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 PrintableVersion The Bible nowHomosexuality, abortion, women, death penalty, earthExpert hubrisTHE BIBLE NOW The authors of this curious book are American academics who specialise in Old Testament studies. They aim in this work to present a defence of the Bible. A laudable aim, one assumes. However, to grasp the nature of a defence, one needs to ask what the perceived danger is. Would the threat be from those who undermine the Bible’s historicity? Or the new atheists? Or postmodern pluralists? The answer is none of the above. The danger these scholars wish to defend the Bible from is the problem posed by readers with less scholarly expertise than themselves. The authors summarise their message: ‘We have warned you about doing Bible when one is not trained in it’ (p.177). What appears at first glance to be an apologetic for the Bible turns out to be a rather old-fashioned, authoritarian and modernistic view of the Scriptures by the scholarly guild. It would be a tyranny of the expert were the effort not carried out with so little finesse. Demi-god academicsThe book opens with a brief preface summarising the reasons academics ought to be granted demigod status. With the humility of Uriah Heep, the authors proclaim: ‘We are scholars, not politicians. We may have positions, but they have no business in our scholarship. A scholar’s job is to tell the truth. Everybody should tell the truth, but a scholar’s profession is to tell the truth. When a scholar lies it is particularly awful’ (p.xiii). The book proceeds — with no discernible hint of irony — to explain that academics trained in their mould have nothing certain to say about the Bible’s views upon five significant ethical issues facing people today. Each of the topics mentioned in the subtitle receives a chapter of self-indulgent demonstrations of critical scholarship’s genius. In each chapter the same approach is taken. Various passages one might assume speak to the topic in some manner are refracted through the authors’ assumptions. They mention obscure biblical scholars, friends or even former students (p.36) who have noted that there are various interpretations of a Hebrew word. It is concluded that people who speak as if the Bible speaks clearly on the matter in hand denigrate their intellect and the complexity of the Bible. So, for example, on the topic of abortion, the authors argue that the Mosaic Law in Exodus 21.22-25 is ‘unclear in several different ways and learned scholars have questioned and debated its meaning over two millennia’ (p.45). Throughout the book we are told that archaeology has disproved the Bible’s historical claims (p.20) or that reading the Bible ‘is not a matter for amateurs, and it is not easy. You cannot just open a Bible — especially in translation — and find an obvious answer’ (p.39). The latter quote was written regarding homosexuality. Mental gymnasticsThis book has very little of significance to say about the topics ostensibly being discussed. One cannot help but marvel at the mental gymnastics by which one must contort the Bible’s sinews, to conclude about abortion: ‘We would have to say that the weight of the biblical evidence is in the direction that abortion is not biblically forbidden’ (p.53). The early church was known for rescuing and adopting babies left to be aborted by exposure. Presumably their misguided humanitarian efforts in obedience to the Bible’s teachings could have been prevented if ‘modern scholars’ had been around to tell them how unclear the Bible is about the sanctity of human life! Why us?This book’s unnamed targets are Christians who hold beliefs commonly thought of as biblical on major ethical issues. One of the strangest ironies of this work is that the authors are Old Testament scholars, who refuse to consider any aspect of the New Testament in their thinking. ‘We deal only with the Hebrew Bible because it is the area of our expertise’ (p.xiv). One wonders why the book appears aimed at traditional Christians rather than Jews. If at times their writing sounds strained, desperate and shrill, perhaps it is because the authors on some level know that they are attempting to shore up ground in a battle long since lost. Their self-important attitude turns off today’s generation who — while they value knowledge — do not wish to see it wielded as part of a power play against the lesser trained. Their studied lack of commitment to beliefs other than their own superiority has emptied denominational churches across the globe, while multitudes flock to believe what they scornfully dismiss as, ‘Common, popular arguments . . . [which] are misunderstood, misquoted, misinterpreted, misread, mistranslated, and misused’ (p.xiii). Peter Sanlon, © Evangelicals Now - February 2012 |
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