Jacques Berlinerblau: The Bible is exceedingly popular and influential. So why aren't the scholars who study it?
[Jacques Berlinerblau is director of the Program for Jewish Civilization at Georgetown University's Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service. He is the author of The Secular Bible: Why Nonbelievers Must Take Religion Seriously (Cambridge University Press, 2005).]
This is a great time for the Bible, but can the same be said for biblical scholarship? That is most likely a question that won't be addressed later this month when biblical scholars descend upon Washington for their annual conferences. The Society of Biblical Literature, for its part, will assemble a sizable chunk of its 6,000 members, few of whom, I would surmise, will be considered any sort of national security risk. As far as academic societies go, the SBL is about as unthreatening and placid as they come. "Edgy," "controversial," or even "relevant" are not the terms that spring to mind when trying to describe its activities. The SBL, of which I've been a member since the early 1990s, is allergic to even thinking clearly and critically about itself, or listening to the concerns of its members.
As for the Bible, well, it is living large again because America is in the midst of a religious revival. What some call the Third and others the Fourth Great Awakening is born of the resurgence of conservative Christianity. Among evangelicals, fundamentalists, neo-evangelicals, and Pentecostals, the centrality of Scripture to Christian life is taken as a given. It is estimated that these groups make up roughly 25 percent of the electorate. They also appear to have been the vanguard of the so-called "values voters" in the 2004 campaign. The awesome power of their ballot has not been lost upon Democratic strategists. No one should be surprised that 2008 presidential hopefuls now routinely pepper their rhetoric with scriptural allusions. The consequences of the electoral and demographic rise of "Bible-believing Christians," as some like to call themselves, are not difficult to discern. As they soar in the nation's public life, their cherished text soars with them.
Both the country's current president and his predecessor accord Scripture great esteem. "Religious special-interest groups" aggressively factor scriptural ideas into their policy positions. Across America groups on the religious right, but increasingly on the left as well, presume that the Bible offers instruction regarding social issues such as research on human embryonic stem cells, poverty, the environment, homosexuality, abortion, public-school curricula, and so on.
Next week when we start one of the last joint meetings of the American Academy of Religion and the SBL (a parting of the ways will be initiated in 2008), it's a good time to ask why biblical scholarship isn't sharing in all of this good fortune. One would imagine that with Scripture on the comeback trail, this would be something of a golden age for biblicists. The SBL, founded in 1880, should have the same cultural cachet as PEN or the Brookings Institution. It should be the impresario of an immense stable of talent, one that it dispatches to the media on a quotidian basis to explicate the rejuvenated Bible for both the general public and assorted high-culture types. Queries and concerns about Scripture ought to be routinely directed to an academic society whose thousands of members constitute the world's most knowledgeable body of experts on all matters biblical. The SBL should be to the Bible what FIFA is to soccer....
Read entire article at Chronicle of Higher Ed
This is a great time for the Bible, but can the same be said for biblical scholarship? That is most likely a question that won't be addressed later this month when biblical scholars descend upon Washington for their annual conferences. The Society of Biblical Literature, for its part, will assemble a sizable chunk of its 6,000 members, few of whom, I would surmise, will be considered any sort of national security risk. As far as academic societies go, the SBL is about as unthreatening and placid as they come. "Edgy," "controversial," or even "relevant" are not the terms that spring to mind when trying to describe its activities. The SBL, of which I've been a member since the early 1990s, is allergic to even thinking clearly and critically about itself, or listening to the concerns of its members.
As for the Bible, well, it is living large again because America is in the midst of a religious revival. What some call the Third and others the Fourth Great Awakening is born of the resurgence of conservative Christianity. Among evangelicals, fundamentalists, neo-evangelicals, and Pentecostals, the centrality of Scripture to Christian life is taken as a given. It is estimated that these groups make up roughly 25 percent of the electorate. They also appear to have been the vanguard of the so-called "values voters" in the 2004 campaign. The awesome power of their ballot has not been lost upon Democratic strategists. No one should be surprised that 2008 presidential hopefuls now routinely pepper their rhetoric with scriptural allusions. The consequences of the electoral and demographic rise of "Bible-believing Christians," as some like to call themselves, are not difficult to discern. As they soar in the nation's public life, their cherished text soars with them.
Both the country's current president and his predecessor accord Scripture great esteem. "Religious special-interest groups" aggressively factor scriptural ideas into their policy positions. Across America groups on the religious right, but increasingly on the left as well, presume that the Bible offers instruction regarding social issues such as research on human embryonic stem cells, poverty, the environment, homosexuality, abortion, public-school curricula, and so on.
Next week when we start one of the last joint meetings of the American Academy of Religion and the SBL (a parting of the ways will be initiated in 2008), it's a good time to ask why biblical scholarship isn't sharing in all of this good fortune. One would imagine that with Scripture on the comeback trail, this would be something of a golden age for biblicists. The SBL, founded in 1880, should have the same cultural cachet as PEN or the Brookings Institution. It should be the impresario of an immense stable of talent, one that it dispatches to the media on a quotidian basis to explicate the rejuvenated Bible for both the general public and assorted high-culture types. Queries and concerns about Scripture ought to be routinely directed to an academic society whose thousands of members constitute the world's most knowledgeable body of experts on all matters biblical. The SBL should be to the Bible what FIFA is to soccer....