I hope that this will be a lesson to [Holding]'s admirers, who should understand now that they shouldn't swoon in admiration when he undertakes to tell them what the biblical languages meant. They should always take with a grain of salt what a linguistic amateur says when he presumes to explain the meanings of words in a language that he doesn't know.

Now let's ask this question: What does a misreading of a reference source's technical methodology -- which is what is involved when it comes to the Strong's number and the doubling of words in Quickverse -- have to do with any level of expertise in use and understanding of the language, and to the degree needed to conduct the discussion we are now having? The answer is that it has nothing to do with it. This is the same sort of diversionary red herring Skeptic X hauls up time and time again when he needs some fluff to lay at an opponent's door. What if I were to use that "90% payment of my website" comment to indicate that Skeptic X has general problems reading and can't be trusted to read anything correctly? In fact I have been doing this -- precisely to make the point that it is exactly what Skeptic X is doing, and that it is merely a cheap diversionary tactic on his part, in this case to distract from the fact that he has been slapped down for trying to make it out that we claimed some special expertise in Greek and Hebrew.

Let's make it clear, as a close, that this is not a peculiarly software "error" -- the same type of mistake in presentation is made in print resources, and causes researchers headaches and makes for difficulties in other venues as well. Vincent Bugliosi, in his excellent book on the Simpson trial, made the point that such presentation errors as these are commonplace. A sign is not properly placed, and we end up going down the wrong road. Do we blame ourselves, or the sign? Are we to be blamed for assuming that the Department of Transportation in our state did their job right, and for not checking maps for confirmation? Of course not. As always the point remains that when such errors are discovered, we go back and do things over as needed, and only those with their own problems with self-esteem will ever make an issue of it once the error is found and corrected. Here, my reading of the software made no difference in my argument. The words could have been repeated 1 or 100 times and my argument would have been the same. Skeptic X, however, can never seem to bring himself to this kind of admission, though it will be interesting to see what he offers as a response (if any) to thinking, for example, I wanted him to pay for 90% of my website. (Or other errors he makes -- see here.)

And here's one more, specifically having to do with the Strong numbers. I called Skeptic X down for a typo:

[Holding] is actually trying to equate his biblical language gaffes with this? I quoted Numbers 3:47-48 but labeled it only as Numbers 3:47. Anyone could have used the information I gave to locate the passage quoted, but when [Holding] labeled yarash as word #423 when it was actually #3423, this was a mistake that would have caused difficulty for those who don't know Hebrew. Furthermore, if [Holding] knew much at all about Hebrew, he should have known that a word that began with the letter yod would not have been word #423 in an alphabetized lexicon, since yod is the 10th character in the Hebrew alphabet.

Pass the pickles for the herring! Yes, it is an equal gaffe, because both involved technical, compositional errors. Even had I known or cared (or even if it had made a difference in the argument!) that yod was the tenth letter in the Hebrew alphabet, knowing this would not have prevented me from not rolling my mouse trackball quite far enough to grab the first 3. For that matter, knowing the reference number does not affect at all knowing how the word is used, and Skeptic X's putative reader with "difficulty" would be no more able to know that yod was the tenth letter, and if they had an issue, obviously could simply check the verse cited and get the correct number, and would immediately grasp that there was a typo -- just as it wouldn't take much to figure that out for Skeptic X's error. Bottom line: Skeptic X is playing the conspiracy theorist because he knows he is being called on the carpet for distractive debate tactics, and because he needs something to make his followers feel better and not notice the content of the argument (which was not in the least dependent upon how many times anistemi or any word was used) -- in short, we're taking away his toys and making him sit in the corner and twiddle his thumbs.

Update: In Part 8 of the Land Promise reply, Skeptic X responds to where I noted that he mistyped Speiser's name:

I have no idea what [Holding] is talking about. I write hundreds of articles per year, so I can't remember everything about all of them without having some specific point of reference. If [Holding] would learn to be specific, perhaps I would be able to reply to him. Of course, if he was specific in his writing, he wouldn't be able to crank out the quality of hackwork that pollutes his website.

Skeptic X may write hundreds of articles per year, but he hasn't written hundreds every year with reference to my work. This is just more of Skeptic X's laziness and/or convenient memory loss, and an attempt to spin out things in his favor. I doubt if Skeptic X has read as much as a twentieth of what is on this website and he is in no position to make "hackwork" judgments, especially with the amount of "hack and cough" work he produces with reading like the "90% of your website" nonsense he cranked out above.