An Article of Faith?
Categories: Scholarship, Paul, Greek, Judaism, Christianity, New Testament, Dead Sea Scrolls, Gospel of Mark, Gospels, Gospel of John, Cross, Skepticism, Book of Acts, Gospel of Luke, Gospel of Matthew, Letters of Paul
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Historians of the Bible and other ancient texts do their best to solve historical problems by using historical method to sift the evidence in objective ways that will persuade other historians that one solution fits the evidence better than its competitors.That said, a learned ear detects a pattern listening to some scholarly discussions: belief. Very occasionally this appears in the religious sense of the word, when a scholar subtly tries to protect a historical or doctrinal sensitivity of a religion they belong to or care about. (Yes, historians and archaeologists care about what they study — there are few other reasons to go to so much trouble to learn so much.) More often this belief takes the form of defending the ideas of the school and professors that provided one's education, defending an idea one has spent a career developing (even if new, contradictory evidence has appeared), or defending one's geography (i.e. one's being a British scholar versus a German one.)
Many scholars spend at least part of their careers proudly defending something about their intellectual heritage and challenging the intellectual heritages of rivals. The best scholars recognize this is tosh, have little use for pride, and trespass across schools of thought, following the evidence, with the attitude of a true Buddhist through maya.
(I am not saying I am one of them: but I am always delighted to hear or read their work.)
Some examples of this kind of academic belief:
- "Only a fool would look in the Book of Acts for historical information about Paul."
- "Everyone knows normal forms of Judaism during the time of the Dead Sea Scrolls look just like the one form of Judaism that survived past that era."
- "Every scholar worth his salt knows that all early Christian texts were written in Greek."
- "It is unassailable that Paul wrote all the letters that bear his name in the New Testament."
(These may only make sense if you've spent decades reading and listening to historians: some widely agreed upon points are the result of a century of evidence gathering and consensus building rather than an artifact of a subset of historians being petulant.)
This post was based on this meditation on belief from an unusual source (I recommend listening to it: my eyes go into blah-blah-blah mode when trying to read certain types of exposition*): http://skeptoid.com/episodes/4134
Everyone is likely a skeptic on some topics and a believer on others: try Mr. Dunning's suggestions on for size whether he offends you or not.
* I first noticed this reading studies on the small differences between the Synoptic Gospels (the similar stories of Matthew, Mark, and Luke) and the Gospel of John. The topics were good, often riveting ("Just how does crucifixion kill?"), but paragraphs of small back-and-forth discussions start turning into blah-blah-blah somewhere in the middle. (Note to my students: do not try this in your papers. I will notice ... eventually.)
-Kushana
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