MEDIA HOWLER ALERT: Something called "Elkhart Truth" announces the following lecture series associated with the From the Dead Sea Scrolls to the Bible in America exhibition in its Local Digest section:

Elkhart: Leading scholar will lecture at exhibit

ELKHART -- The world's leading scholar on ancient Hebrew, Frank Seekins, will present hourly lectures on the Paleo-Hebrew language at the exhibit "The Dead Sea Scrolls to the Bible in America" at Concord Mall.

Today through Oct. 31 and Nov. 5-7, Seekins will lecture hourly at the traveling collection of ancient biblical manuscripts, which includes fragments of the Dead Sea Scrolls.

The popular exhibit, initially scheduled to run until the end of the month, has been held over until Nov. 7.

My first reaction was, who the heck is Frank Seekins? I've never heard of him. A Google search produced a few things. He has written a popular book entitled Hebrew Word Pictures and some other popular books on Hebrew. The premise of the first one looks quite dubious to me and in any case is not aimed at a scholarly audience. There is nothing about him publishing specialist research on ancient Hebrew or holding an academic position, which I suspect is why I hadn't heard of him. If the article had said something like "a scholar of ancient Hebrew," I wouldn't have blinked. I don't know every specialist in Hebrew in the world. But the world's leading scholar? I would be hard pressed to say who that is. Some names do come to mind, but I imagine we could debate about the top half-dozen or so and agree to disagree on first place. The point is that, whatever good Dr. Seekins has done (and I do appreciate the value of popular lectures), the top Hebrew scholar would be well known in the academic world for a large body of cutting-edge published research.

Indeed, anyone prominent in ancient Hebrew studies would be embarrassed to be characterized as "the world's leading scholar on ancient Hebrew," simply because there are so many brilliant people in the field. Now I'm not blaming Frank Seekins for the announcement; I don't doubt that someone else came up with this on his behalf. He probably is mortified, if he's seen it. The thing that bothers me is that the media outlet obviously hasn't a clue what constitutes world-class scholarship or a clue whom to ask about it and they have made themselves and the whole exhibition look pretty silly. I don't mean to be petty, and I realize that this is a very local news source. Still, that doesn't excuse this sort of carelessness, which serves their local audience ill. And especially if they're going to post on the Internet in front of an international audience, they need to put more effort into getting their facts straight and putting them in proper perspective.

I've revised this post a little to make clear that my quarrel is with eTruth, not Frank Seekins. Which is not to say that I endorse his ideas.