My years-long humiliations of Farrell Till began with a debate concerning 2 Kings and Hosea, and it is appropriate that it ought to end there. Of course, it is unlikely that Till has the good sense, honor, decency, or humility to quit when he should; he is as of this date many years behind on replying to our material, in the process having committed several enormous gaffes that would send more honest men to the confessional booth. The purpose of this article is to highlight one of the latest of these gaffes, and to demand from Till a public apology (our demand is for mostly rhetorical effect, since given his inclinations towards skilled rationalization, we obviously don't expect one to be forthcoming), and to offer this up as the latest and most clear evidence that Till is an incompetent whose only working skill on a resume' is a mouth that runs faster than his brain.

To set the background: Till had accused me some time ago in the Hosea-2 Kings exchange of a tactic which he describes in general as follows:

Citations from periodials in student papers would immediately set off an alarm in my head, because a popular student ploy was to cite in their papers titles of periodical articles that they had found cited in books they had consulted. The books would usually be in the library, but, as often as not, the periodicals weren't in the library's inventory. I didn't have to be a genius to figure out what had been done, because—and I will admit it—I had done the same thing when I was a college student.

I insisted that all 17 of my sources for the matter had been found at the Reformed Theological Seminary library here in Orlando. Lately Till has replied with yet more affirmation of his slander, and purported to justify it with fact, as follows:

....what [Holding] says here doesn't agree with my own research. He had mentioned some time ago that he uses the Reformed Theological Seminary Library in Orlando, so when I was trying to locate his "sources" to check their content, I used interlibrary loan at the college where I used to teach. Its system lists all locations of where books requested can be borrowed, and I specifically asked the operator of the computer to check for availability in Orlando, Florida. Some of [Holding]'s "sources" were not listed there. Anyway, [Holding] needs to be careful about what he claims, because the electronic age makes it too easy to check claims. There is a website where all books in the catalogs of the RTS Libraries in Orlando, Charlotte (NC), and Jackson (MS) are listed. That search has shown that none of the libraries have Mordecai Coogan's book 2 Kings, but I guess that this was one of the "couple" that [Holding] bought at Long's Christian bookstore. None of the articles in journals like Catholic Biblical Quarterly, Journal of Biblical Literature, and Journal for the Study of the Old Testament were available in these libraries. Two articles from The Journal of Biblical Literature were inventoried, but neither of them was Mullen's article cited by [Holding]. Of course, he was probably able to run down to Long's and grab these off the shelf too. All three of these journals in the issues needed just happened to be on sale. This website search revealed another interesting thing. In addition to being an expert in Hebrew, [Holding] must also be able to read German, because he cited the commentary on Hosea by Hans Walter Wolff, and it was available only in the original German version. How was he able to cite a book written in German? Well, that is easy to do. If McComiskey or Stuart cited it, [Holding] could cite it too and pass it off in his endnotes as a primary source.

Till went on to suggest that I "bluffed" my way through college with the same tactics.

In reply to this, we will now present rationally indisputable evidence that Till is in error on two of these points (the ones highlighted) to start. He is in error on others as well, but because these two points are the easiest to deal with, we will address them here and now, and anyone wishing for similar proof on other such points, I will gladly provide them with verification on request.

Below are the title pages of Cogan's commentary, as well as Wolff's commentary -- in English, with a note about the translation -- with the stamp of Reformed Theological Seminary's library on them:

As for searching the RTS catalog, I have no idea what Till's problem is, but incompetence is the most likely root of it. Cogan's commentary is in the catalog, plain as day, under this listing:

Orlando

* Main

o BS1335.3 .C63 1988 [Available]

So likewise Wolff's -- 2 copies, in fact, though one is checked out at this moment:

Orlando

* Main

o BS1565.3 .W64213 c.2 [Checked Out]

o BS1565.3 .W64213 [Available]

I think no more needs to be said, including no more at this time about the article of Till's I took this from. This is manifest proof of Till's incompetence, and of his willingness to engage in slander and/or deception. We hereby demand that Till issue a public apology for this error and for his slander.

Don't hold your breath, though.

If you did hold your breath, keep holding it. We didn't expect any apology from Till's quarter, for as he admits himself, he is and has been quite the skilled rationalizer, but we have some comments on what was offered, and further comments on our disposition of Till himself. More on that anon.

In terms of reply, we will ignore the bulk of Till's ranting rattles, as usual. There is no lack in this, for the bulk are (as usual) things that have been replied to before (but he wouldn't know, since he's 874 years behind in replying to us, and still working on that personal reply to Simon Greenleaf and making plans now to attend the first Super Bowl), and it is likely that only an exceptional sadomasochist would subject themslves to Till's incessant blather anyway, or else, someone else who holds an equitable stake in the local funny farm.

When it finally gets to answering the charges above, however, the rationalizations fly like spittle from Till's mouth during a debate:

• "Duh ah, sure, all these sources may be IN the library, but that doesn't prove he actually used them!" Of course, I admit I didn't. I was actually getting my information from the Pope and his little friend the Roswell alien, right after we had our little excursion in the Lovre planting subliminal messages in da Vinci's "Mona Lisa" such as Eat more tripe and putting "backwards masked" lyrics into the latest Dr. Dre album that would encourage people to subscribe to Better Homes and Gardens.
• "Duh huh, you ignored my extra stupid questions of the week!" Till asks two questions he thinks I refused to answer, though I did clearly enough for anyone with the most limited comprehension and critical thinking skills, but since Till is a low-context Neanderthal, let's spell it out for him:

  1. Did you obtain and read all sections in your 17 "sources" that you cited in your article?

  Duh....yes.

  2. Did you lift a cited [secondary] reference from any of these books or periodicals and present it as a primary reference?

  Duh....NO.

  Now would Farrell also like for us to strain his beets for him and change his diaper?

• "Duh ah, well, maybe those photocopied title pages aren't real. I could obtain a copy of Coogan's commentary, photocopy it, and then take a book with a stamp from my local library on the title page, photocopy its title page, and with a little splicing together make a copy that would appear to "prove" that my local library had Coogan's commentary available. Yes, folks, Till REALLY does suggest this was done. Really.

  Do I really need to say much more? I don't, but we'll say some more at the end after we finish with the skinning:

• "Duh ah, well, I didn't find some of that stuff in the catalog." Well, we're sorry Till is so stupid sometimes, but let's give him some hints. The reason he can't find periodical titles is because he doesn't bother to look around before he runs his mouth. Go here and you'll notice a little tab in the top graphic that says, "Periodicals". That's where things like Catholic Biblical Quarterly are listed -- not in the catalog. So let's paint a big, red STUPID on Till's forehead and move on.
• "Duh ah, when I looked for Wolff's book back then only a German version was listed." Sorry, I don't buy that. There's no German version listed in the catalog at all. In the end, though, once we're past the three journals, Till has to admit that 11 of the remaining 14 are in the RTS library; of the three that remain, two (Achtemeier, Garrett) were those that I had said I found in a local bookstore, and one (Morris) he allows to be a match by virtue of the title.
• "Duh ah, Holding deleted his article answering me!" No, I didn't. I moved it to my cartoon website here which is now where I put nearly all of my responses to extraordinarily stupid people like Till.
• "Duh ah, no, you apologize to ME for saying I went to a lousy college!" Pish tosh. Till is so busy getting himself out from the plot we buried him in that he missed my anwser to this. I don't care how high a rating his college got from US News and World Report recently; we're not talking about what and who is there NOW but what the school was all about THEN when he went, back when he was still writing replies directly to Greenleaf himself. Only the stupidest sort of person thinks that appealing to data from the 90s has any bearing on what happened in the 40s or 50s when it comes to rating a college.

  Now a few words in close.

  We've been ignoring 90% of Till's output lately, and expect to continue to ignore it to that level. The level of rationalization engaged in above, which verges on the sort that would be offered by Acharya S, speaks for itself.

  But the real reason we'll be ignoring him is that we've discovered Till's secret: He's not actually human. He's actually an anthropomorphic spy from the Planet Goombah. And we offer the following as proof:

• No human, none at all, could possibly be this stupid.
• We have a photograph of him morphing into a Goombahite:

  Oh, and the rest of you can start breathing again. You have our permission.

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