stephan huller

I know it's not cool around here to acknowledge that a church might be worth attending - most of us here are like eunuchs passing around pornography only now with religious texts - but I just got this email from David Trobisch about a church I guess he attends with my other friend Charles Hedrick in Springfield, MO of all places. I thought this 'conference' schedule looks more interesting that most regional SBL meetings:

These two guys are really, really cool people. I know them personally. The idea that local yokels in Springfield can have access to this sort of knowledge is really overwhelming. I am not so sure about the music. But it actually looks very interesting.

Vorkosigan

That is cool, but shouldn't it be in another one of subforums?

stephan huller

We have Westar meetings published here, SBL news - what's the difference that it happens to be in a church? Trobisch is really cool. That's what makes this cool

Toto

The lecture by Dr. Charles Hedrick "Before Constantine: What were the options for being Christian" might be relevant to this forum, and perhaps Dr. David Trobisch "Current thinking about the Bible and the church." I hope there will be videos or transcripts.

The rest is church service. Social justice music? finger foods?

stephan huller

Trobisch is one of the few experts on ancient Christian manuscripts who isn't a God-freak. But he's German so it is difficult for Germans to be completely irrational. It was Hedrick who gave the me the line - via a telephone conversation - regarding the question of Secret Mark. 'Well strictly speaking, Matthew and Luke are ancient forgeries of Mark.'

Whenever people at this forum talk about a conspiracy of scholars conspiring against higher criticism - it should be noted that it simply isn't true. Indeed, these are two of the good guys both at the same church strangely enough. Some here might go to church at all? But if you look at Trobisch's website he has some funny allusions to the fruitlessness of what he does. I think I saw somewhere a reference to a trip to Iowa where he says something like 'to talk to strange people who care about the history of the Church.'

In other words, since we're all talking about God and religion all the time here, it's more bizarre when you think of it NOT to participate in a church of some kind. I mean, as I said, it's like guys who watch porn all day not hiring prostitutes 'on principle.'

I think the reason why these guys don't put many of their opinions on display isn't because they are afraid of losing the right to publish or this or that. It's just that they recognize the difference between 'opinion' - i.e. 'hunches' that aren't yet supported by facts - and things which can be supported by evidence. Maybe they can be accused of not going far enough in purging themselves of unsupported suppositions. But we all do that. Who questions everything? As I've said many times here, anyone that's married presupposes that their spouse loves them, that their kids are special, that they won't die on the highway on the drive to work. Certainly there are signs that (a) their spouse doesn't love them (b) their kids aren't special and (c) that they might die at any moment on the drive to work. But a lot of life comes down to 'as if' or acting 'as if' a group of assumptions happen to be true.

There are more rational scholars of Christianity than many of you might believe. They just need encouragement to come out of the closet.

hylidae

I was thinking the same thing. Having lived in MO, I have my doubts as to whether it will thrive there. But I agree there's few better places for an open, questioning kind of Christianity to take hold if it does.

Toto

http://www.trobisch.com/david/wb/

says "live video broadcast" - but no link except to the church website?

Toto

I think of it as more like a psychologist studying abnormal thinking. Does the psychologist have to be a bit crazy? (I know that at least some of them are, but all?)

Charles Hedrick: Does God Have a Future?

. . .

Every religion assumes that its god has eternal prospects. But the idea that "our God is eternal" is not true, as history shows. A particular god's character and personality exist principally in the mind, apart from any existence the god may have as an objective reality.

For example, the Protestant God did not exist before the 16th century. He was conceived and born along with Protestantism. The Roman Catholic God was very different - and still is. God as he exists in the minds of Episcopalians today is essentially different from the God of Protestant fundamentalists and Unitarians. The gods of these groups have different views on required ritual, ethical values, sin, forgiveness and the future - provided we assume (as each group tells us) their teaching derives from God.

... All gods share a potential for obsolescence. Apollo and Zeus are no longer invoked in the warm language of faith as once they were. Their oracles are silent. Mithras and Dionysus once possessed the keys to eternal life and graciously bestowed that gift throughout the ancient world. Their altars are now cold, their temples empty, their rites abandoned. Yet in the day of their popularity, their believers would have been shocked at the idea their god would one day be obsolete.

spin

You can't think about the issue by talking of just a few individuals. One can always find exceptions to anything that's not purely measurable scientifically. And labeling hegemony a conspiracy misunderstands the nature of power. Hegemony doesn't require conspiracy. Powerful entities reproduce themselves. To become a paid member of the religious scholarly community, you have to reproduce it in miniature. You get your ass on the chair because you make noises those who are already there understand and appreciate. Again, this is not a scientific institution, but one whose existence is the fossilization of an inherited faith motivated knowledge disseminating establishment.

Religious studies as it exists is analogous to the more excessive examples of history or anthropology done for nationalist purposes. How do you react to Ms Mazar finding evidence for the Davidic kingdom? or Korean scholars claiming to have evidence that the first use of cultivated seeds were in Korea? or, say, American academics claiming that the founding fathers gave birth to the purest form of democracy?

The vast majority of christian scholars today staunchly believe in the historical Jesus while maintaining a general disinterest in history and advocating hermeneutics as a viable methodological basis for their brand of history. (Insert a criticism of most myth peddlars here as a belief system that also interferes with the pursuit of scholarship.)

Forget the "conspiracy" rhetoric. The rump of religious academia has a disdain for higher criticism, though it thinks it is highly critical in matters of history. I'm sure one of the greats, W.F. Albright, thought he was highly critical at a time when he was considered one of the bright lights in religious studies. Biblical scholars are more circumspect today, but usually still say their prayers when they go to church.

Nevertheless, there are exceptions and you apparently know a few, perhaps because you might never have had your ass on a chair.

You keep coming out with these obsessively sex-related analogies. They are probably more a reflection on you than what you are trying to talk about.

You will trust the analysis of those who have no (or little) vested interest in the field they are studying, while having sufficient interest to know the subject well. It's an obvious reduction of credibility to have the field filled with believers (as it would be with those antagonistic to the field). People usually get interested in a field of study because they find something appealing about it (for whatever reason). The field of religious studies needs those people. There are already fine philologists, fine manuscript scholars, fine Aramaicists and fine Hebraists, but when it comes to areas where people need to understand no matter the consequences, most current religious scholars cannot get there. How can they? How could most Americans not think it was a great day when Bin Laden was assassinated, sick though that is?

Separation is necessary. We normally make so many gratuitous mistakes that they are hard to deal with without adding mistakes from institutional blinkers. We have a possibility of dealing with gratuitous mistakes, it's much harder with the blinkered ones.

Employed scholars are supposed to pop out articles regularly. It's part of the constant regime of evaluation.

In our own chosen fields of study? This is one of those things that po-mo has succeeded in hammering into a lot of heads: we fall over our presuppositions, so we have to root them out. At the top end of most fields scholars are deadly aware of the problem and you can find discussions in some of their own papers of what they can glimpse of those presuppositions. You know everything is liable to be a problem and because of that you need to be ready to change your mind at the wisp of a wind.

I keep trying to tell TedM to stop with the common sense, when dealing with uncommon things. The work of scholarship in the field of religious studies is relatively uncommon. You won't question everything in your life, but all the tenets of your field of study have to withstand whatever questions comes in order to stand or fall.

But then how might you really rate the difference between 0.0065% and 0.0098%? That could be the "more" you might not believe.

When the Sultanate of Oman was brought to an end and the palace slaves were set free, they had spent so much of their lives with their heads bowed that they couldn't keep them raised. Bart Ehrman started off in a seminary and worked his way through the full gamut of educational institutions and ended up both a disbeliever and a staunch supporter of the central historical status quo.

By all means let's encourage as many as we can. But don't hold your breath while trying to do so.

stephan huller

I think I do it to demonstrate my impiety. When I am with black people I can't help mention I am a minority. I am always conscious of who I am speaking with. I remember the Curb Your Enthusiasm episode where Larry feels compelled to answers the guy in the wheelchair who asks him what he does - 'sit around mostly.' 'Walking isn't that great' etc. It's a bad habit.