philosopher of religion Frederick Sontag, and analytic philosopher Amy Kind.
Here is the dissertation abstract:
"This study presents a philosophical reading of the native epistemology of the Tanakh. It seeks to provide a maximally noncontroversial account of this form of conceptuality by treating the Tanakh not as religious literature, but as an ancient Semitic epistemic text. The frequency of the verb 'know' is used to identify textual locations of epistemic emphasis indigenous to the literature, while analytic philosophy and classical studies are employed to elucidate these passages and set them in transcultural context. Tanakh epistemology is cohesive, nuanced, far-ranging, and bold. Its deepest conceptual commitments voice noncontradictory positions regarding skepticism, perception, physical and nonphysical reality, epistemic limits, and the relation of knowledge to power, desire, and life. The articulation of these positions enables a meta-epistemic assessment of the sometimes variant assumptions of Hellenically-derived philosophical epistemology. Since this form of Greek thought conceptually undergirds the western intellectual tradition, a meta-epistemic engagement of this nature is broadly relevant for western culture. This can be seen in the early Enlightenment in the way Spinoza sets off philosophical against biblical epistemology in his attempt to liberate the western mind from ecclesial control. This study argues that neither early modern Christendom nor Spinoza provide accurate accounts of Tanakh epistemology. The prisms by which ancient forms of Greek and Semitic conceptuality are refracted into early modern Europe are therefore flawed, and with them the western bases for assuming that Greek-derived epistemology is of uniquely transcultural validity and application. Consequences follow for biblical studies, religion, philosophy, and politics, and for other domains in thought and culture."
The dissertation is transformed in the book it became.
Cambridge University Press published Tanakh Epistemology in hardcover in June 2020. Douglas Yoder uses the tools of modern and postmodern philosophy and biblical criticism to elucidate the epistemology of the Tanakh, the collection of writings that comprise the Hebrew Bible.
Despite the conceptual sophistication of the Tanakh, its epistemo
Cambridge University Press published Tanakh Epistemology in hardcover in June 2020. Douglas Yoder uses the tools of modern and postmodern philosophy and biblical criticism to elucidate the epistemology of the Tanakh, the collection of writings that comprise the Hebrew Bible.
Despite the conceptual sophistication of the Tanakh, its epistemology has been overlooked in both religious and secular hermeneutics. The concept of revelation, the genre of apocalypse, and critiques of ideology and theory are all found within or derive from epistemic texts of the Tanakh. Yoder examines how philosophers such as Spinoza, Hume, and Kant interact with such matters, and how philosophy and science relate to claims of revelatory knowledge. He also explores how the motifs of writing, reading, interpretation, image, madness, and animals, topics that figure prominently in the work of Derrida, Foucault, and Nietzsche, appear also in the Tanakh. An understanding of Tanakh epistemology, Yoder concludes, can lead to new appraisals of religious and secular life throughout the modern world.
Tanakh Epistemology offers a new foundation for Jewish, Christian, Muslim, and secular readers to better understand themselves, and each other.
Here is a link to an overview article of the book for the general reader: