LegionOnomaMoi

Another thread recently brought up the issue of academic or scholarly consensus, but did so through a specific topic which concerns an area of research shared by scholars from a variety of backgrounds. I believe that the focus on a single issue limits the scope of the discussion such that had I attempted to write the following in that thread, at best I would be dealing with peripheral issues, and would more likely just be off-topic. In addition, by beginning another thread, I can deal with other issues of scholarship (what generally qualifies and why, how it is developed, what consensus means and how it might be reached, and so forth.

Introduction: The "Ivory Tower"

The purpose of this post (whatever the thread itself may become) is to examine scholarship in general, with a greater focus on biblical studies than other fields. I realized some time ago, both in discussions with people I knew and those I tutored or taught, that a great many people don’t really have a very good understanding of how a work of scholarship in any given field is produced, or what counts as scholarship, or how any given field develops through the research of those working within it. This has nothing to do with intelligence, but is (I believe) simply a lack of familiarity with the academic world so to speak.

And this is hardly something which has gone unnoticed by academia or the public. References to the “ivory tower” exist in journal articles, where (more often than not) some scholar laments the disinformation presented to the public. For example, Naomi Oreskes' “Beyond the ivory tower: The scientific consensus on climate change” is one of many papers and books about the “vast and terrible” gap between what “experts” know about climate change and what the “public” is exposed to. And then we can turn to blogs and similar sources which lambast the closed-off, isolated “ivory tower” environment of climate science and the “groupthink” result: a bunch of scientists who are convinced of their own theory mostly because they continually review each other’s papers and do not allow dissenting voices to be published. The point of this example is not to make any claim about climate science except that it is one example where specialists perceive that a divide exists between information readily available to and consumed by the public and scholarship. Often enough, it isn’t these sources are wrong, but that the people who read them do not realize the significant difference between their sources and what specialists consider to be scholarship. It is also an example in which a large number of individuals have accused the scholars of living in a bubble and using their credentials as a shield. As I have discovered recently, a similar situation exists when it comes to historical Jesus research (again, I speak only of the positions of academics and non-academics with respect to how each group thinks of the other, rather than the accuracy of either position or the state or research of climate studies or Jesus studies; I am not comparing the fields themselves).

What the hell do I know?


Before getting into the production of scholarship and research and how it can differ from the sources most people use to understand any given topic, I feel obliged to give some reason why anybody should think I have any idea what I am talking about. I do not have a doctorate in any field, let alone multiple fields, so what would I know about how scholarship is produced? And even if I know something of one field, why does that in any way qualify me to talk about another field, or about biblical studies? The answer is that I may not be qualified, but I feel that I have some particular experience which is enough for me to address the issue of scholarship and the nature of academia in general. I am currently an active graduate researcher in the field of cognitive science, and I teach and tutor others in various topics related to this field. However, the work I did to get into this field has little to do with my undergraduate work (like most things I know something about, I taught myself). My majors as an undergrad were classical languages and psychology and sociology (a joint major which is basically major in social psychology). Most of what I learned as an undergrad and since then comes from an ability to access journals, an obsession with studying, and the fact that about the only “luxury” items I buy are books or volumes intended for specialists (and therefore are generally overpriced and not available in just about any bookstore except some online). In addition to the research I do, I also maintain communication with specialists in completely unrelated fields.
In short, despite my lack of expertise, and whatever my knowledge of any given field is, I think it is fair to say that I have spent a lot of time reading specialist literature in a diverse number of fields and have discussed these fields with a large number of those who are specialists in them. Therefore, even if my capacity to speak with any authority about any field is nil, I believe I do have the necessary expertise to talk about scholarship itself, and how it differs from what people generally read (this includes what most specialists read in fields they do not work in).

When is a book a work of scholarship? And Why?

I can now finally start addressing the issue of scholarship itself. Perhaps the best place to begin, simply because it has created such a splash here and elsewhere recently, is Ehrman’s book on the historical Jesus and mythicism. A recent thread linked to a blog post by Ehrman in which he described two types of books he writes: those for other specialists, and those for the public. Relatively few professors write books intended for public consumption, and of those few, fewer still manage to write something worthwhile. But what is the difference between a “scholarly” book and something like Ehrman’s recent book?

Ehrman as Example

A few examples will probably suffice. It is perhaps easiest to continue with Ehrman himself. Some time ago, he wrote a popular book Misquoting Jesus. The book is mostly about textual criticism and the nature of our manuscript sources for the New Testament. Around that time, Ehrman also published a collection of his essays in a book entitled Studies in the Textual Criticism of the New Testament. This book was published by Brill Academic Publishers. It is volume 33 in a series (New Testament Tools and Studies) of academic books (or, more accurately, monographs, the name for book length works which focus on a narrow topic within a field and discuss it in great length and assume that the reader is familiar with a great deal of background information necessary to understand the work). In this book, not only is the prose of a quite different nature, and the text filled with typical academic jargon, but Ehrman often gives lines from ancient sources in the original Greek. Although his popular works include Greek words, they are transliterated (they are printed in the Roman/English alphabet, rather than the Greek alphabet) and translated. In this book, he does neither.

The fact that the book is published as part of an academic series also means that, like academic journals, it is reviewed by an editorial board. In fact, books published by companies like Brill are subject to intense scrutiny even when they are not part of such a series. Other than the language and the publisher, what else is different? Here again an example serves. In Misquoting Jesus, Ehrman writes of the variants among our extant manuscripts, stating “Scholars differ significantly in their estimates—some say there are 200,000 variants known, some say 300,000, some say 400,000 or more!” (p. 89). He ends the section with, “There are more variations among our manuscripts than there are words in the New Testament.”

There is a comparable passage in Studies in the Textual Criticism of the New Testament. On page 309, Ehrman writes, “[n]o one knows for sure how many differences there are among our surviving witnesses, simply because no one has yet been able to count them all. The best estimates put the number at around 300,000, but perhaps it’s better to put this figure in comparative terms. There are more differences among our manuscripts than there are words in the NT.” However, this time he does not end with this sensationalist claim (and also lacking is the higher estimate and the exclamation point). Instead, we find he continues: “As one might expect, however, these raw numbers are somewhat deceptive. For the vast majority of these textual differences are easily recognized as simple scribal mistakes, errors caused by carelessness, ineptitude, or fatigue. The single largest category of mistake is orthographic; an examination of almost any of our oldest Greek manuscripts will show that scribes in antiquity could spell no better than most people can today. Scribes can at least be excused on this score: they lived, after all, in a world that was for the most part without dictionaries, let alone a spell check.”

In his popular book, Ehrman ends with the higher estimate, doesn't point out that anything about the "best estimates", and ends without the rather important qualification the other book: these numbers are deceptive. So despite actually writing elsewhere that what he said, left as is (which is what he did in Misquoting Jesus), are "deceptive", he favors sensationalism over accuracy.

The Publishing Company

Whatever faults academic publishing companies may have, encouraging sensationalism isn’t one of them. First, as there publications are intended for experts, few such claims would be accepted anyway. Second, the publishers already know that these books will not sell well by any normal standards. Which is why if you look at the titles in this particular series (as it is pretty standard) you will see that the price of these books ranges from around $150 to about $400 (with the exception of one outlier which is available from Brill for $1,156). Such prices are the norm, and individuals actually by these (they are mostly purchased by departments within universities, labs, think-tanks, etc.). Both the intended audience and the peer-review are almost certainly factors which could have ensured Ehrman would eliminate or qualify many sensationalist claims. However, it is more likely that, like all other academics, when he writes for his peers money is secondary to posterity, and therefore accuracy to monetary returns.

Two other examples of "dual" publishing

Two other similar examples are also useful here, and can be described briefly. One is Poet and Peasant and Through Peasant Eyes: A Literary-Cultural Approach to the Parables in Luke. This edition combines two different books which differ mainly in how technical they are rather than the subject matter. The juxtaposition of the first book (intended more for specialists) with the second enables a direct comparison. And Bailey himself says in the introduction to the second book that “much of the documentation that is expected in a technical publication the reader will find missing.”

The last similar example are two books on how the druids have been interpreted throughout history written by Professor Ronald Hutton. Hutton became widely known (at least relative to professors in general) with the publication of his book on the history of Wicca. However, this book and one which also received some notice from the public (and more after his book on Wicca) were both technical works. As a result, many of his readers complained to him that his books were too difficult or unreadable. They seem not to have realized that they were never expected to read them at all. However, Hutton (whom I have corresponded with more than once, and has always been helpful, respectful to those who disagree with him even in private emails, and comes off as a kind, polite man devoted to educating others) did not simply dismiss these complaints. Instead, he changed his policies to accommodate his new readers, and published two versions of the same work on the druids: one for his colleagues, and one for the public.

The norm: Books without a version for the public

The last example of academic books is not one for which two “versions” exist. I simply picked a book at random from one of my shelves of books on linguistics. So we have Ringe’s From Proto-Indo-European to Proto-Germanic. The entire book is basically on phonology (sounds and sound changes) which existed in languages never written down in any form or otherwise recorded. Those interested have merely to go to amazon or Google books and scan the table of contents to judge how likely they think it is that this book found many readers who aren’t specialists in some field relating to IE studies.

Books vs. Scholarship: Final Comments

With the examples out of the way, I can now make some generalizations about the differences between the books (or monographs) which are considered scholarship and those which are either borderline or clearly not.
1) Books intended for specialists are generally published by specialty publishing companies like Springer, Walter de Gruyter, Brill, etc., or are published by university publishing companies.
2) Such books assume a great deal of the reader. At the very least, they assume the reader knows a great deal about the wider field of scholarship to which the book belongs. For certain subjects (particularly the humanities and arts) often the reader will be expected to know other modern languages (particularly French, German, and Italian) and languages particular to that field (e.g., those whose field is Indo-European studies will usually know at least Latin and Greek along with two or more other ancient IE languages like Hittite or Sanskrit).
3) The reason the books are usually monographs is because they are quite focused and yet often quite long. This allows the author to treat a topic like ergativity or a particular use of a particular type of evolutionary algorithms (e.g., multi-objective optimization) in great detail. An entire chapter of such a monograph can be devoted to the use of a single preposition in some language or “The ongoing Methodstreit of the Austrian school” because there is no need for the author to acquaint the reader with background information (it is assumed) and unlike a journal article the length permits far more.
4) It is not easy for someone to publish a book like this. Not only must the author have spent a considerable time in the field and with the specific topic, but (again, like journals) these books are published by highly selective presses.

Books and Scholarship: Some "fuzzy" boundaries

The issue of which press published X book is actually not as straightforward as I have thus far made it out to be. In particular, bigger university presses (Oxford University Press, MIT Press, etc.) not only publish textbooks but also works which are not simply intended for specialists (or at least are not as technical as the ones discussed so far). Some specialty academic publishing companies do the same. These books are still subject to greater scrutiny and held to higher standards, but they are often more akin to introductions to a subject or they deal with a much larger topic in less depth. For books on the historical Jesus, such works can often be identified simply by how they treat Greek or Hebrew or whatever other languages the texts they discuss were written in (if, for example, lines in Hebrew or Greek are present, written in those alphabets, and left untranslated, that's a giveaway). But there is also the length of the book, the prose, and especially the amount of time explaining things which another specialist would already know. Some of these books are cited by other academics, others are not. They are, however, generally of a superior quality simply because the company publishing them has a reputation to maintain which is more important than a bottom line.

The rest of scholarship, the majority of scholarship

Yet books which fall between specialist literature and popular literature do not make up much of what is considered “scholarship” by scholars. That is, even those that are cited pale in comparison with the number of papers published in journals and the impact these have on shaping consensus views (if they exist) and the direction of the field in general. This is especially true in the sciences, as such fields develop mainly from experiments, and the results of these are published in journals. However, whether the topic is orality in the first century or pain management in preterm infants, most of the scholarship in the field is difficult for the public to even access, let alone to actually read, as it exists in technical monographs, edited volumes (such as those which result from papers given at academic conferences), and journal articles. And even when the dense nature of the work is not a problem, the quotations of lines in other languages left untranslated, the use of multivariable mathematics, and similar components will create plenty of barriers.

Scholarship vs. what the non-specialist reads, and why

It is both of these two last factors which create much of the divide between the scholars and the public. The technical literature is often not easy to come by for most people even if they knew of it. Further, the use of academic prose, technical jargon, as well as the assumption of background knowledge all mean that even if such scholarship was readily available, few people would choose to read it.

It's more than the technical nature of scholarship

There is, however, one last important factor: the alternatives. Not only do people have greater access to a work like Misquoting Jesus than to technical monographs on textual criticism, the popular books are available in bookstores, are promoted by various ads and so forth, and finally the readers begin to ensure the sale of such books. One need only look at how many reviews a work like The Jesus Mysteries or Crossan’s Jesus: A Revolutionary Biography received compared to just about any technical book to see how readers help ensure that the former, not the latter, become widely known of and read.

Thus, not only is the non-specialist literature in general cheaper, easier to read, and more entertaining, the alternatives are often not even known about. Not very long ago, I was corresponding with someone studying physics about physics and the brain. I cited some works which are considered to be specialist literature/scholarship (volumes from edited series and a few papers from edited volumes, including conference proceedings). The response was a request for “peer-reviewed” literature rather than books. Here was an intelligent person, in the midst of studies, and yet did not know that scholarship exists outside of journals. Like many I have encountered, this individual simply did not know that edited series, conference proceedings, and certain other literature is just as carefully reviewed as journal articles (or even that such sources exist), and is considered to have as much legitimacy.

[coming up: academia]

LegionOnomaMoi

What is the state of research in any given field?

The post above is what scholarship is, as far as specialists are concerned. It primarily consists of works which are written for other scholars and which are for the most part unreadable if you aren’t in the field or in some related field. However, the issue of consensus and how trends and tendencies within a field develop is somewhat separate. I already mentioned volumes which contain papers presented at conferences. Such conferences are often a place where the state of a given topic within a field is assessed. Additionally, there are often explicit reviews of existing scholarship about a topic. However, often enough there is nothing out there other than the journals, monographs, and so forth to gauge where most specialists stand on X topic. For those in the field, who more or less have to keep up with such publications, this isn’t exactly an issue. For outsiders, especially those who are not working within any academic field, it means that more often than not the state of research is impossible to assess.


The thread which discussed consensus and which prompted this one discussed a certain textbook on the historical Jesus. That book, like most textbooks, is intended to acquaint the reader with the field and give a number of references which contain the detail every textbook lacks. It is better than many in the presentation of sources for further information. However, it is mainly intended for students, who for the most part can access the “further reading” sources without much trouble. It doesn’t do much to help a skeptical reader who is not a student who wishes to understand the basis for the positions the textbook covers, as such individuals will have much greater difficulty accessing the sources suggested for an in-depth understanding. For those who simply wish to know what the state of historical Jesus studies is as far as academics are concerned, it is a pretty good resource. However, like so many topics which are of interest to non-specialists and which are contentious issues at least among the public (religion, politics, environment, etc.), knowing what the state of research is usually doesn’t help much.

The Vast Conspiracies: What is closer to the truth and what is farther from it

I can hardly write something on consensus and academia, especially in this sub-forum, without addressing issues of consensus views built upon things other than scholarship. Unfortunately, the various issues which have been discussed concerning things which influence academia and have little to do with actual scholarship or at least with sound scholarship are not simple. Nor is there much agreement. In fact, there isn’t much agreement when it comes to knowledge itself. So I can hardly give a fair treatment even to historical Jesus studies, let alone academia in general. However, there are a few widely known and fairly commonly accepted views.

Paradigm Shift

One comes from Kuhn’s conception of the “paradigm shift”. In short, for a given field experts will settle on a theory, and explain evidence using that theory even if they have to force it to fit, and if that isn’t possible they will reject it for some other reason. Then, something will happen which causes that paradigm to fall apart, and a new one will be created. A very important point is that for those who accept a more radical view of paradigm shifts, such shifts have little or nothing to do with new research or discoveries. That is, the experts believe X paradigm for a while, until something happens (such as an economic challenge to the field if the status quo is maintained), which causes the experts to reject the former paradigm and accept a new one which has no more or less validity than the one before it.

There are not many scholars who accept Kuhn’s thesis or later, even more radical versions of it. However, much more widely accepted is the tendency for dominate views to remain dominant simply because work which fits into those views is scrutinized less, the alternative views which pass review required to be published are met with much greater criticism in journals and other academic media, and there is always the tendency to think “well, so many people can’t all be wrong.” In other words, a less radical view of Kuhn’s hypothesis (which was actually specific to science) is more generally accepted, and pieces of it have been developed through empirical studies elsewhere (such as social psychology).

Sometimes size does matter: small groups triumph over vast hegemonies

Another problem which is less prominent is a type of groupthink (my treatment of groupthink theory here is somewhat cavalier). Sometimes, there simply aren’t enough specialists for a particular field within some discipline. For example, this problem has plagued climate science because the field is so vast that nobody is an expert in more than a few areas vital to climate science as a whole, the climate issue is highly politicized (with enormous grants, think-tanks serving political agendas, politicians and government agencies requiring results for continued funding, etc.), and the climate is unbelievably complex. When controversy arose over a particular statistical paleoclimate reconstruction some years ago, one issue which was brought up was that the paleoclimate community specializing in proxy reconstructions was so small everybody just reviewed everybody else’s paper. IPCC authors have been asked (and ignored the request) to stop citing their own work. A now prominent climate skeptic (a "denier") who was a 2001 lead author for the IPCC was “backdoored” into other IPCC report preparations/reviews because there were so few other people who were experts in his specialty. There was no choice but to bring him in.

The same thing happens apart from science, including in historical Jesus studies. The number of specialists who are involved in NT studies or historical Jesus studies who are competent in Aramaic is tiny compared with the number who are competent in Greek, Hebrew, and Latin. There are several cases of individuals whose work is published simply because there aren’t really enough people who are capable of judging it. Usually, this happens more with dissertations and graduate theses, but it happens in the academic world as a whole too.

Religion: Here there be dragons

Finally, with NT studies in particular, there is the fact that the topic is contentious. Christianity may not dominate like it did, particularly in Europe, but even there it is an influence. A great many people who have contributed to the historical Jesus “quest” aren’t just Christian, but were educated in seminaries. Some universities (albeit not many, and those that do are explicit about it) require that their professors subscribe to a particular doctrine.

Abandon Hope? Or enter here?

What, then, might one conclude about the state of historical Jesus scholarship? Despite the forces at work described above, and others, fortunately there are forces which work in opposition to these or at least mitigate them. For example, although most NT scholars or Biblical scholars are Christian, very few are “conservative” Christians or evangelical Christians. And more than a few are not religious at all, or are not Christian. And then there is the fact that even believing, conservative Christians can produce scholarship which is antithetical to their personal beliefs. They realize that as objects of historical study, Jesus, the NT, and the early Christians simply will not be what they are as objects of faith, and can write accounts which they believe to be most likely from a historical point of view, but which they do not accept as believing Christians.

Mythicism isn't as radical a challenge to christianity as mythicists often believe

There is one final point about the religious influence which many mythicists have said is a central component of the widespread rejection of mythicist views. I do not really understand it. The idea seems to be that the historical Jesus is somehow the last bastion of Christianity within NT studies (and similar fields), and those who write about the historical Jesus refuse in the name of Christianity (or because they fear reprisal from the rest of the academic community due its Christian bias) to acknowledge that mythicists have a case.

My entire immediate family consists of practicing Catholics. As the lone agnostic, this has led to some uneasy truces as well as continual conflicts. However, it also means that I have been exposed (often without any choice) as an adult to apologetic arguments and sources ("I'll read X book/paper you recommend, but only if you'll read Y"). One I remember quite vividly was a lecture on CD my father was listening to in which the professor speaking viciously attacked the entire historical Jesus enterprise because only the Christ of faith was available to us. This is not a new or unique position. The historical reconstruction of Jesus is necessarily not Christian. Those who seek to create a Jesus who did rise from the dead and who attempt to use “history” to argue this are few and without support from the vast majority of scholars. The historical Jesus, even for Christians, cannot do anything which makes him a Christ worthy of worship. At best, the Christian historian who wishes her or his work to be taken seriously as history must say, for example, that a given miracle story may result from an actual event, but nothing miraculous happened (it was only interpreted as a miracle, then or later). Or, alternatively, we can't confirm anything miraculous happened except by leaving historiography and entering theology.

Why so serious?

Not only have Christian theologians attacked the idea of reconstructing a historical Jesus because such a reconstruction will inevitably fail to result in the Christ of faith, but there have been plenty of scandalous things published about Jesus or the bible by scholars who are still respected by the academic community. An early argument I had with my father and brother concerned the resurrection, and both echoed Paul in their view that it really didn’t matter what other things Jesus did, or if he existed at all, if he didn’t rise from the dead. Not all Christians believe this, of course, but to a large number the suggestion that Jesus’ body was devoured by dogs, or that he was a failed prophet, or that his followers created the story of his resurrection, or any number of theories which dominate historical Jesus studies are as bad or worse than a Jesus who never had any historical reality apart from faith. Unfortunately, for far too many, a book which suggests that the biblical Jesus Christ is true, except that the Son of God was gay, would be more unacceptable than any mythicist view.

If the academic community can accept as valid scholarship a large number of diverse views about Jesus which would be (or are) received with great distaste from the public, from theologians, from the Catholic church, and so forth, what makes a mythical Jesus so taboo? Look at the controversies which resulted from The Da Vinci Code or the works upon which it was based. These did not deny the historical reality of Jesus, but were either greeted with greater outcries than various mythicist works or at least as much. The explicit view of so many Christians I have talked to or read is that the NT can only be approached as an object of faith, and all historical reconstruction, including those which determine Jesus was just another Mithras, are equally worthless. If Jesus’ wasn’t the resurrected son of God, then their beliefs are wrong and with them Christianity. And as historiography cannot reconstruct a risen Son of God, it really doesn’t matter.

What about the other things which affect academic views?

Which brings us finally to the ways in which historical Jesus studies compare to other fields when it comes to factors apart from scholarship which govern views. Of central importance is the way in which scholarship in general works: publish or perish. Academic posts are hard to get, and tenure is even more difficult. They are awarded based mostly on the contributions of the individual to scholarship. This means going beyond what has already been done. In any given field, one reason so many works are ultimately left by the wayside is because the authors needed to publish and an outlandish theory is a novel theory, and novelty often triumphs when it comes to whether or not something is published. The need of most specialists to produce scholarship which is novel works in opposition to the forces which create the Kuhnian-type paradigm. This is especially true over a generation. The new group of scholars needs to offer something more, but the older generation is still there. There is not the separation necessary for the radical Kuhnian paradigm shift, but there is the drive for novel theories which can at least be accepted as suitable for publishing. This doesn’t mean that new views are better, or that any field is moving forward thanks to this drive. It just means that academia tends to be the type of environment where radical is accepted far more easily than conservative, novel far more than status quo, and so forth.

Theories and the Test of Time

Whether science, philosophy, history, or whatever, for every proposed theory (even those accepted for years or decades), there are precious few among them which survive to stand the test of time. For every scholar trying to support a particular theory, there are almost always more trying to rip it to pieces. And especially since the 20th century, as the diversity of fields and specialties increased along with the number of universities, journals, and academic freedom, the idea that a theory could survive across generations and continents without at least a minority of experts opposing, or that a theory which has validity could be effectively squashed such that no minority of specialists supporting it exists would be hard indeed to imagine.

In the end, most of the time consensus doesn’t exist at all unless it is quite simple (the heart is still believed to pump blood) or is quite limited (the diversity among historical reconstructions of Jesus is vast, but they share a limited common core which could be called the consensus view). The tendency is for greater diversity in views and in specialties (right or wrong). For every work which is based on sound methods, there are at least one hundred more going in some different direction which lack such soundness. There are scholars whose publications consist mainly of critiquing the original work of others, and historical Jesus studies is filled with these. The problem is seldom consensus. It is increasingly a matter of novel scholarship being no good.

The Ivory Tower: no wall, no moat, and occupents who frequently get ideas from the local pub

And the last thing that we would expect is the “ivory tower” effect to keep scholars from recognizing even a bad view which might be defensible and trying to turn it into a paper or some other academic work. Although the elitism of academics can be a problem, and views can be ignored until they are picked up or supported by someone with credentials, more often non-specialists are just wrong. They lack the resources, educational background, and extensive research specialists have. And with all that, in general most of these specialists' theories and models are wrong or inaccurate. So when a view has stood the test of time and is almost unanimously accepted, it is more likely to be the product of the same conspiracy which is said to have created Christianity in the 4th century than it is to be religious, political, or academic factors ensuring that the view remains unchallenged within academia.

Vorkosigan

What is the point of this?

Adam

What's wrong with him just laying out the facts pure and simple? It's not like everyone already knows all this. Thanks, LOM

Vorkosigan

I didn't say it was wrong. But it does not appear to have any point to it.

aa5874

What rhetoric you post!!! Please name the Scientific theories that Scientists are trying to "rip to pieces"??

Scientific theories are developed with available DATA so can be upgraded or downgraded as new data is received.

Scientific theories are NOT really cast in stone.

mountainman

Ancient Historical Evidence


What about the critical relevance of the ancient historical evidence itself?


Is there a current devaluation of the notion of evidence and of the corresponding overappreciation of rhetoric and idealogy as instruments for the analysis of the literary sources?

What agendas exist?

Are they hegemonic?


Hypotheses in Ancient History


You might like to address the nature and the fundamental role of hypotheses in the field of ancient history.


Is the existence of an historical jesus itself an hypothesis?


The HJ position appears to assume that the truth value of it is positive: Jesus existed.

The MJ position appears to assume the antithesis - its truth value is negative: Jesus didn't exist.

LegionOnomaMoi

There isn't just one. But one point has to do with something that has become increasingly clear to me after I began interacting with people online. I spend most of my time talking, working, interacting, and debating with people who either have doctorates or are in grad school. The exceptions tend to be students. It wasn't until I joined the forum I did before this one, and then this one, and until I began reading blogs, comments, and other web 2.0 products that I realized the disconnect between academia was different than I knew. My family and friends know what I do, and despite frequent attempts on my part to get them to stop, they feel compelled to direct me to every media reference (usually a newspaper) to some study about the brain. Almost without exception, these reports so distort the studies they are talking about to make them interesting that they are either just wrong, or are useless. I had thought that the this was pretty much it: there are those who read scholarship in a given field, and those who don't. Those who don't typically rely on bad sources, even if they are specialists in some other field, and thus tend to be misinformed. What I found was that this was neither true, nor really the problem.

For the most part people, including a large number of educated, intelligent people, simply are not aware of the ways in which a field of study develops and what scholarship is. Many know that there are "peer-reviewed" journals but don't know how important the name of the journal is relative to the mere fact that it is "peer-reviewed." And for most, the knowledge that journals are considered scholarship is where it ends. The distinctions between a book written by a scholar but published for the general public and other types of books aren't just missed; the knowledge that they exist at all isn't thre. There are so many people who don't realize that a large number of books and volumes which would never and have never been inside a Borders or Barnes & Nobles make up a good deal of scholarship because for just about any given field, there is a need for technical works which are longer than a journal article. Yet for so many people, a book is a book is a book.

So one reason I wrote what I did was to inform anybody who might be interested and might not know that there is a vast gulf between most of the books (no matter the author) which the non-specialist reads and many of the books those who are in the field read. There are (as I said) those books which fall in between, but as the technical literature can't really be mistaken for these, and as such monographs and volumes go unpublicized, people simply don't know they exist or what their role is.

Nobody can be a specialist or even well-acquainted with all fields. And when I thought that this was simply the difference, I wasn't bothered. The fact that there are so many people who not only don't have access to specialist literature, but also aren't really even aware what it is: how a book written by some professor is far less important than who published it, and that that a book like The Language Instinct or Foundations of Language: Brain, Meaning, Grammar, Evolution are, despite being works by experts published by an academic press, still quite different from something like Efficiency and Complexity in Grammars. The fact that people took Ehrman's recent book as indicative of anything (e.g., the case for historicity had been presented and found wanting) was a shock to me. Then quite recently what was meant to be a textbook becomes an argument and/or a way of understanding academia.


Another important point (perhaps the only other) was a desire to relate how academia works in general to historical Jesus studies. One thing I noticed a long time ago, before joining forums and so forth, was how little people in general knew about the nature of our sources for the past. There are a great many people who have read quite a bit of scholarship about the historical Jesus, but haven't read much about ancient history in general. They not only lack access to most of the secondary scholarship on the historical Jesus or related topics, but have even less familiarity with how scholarship on this topic compares with others which concern ancient history. And I believe that it is this, more than anything else, which is behind much of the belief that historical Jesus scholarship is somehow a consensus built on air and mythicism is disregarded because of some socio-cultural, religious component inherent to historical Jesus studies. The idea that Jesus as a myth is somehow more offensive or off limits than what is actually out there is bizarre. That the historical Jesus quest is doomed from the start is a position held quite adamantly within more conservative christian circles.

Basically, I wrote what I did to begin something which addressed the gap between those within academia and those without. I didn't have much hope that it would do anything, but seeing a textbook treated as something other than it is was just the last little straw which broke the camel's back.

LegionOnomaMoi

Embodied cognition. Massive modularity. The innateness of grammar in the brain. Whether neurons use rate or temporal coding. The debate over Rosen's theory about the computability of complex systems within theoretical biology. Whether mental disorders are a comparable to a disease. Nature vs. nurture. The role and significance of epigenetics. Which model (of any) of quantum physics is accurate. Whether the sociocognitive model (SCM) of MPD/DID or the post-traumatic model (PTM) is correct. The extent to which the placebo effect is responsible for the results of psychotropic medication. The role of GCRs in cloud seeding. The nature of time. The cognitive capabilities of neadertals, and their relation to homo sapien sapiens in terms of interbreeding and competition.

I could go on, but as this is pointless and boring and as you had to ask there's no point in answering, I'll stop.

aa5874

Please stop immediately.

There are no scientists who want to "rip to pieces" anything you have mentioned.

You have virtually NO clue how scientific theories are developed.