chrisengland

Hello
I wondered about New Testament scholarship and Biblical schoalrship on a whole.
Are most Biblical schoalrs Christians?
I get the impression that they may be but not conservative because if they were they would probably say that the Gospels are eye witness accounts and that all of Pauls letters are authentic ect.
But apparently most don't.
So I get the impression most are liberal Christians
If anyone replys to this thread with an answer I would be very grateful if you could back it up with some good argumentation or some evidence because although I,m sure most people on here are honest it would be naive of me to come on an atheist website and just take peoples word for it.
thankyou
Chris

DCHindley

Most NT or Biblical critics don't wear their conviction on their sleeves, although many don't hide them either. Most appear to be affiliated with "mainstream" denominations, Methodist, Presbyterian, Lutheran, some Roman Catholics and Baptists. A few are "independents" which can mean something different at each church that claims that label.

When the "historical-critical" approach was still new, most adherents were professed Christians. I guess you could call them "liberals" in the original non-purgative sense. Socially, many were what we might call conservative. They adopted a holistic way of looking at criticism that did not see rational analysis of data as incompatable with "Gods big plan". Leopold von Ranke, the father of modern historical-critical method, would fall in this category.

This type of approach was considered very "modern" (="enlightened") through the early 20th century. The post-modern reaction began in earnest around the 1920's or 30's, with critics switching primarily to post-structural interpretive approaches (existentialism, history of religions, etc) although most still adhered to the historical-critical method to sift the facts.

I became aware of biblical criticism in the 1970's, and by then it seemed that critics were turning Jesus into an eastern mystic along New Age lines. It was right about this time, maybe more in the 80's, when Evangelicals and even Fundamentalist scholars began to adopt and adapt histocical-critical methodology, but with a decidedly more radical application of the post-structural point of view chacteristic of post-modernism to, in a way, "take back" ground they felt they had lost to the more liberal critics.

While most who adopt post-structural ideas were content to consider the agendas and convictions of other critics and also of the sources they use, they still had no trouble accepting the historical implications of using the method. The more radical post-modernists have tried to eliminate or significantly downplay the historical ramificatons, mainly by turnng to reader-response criticism to internalize the message found in the NT, that is, make it relevant to the readers personal faith.

Many of the evangelical/fundamentalist critics thus see the historical Jesus as irelevant to how the believer relates to his/her God. Historical criticism is useful to help us appreciate how the message related to the original readers of the biblical books and other early literature, but only so we today can better understand or own modern faiths.

Well, that was muddled, but good enough for time I can devote to it right now.

DCH

No Robots

There are a few atheists like William Arnal. And of course there are many Jews.

DCHindley

I haven't a clue what motivates Bill Arnal to study early Christianity. I think I recall him saying on the Crosstalk2 or GThomas lists a couple times that he doesn't think the HJ is relevant to anything today, although I think he meant modern belief systms. Personally, I think he's a bit of an anarchist.

Jewish scholars, where they touch on NT studies, seem to weigh in on matters of the degree of Jesus' or Paul's "Jewishness". Besides Geza Vermes, Daniel Boyarin, Mark Nanos, Jacob Neusner or Hyam MacCoby, not a lot of them seem too interested in Christianity. Even then I think their ideological perspectives distinctly color their criticism (excepting maybe Nanos, who doesn't seem to be pushing an agenda). Most concervative and orthodox Jews seem to be content to confine their criticism to rabbinical interpretations.

DCH

Toto

I'm not sure of the purpose of your question, or why you are asking it here if you think that atheists are untrustworthy

Most of the jobs in NT studies are with seminiaries, where there is a requirement to be a Christian. A non-Christian who wanted to specialize in NT studies would find some professional difficulties, and would probably study ancient history or some related field.

I think that most NT scholars started out as Christians, because that was what led them into the field. Bart Ehrman became an agnostic as a result of his studies (he teaches at a public university in America), and Robert M. Price became an atheist. Gerhard Luedemann at some point decided he could no longer call himself a Christian because he did not believe in the Resurrection, and his University appointment (in Germany) was withdrawn.
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The Jesus Seminar is primarily composed of liberal Christians. Outside of the Jesus Seminar, there are a number of conservative Catholics, who do not believe in the inerrancy of the Bible, but who do not necessarily think that a lot of history can be derived from it; and conservative evangelicals, who try to find as much history and eyewitness testimony as they can.

It would be hard to do a survey, however. Most scholars present their work as independent of their personal beliefs.

aa5874

How can you be sure their work is independent of their personal beliefs? If the majority of Biblical scholars who are Christians claim Jesus existed, then independency of their work and beliefs cannot be ascertained.

Toto

Well that's the problem, isn't it? You can't be sure that there are not direct or indirect influences.

aa5874

Well, the problem for me is not that I am not sure, it's that I am sure it's the problem. That is, most Christian scholars will always claim that Jesus was a figure of history, in whatever form.

Solitary Man

Jeffrey Gibson is an agnostic, Chris Weimer is an atheist, Walter Shandruk is an atheist, Rick Sumner is an atheist, Zeba Crook is, as far as I can tell, not a theist, and Loren Rosson is a Unitarian Universalist, though I'm not sure of his theistic beliefs, and I've never heard Mark Goodacre openly discuss his faith, much less see it affect his work. All think that the historical Jesus existed.

aa5874

Well, then maybe Marcion of Pontus was an atheist, because he didn't believe in the God of the Jews, but he believed Jesus existed.