Why Be a Biblical Scholar? What Good Can Biblical Scholars Serve?
(avg. read time: 10–20 mins.)
After my last post on credentialism, I thought it might be helpful to offer some reflections on why biblical scholarship is important and why someone like me would seek to be a biblical scholar. On the one hand, some people regard being a biblical scholar in the same manner they regard being a literary scholar: a biblical scholar is someone who entangles themselves in discussions about the insignificant minutiae of texts and theories that ultimately have no usefulness in the “real world.” On the other hand, the more religiously minded sometimes wonder why biblical scholarship is necessary—whether because they think all one needs to do is to “just read it,” because each believer has the Holy Spirit as a guide, or because reading the Bible is every believer’s personal responsibility and appealing to scholarship may distort or distract from that reading (since it never matters what man says, but what God says). There are other questions and concerns too, but the aforementioned is enough for this context. In what follows, I often speak about biblical scholars in ways that assume specifically Christian biblical scholars rather than biblical scholars in general, since I am a Christian biblical scholar, and I cannot write with conviction about the significance of such work for scholars who have no adherence to the text as Scripture.
First of all, I want to point out that these titular questions were raised not only out of vocational reflection; I have also received inspiration from reading N. T. Wright’s lecture “New Testament Scholarship and Christian Discipleship.” I commend this lecture—which is available online—to anyone interested in questions of the need for such scholarship or the relationship between scholarship and discipleship. My first points in answering these questions about the necessity of some becoming biblical scholars will be derived from Wright.
Scholars and Contexts
As one might note, based on my short series on textual criticism, there is an inherent and too often unrecognized necessity for biblical scholarship of some variety or another in the world today. Unless everyone is prepared to read ancient Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek and to review the thousands of manuscripts—which could also include older manuscripts in Latin, Syriac, Coptic, Armenian, and so on—to determine to the most accurate degree possible the earliest recoverable content of the texts and how best to translate the material into what is comprehensible in the receptor language (whether English, Mandarin, Hindi, Spanish, or what have you), people inevitably rely upon the work of scholars. To have good Bibles at all today depends on scholarly work. But in this respect, I argue that there are further reasons that scholars are necessary to the enterprise of biblical interpretation. These reasons can be summarized by an all-encompassing word: context.
Scholars are people who should know and be thoroughly familiar with the many contexts in which and to which the Bible was written. There is the textual biblical context itself with which scholars are trained to be thoroughly familiar to know how to connect all of the smaller statements together, as well as what connects the larger works together in the canon. This is the first and foremost context, that of the text in its textual context, that the scholar absolutely needs familiarity with. If we are not experts in the primary texts, we are not properly biblical scholars. Scholars serve the Church best with their familiarity with the world of the text—including immediate context, book context, and canonical context—for it is there that the context of the world in front of the text (the world it addresses) meets the context of the world behind the text (the world in which it was originally written). As such, scholars also need familiarity with other aspects of context.
Literary context—including matters we have already noted of textual context, as well as structure and genre—needs to be defined because not all books can be read in the same way. Cultural contexts should be known, since the people who wrote the Bible and the ones to whom the biblical books were addressed did not operate in the same culture as the modern and postmodern West, and these cultural contexts gave meaning to the language used. Because there is such a large gap in time between when the books were written and today, the biblical books were also informed by different and—for us today—distant historical contexts that shaped the world in which they lived, moved, and had their being. These environments in which they lived, by which they were influenced, and to which they responded also consisted of prevailing, countervailing, mixed, and diverse streams of thought in terms of philosophy and theology. Each of these contexts also have influence on the metaphors and other symbols that were in conventional use in biblical times; thus, the ways in which these contexts inform these symbols must be studied. Insofar as it is possible, knowledge of these contexts needs to be maintained, recovered, and articulated to help readers understand the texts and the potential hermeneutical gaps in reading these texts today. As my old professor Ben Witherington has said in many places, “a text without a context is just a pretext for whatever you want it to mean.” Or as I prefer to put it, someone who does not attend to these matters of context will say, “I reject this context and substitute my own.” One of the essential tasks of scholars is to find, understand, and take account of these contexts. In light of that necessity and with the understanding that some people need to address it, a certain group of people, which includes myself, see the need to take on this task personally, to dedicate our lives to the pursuits entailed therein, and to share what we learn with others, thereby equipping them with skills and knowledge for reading more deeply.
Scholars and Scriptural Wisdom
Another point which Wright particularly emphasizes in addressing this question is the role of scholarship in the debates over public truth and common good. If Christian claims are supposed to be public truths—as opposed to some notion of religion as a completely privatized matter a la Locke and still popular post-Enlightenment beliefs—then the tasks of scholarship are essential to the discussion of these claims, especially in terms of determining what claims are—properly speaking—biblical, what their implications are, and whether they are true or false. As Wright himself states, the tasks of scholarship, “are themselves essentially and properly public tasks, putting material into the public domain in books and articles – and now of course on websites – and allowing anyone and everyone to respond, to comment, to draw attention to evidence missed or mishandled, to arguments that beg questions or skip stages, and so on.” Biblical scholars are people who can put such material forward for criticism and who, ideally, have the expertise to apply that kind of criticism well to public truth claims all in terms of how to understand the Bible and its implications for the issues of today. Furthermore, they are also to be well equipped for discussions of how biblical beliefs and values provide for the common good. If the material in the Bible does in fact provide the common good, it follows that we will need a good understanding of it, the contexts in which it was written, the movements it spawned (namely, in the earliest days), and how to apply that knowledge wisely in particular contexts. If misinformation and mistaken understandings are proliferated about the Bible, obstacles are created to communicating the public truth and committing to the common good, which would require more work to clear away false impressions and to put forth true ones in their place. These matters are quite complex and while I do believe every believer needs to undertake these tasks in some form or another, the need for people who dedicate more focus to such tasks from a position of expertise in the Bible is particularly acute.
To piggyback on the last statement, Wright acknowledges that it is not necessarily ideal for all disciples to become scholars in a primary sense. However, disciples are best equipped for their varied vocations when they are in fellowship with a community of believers that takes engaging the biblical texts at the deepest level as essential to their exercise of worship and mission. Like other activities of worship and mission, biblical engagement is a communal activity and the recognition of the need to incorporate, somehow, sound biblical scholarship into this biblical engagement is part and parcel of the recognition that the communal life of the Church involves realizing that the Church is composed of gifted but individually incomplete people who are brought together by the Spirit for mutual pursuit of the aims of God and mutual edification in carrying out those tasks. This point is true in such a way that individuals need each other and need complementary gifts to carry out the mission of the community properly. In such a community, biblical scholars are, of course, essential (as are people of other vocations). There are potential problems, but I will let Wright briefly address such concerns in his own words: “There is, in other words (actually, words of the late great Ben Meyer), the danger of people who need the bread of insight being offered instead the stone of research. But the ideal at which churches should aim is that wise biblical research should be translated insightfully into the kind of wisdom which will generate, foster and nurture Christian preachers and teachers.”
Scholars Are Students
Of course, to create such an ecclesial culture, there needs to be a commitment to lifelong learning on the part of all. To have such a commitment, there must be acknowledgments that we will never reach the point where we have figured everything out and that to be a disciple means to be a learner. Even more, as Wright states, it seems that God has structured matters in such a way that there will never be a time when the brightest minds of Christianity figure out the answer to every exegetical question and all that future generations will have to do is find out what they had to say on the subject. Rather, each generation needs to wrestle with the big questions of exegesis and hermeneutics, with the aims and visions of Jesus and the New Testament writers, and with what these things mean for the world today. Naturally, in light of such considerations, each generation needs biblical scholars. Furthermore, biblical scholars must acknowledge that our lifelong task of learning does not simply involve engagement with other scholars, but also involves engagement with and learning from other readers in the community of the Church. We are all students of God—after all, to be a disciple is, by definition, to be a learner—and we have much to learn from other students.
One point Wright highlights has the effect of providing at least a partial answer to the concern about why we would need scholarship if we have the Holy Spirit. As he says,
Just as the gift of the Holy Spirit does not mean the absence of moral effort, and indeed failure, repentance and fresh starts, so the gift of what Paul remarkably calls ‘the mind of Christ’ does not excuse us from exercising our own minds, with all that that is going to mean in terms of cultivating the virtues of the intellect, including making one’s way through false starts, mental cul-de-sacs, the scholarly equivalent of repentance and fresh beginnings, and fresh attention to the data.
Indeed, if the gift of the Holy Spirit and the resultant fruit would actually entail greater reason to be morally upright, so too should having the mind of Christ entail greater reason to love the Lord our God with all that we are, including these virtues of the intellect. Such should indeed be the essence of being a biblical scholar for a follower of Christ.
Scholarship and Service
A final observation I would derive from Wright is the recognition of the larger worlds in which scholars belong. On the one hand, biblical scholars belong in the wider world of biblical scholarship and should submit the contributions they make to that world in humility to critical appraisal. On the other hand, biblical scholars belong in the wider world of the Church, which entails a recognition of the responsibility to teach what one has learned and a recognition that one needs to learn from other perspectives within the Church that are not shaped by scholarly backgrounds. While biblical scholars certainly have much to learn from non-scholars who are brothers and sisters in Christ, I want to focus here on the former entailment, since it is what is at issue here. Why be a biblical scholar? One part of the answer is that God has gifted biblical scholars with certain sets of qualities that the Church needs. One who has been thus gifted should spend copious time in deep study of the Bible, which should lead to interaction with biblical scholarship and participation in it. In turn, the one who has spent time in scholarly study of the Bible has a responsibility to pass that knowledge on to the Church for the benefit and equipping of others.
Scholarship and the Holy Spirit
But the above does not directly address the common objection cited earlier, which is generally stated in terms such as, “it doesn’t matter what X says or what Y says, what does God say?” There is both some wisdom and some presumption in this sentiment when expressed in objection to scholarship or people citing scholars. The wisdom comes from the need to study primary sources (especially the biblical texts) rather than replacing that necessary study with studying secondary sources. It also comes from how it conveys the need to avoid overcomplicating God’s message and thereby endlessly deferring obedience. Furthermore, it comes from the recognition that no matter whose feet we sit at, we all sit at the feet of God. Finally, it does, at least, represent an acknowledgment that we have not heard Scripture properly just because we have consulted this or that scholar, but only when we have heard it as God’s word to us by the Holy Spirit.
The presumption is that what a person reads unreflectively is necessarily somehow, “what God says.” It neglects factors already mentioned about the Bible being written in other languages, the manuscript issues, and the many contexts needing consideration. It also neglects the fact that no matter how one reads a text, the very act of reading or hearing is inherently interpretive. To put the proverb I quoted from Witherington earlier in another way, context will always be provided to a text; it is simply a question of where the context comes from.
The companion notion to this sentiment is the idea that if we have been given the Holy Spirit who guides us, scholarship is unnecessary. There are a lot of issues packed into this notion that I cannot adequately unpack here, but two general issues I see needing to be addressed are the question of assurance and the neglected framework of Scripture-reading as a communal activity. The question of assurance in terms of interpretation and understanding comes up because scholarship is in a state of constant review, refinement, argument, critique, defense, articulating new perspectives, dealing with new information, and continuing cycles of these activities. Of course, such should be expected in any human endeavor, no matter how intelligent and insightful people within in it may be, because there are different perspectives and worldviews among the participants and because there are always gaps in knowledge, many of which will remain recalcitrant.
Therefore, some have tended to think that the way to finding assurance is to circumvent the complex and messy processes of scholarship altogether and “simply rely on the Holy Spirit” (whatever a person thinks that phrase means). But several problems arise from this approach to finding assurance in interpretation. 1) To insist that a certain interpretation came from the Holy Spirit is quite a serious statement, which, if false, amounts to taking the Lord’s name in vain. If one is simply going by his/her own understanding, he/she might as well admit it rather than attempt to add bombast by claiming they received such understanding from the Spirit. 2) This notion fails to grasp the character of biblical sanctification in terms of its nature as a process (including the growth of understanding) and in terms of the fact that comprehensive understanding of the Scripture is nowhere a promise attached to the Spirit’s work in the present age. 3) Part of the messiness of the scholarly enterprise that is in fact one of its virtues is lost here: finding ways to articulate and discuss disagreements as well as hopefully grow from those disagreements. If one claims an interpretation came from the Holy Spirit and someone else makes an opposite interpretation that he/she claims is from the Holy Spirit, what way is there to handle such disagreement and grow from it apart from realizing that the task of interpretation is more complicated than initially thought and that there is need for discerning the spirits? 4) Why should this ill-defined practice of “relying on the Spirit” (which is often simply a way of trying to sanctify and even divinize one’s own view) be used if it was not adopted by the biblical writers themselves? If we stick only with the New Testament, the Gospel writers apparently did not see it as sufficient for their audiences, who knew these traditions about Jesus, to simply rely on the Holy Spirit to guide them to what they mean (otherwise, one must wonder why the texts were written at all). The epistle writers had to correct misunderstandings of the gospel and the Christian life, and their instructions never reduce to, “Just rely on the Spirit.” Obviously, relying on the Spirit is necessary for Christian life in general, and Scripture interpretation in particular, but it should never be code for laziness.
Scholarship and the Community of the Church
The other general issue is that of neglecting the framework of Scripture-reading as a communal activity. The notion presupposes a strictly individual act of reading. While personal reading is incumbent upon us in the age of widespread literacy, we must never forget that in the original contexts in which the biblical books were written, it was generally assumed there would be a group of people listening to someone reading a text and engaging with what they had heard. On the one hand, this fact of communal reading served a practical purpose because the vast majority of people could not read (or, at least, could not read extensively). But on the other hand, communal reading was—and should still be—a recognition that a group of people was/is commonly invested in the story relayed through the Scripture, as this story is foundational to each person’s worldview and to the identity of the community. If we believe the Holy Spirit unites the assembly of believers and gifts them in such ways that no individual is complete in and of himself/herself and thus requires the gifts of others to live the biblically intended Christian life, why should one believe that the Spirit only speaks to individuals in and of themselves regarding scriptural interpretation? Surely the Spirit can and does speak through other readers who engage the story. Why, apart from narcissism, should one believe that the Spirit speaks to oneself everything regarding scriptural exegesis and hermeneutics? If we can accept the belief that the Spirit speaks through other readers, it should not be hard to believe that the Spirit speaks through scholars especially equipped for such tasks as exegesis and hermeneutics. At the same time, this reality of communal reading and the proper role of scholars as senior learners means that we do not serve only one function in communal reading. We also must learn from other readers, and not only from other scholars.
In the course of my studies, I have also noted other factors that validate the need for some to be biblical scholars and for general engagement with biblical scholarship. In the Old Testament, especially in the Historical Books, it is considered an honorable leadership quality to know the story of Israel well. In Deuteronomy and a key passage in 2 Kings, it is clearly seen that continued faithfulness to YHWH is dependent upon knowing the story at the foundation of Israel’s identity, which is preserved in Scripture (Deut 6:4–12, 20–25; 8:11–18; 11:1–12; 16:1–8; 2 Kgs 17). In addition to Moses, other Old Testament leaders, whatever their vices may be, are noted for speeches in which they articulate the essential story of Israel, such as Joshua (Josh 24), Jephthah (Judg 11), Samuel (1 Sam 12), and Solomon (1 Kgs 8:12–21, 51–53, 56–58). The godly leader par excellence in this regard is Josiah, who reformed Israel according to what he had heard read from the Torah.
When one turns to the New Testament, Jesus and the writers of the New Testament clearly have a proficient knowledge of the scriptural story and engage that story in multiple contexts. The essence of the gospel in the earliest days of the Church is that the story of Jesus (especially in the key events of his death, resurrection, and exaltation) is the climax and fulfillment of the story of Israel. To be able to articulate and defend this claim, the earliest Christians would need a thorough knowledge and strong grasp of both the story of Jesus and the story of Israel. In this vein, while biblical scholars are not the only people who need to take up this mantle in the Church today, it is important to have people who have a thoroughgoing familiarity with the story among the teachers in the community of believers.
Another factor I see as important is the centricity of the Bible in historic Christian movements. Whenever movements have been initiated, the basis has typically had something to do with biblical interpretation. Whatever other movements may arise in Christianity, this trend will most likely continue. In that light, biblical scholars can serve important functions of evaluating movements, deepening/strengthening their foundation, and challenging their teachings and practices when necessary.
As I have alluded to a number of times in the course of this post, there is also the problem of false teaching that needs to be addressed. There has been and is much false teaching about the contents of the Bible. Because of the associations that will inevitably be made because of the misinformation caused by the false teachings, it behooves a Christian to seek out diligently what is true and what is false about the Bible and to be able to declare corrections to these false teachings in public. Surely biblical scholars should be well equipped for leading the pursuit of these endeavors. Who among believers would not want them to be working in such capacities?
Finally, there is the ever-present problem of discerning what it means for something (teaching or praxis) to be “biblical.” There is much debate over whether or not something is biblical without much thought put into the overarching question of what it means to be biblical. Polygamy and cannibalism are “biblical” in the sense that the Bible mentions them. If the term is narrowed to what the Bible teaches, there remains the issue of what it means for the Bible to “teach,” “advocate,” or “affirm” something. This question has been especially poignant in the issue of the relationship between believers of the new covenant and the Mosaic law, but it also arises in debates of the extent to which one can regard interpretations as “biblical” and in concerns of how to approach biblical silence (is something permissible if it is not mentioned, is it restricted if it is not mentioned, or is there more nuance to the question?). These questions and similar ones are quite complex and thorny. They require careful thought and deep knowledge of the Bible. Once again, biblical scholars are essential for providing well informed answers to the problem of when one can describe something as “biblical.”
For these reasons, I believe there is a deep need for biblical scholars in the Church. Because I perceive I have been gifted for such a vocation and because these needs especially appeal to my passions, I have sensed a call to serve the Church as a biblical scholar. And I hope that my work is worthy of that calling.