Image: The Ivory Tower by Judith “Inky-Wings” McNicol, 1995 (21×30cm)
Do scholars dare to enter humanity’s tower of babble? Image: Ivory Tower (Detail)
Two recent posts by Bible scholars sensitive to the epic flow of human thought have got me thinking about the cure for modern Biblical studies malaise. First, Tim Bulkeley writes about the metadata that surrounds the Bible, who produces it and who consumes it:
It is small wonder that "the guild" has such an identity crisis at present, we have moved from a situation where the religious readers were thoroughly dominant, through one where the "historians" (for want of a better term) have become dominant in the academy, but in which those willing to pay for our "product" (publications and teaching) are very predominantly still religious readers.
Then John Hobbins offers antidotes for the poisoning of the evangelical mind:
That’s easy. Fundagelicalism is that subset of Christianity which influences all the others. In my context, a typical United Methodist congregation in the Midwest, the most ardent members are evangelicals by almost any definition. If they have strong views on any of the above topics, the probability is high that they run in the direction of the standard fundagelical position. To be sure, they also know that one can be a Christian without necessarily holding to those positions. But they usually believe that one is a better Christian if one believes as they do.
What both these posts speak of to me is a disengagement by scholars with the vibrant rainforest of Christendom that exists today. They poo-poo Study Bibles. They diss mega-pastors and the books they produce. And they treat as an unholy abomination the first place people turn on the Internet for guidance on understanding the Bible: Wikipedia.
My long-time sparring partner Jim West is the personification of this elitism. Granted, I understand he writes hyperbolically for rhetorical effect. His obsession with the past, dead languages and dead theologians is his own way of bringing attention to otherwise neglected fonts of wisdom. But his vituperous verbal venom for all things outside the narrow confines of his encomiums of the arcane leaves him looking like the man in Bruegel’s famous Netherlandish Proverbs who is hanging his rear out the upstairs window so he can poop on the globe even while the cards in his hand show a simultaneous love of aspects of this world’s folly.
John Hobbins is offering an antidote for the wrong patient. It’s not the pure in heart who need bypass surgery. Their naivety was praised by the Galilean sage. Instead, it is the experts who have painted themselves into a corner and are in need of rescue. They have drawn their own silhouette and offered it to the world as the image of orthodoxy but the world is blissfully unaware. Rave on in the ruins of your ivory tower! Hurl yourself into the thornbush of your quest for historicity while the great tide of humanity passes by unaware of your agonies!
When I imagine the recent SBL meeting in Boston, I can only think of the monk and the nun on Bosch’s Ship of Fools. An entire ship of fools full of mad cynics serenading one another with nonsense while outside the world hums to a different melody.
Is there an antidote for the dropsy that has afflicted our Biblical studies brethren? Yes, there is. But it is painful, distasteful and altogether life-giving. Jim West and all his friends must throw themselves into the midst of the hoi-polloi and absorb the babble of the rabble. They must invade the tower they despise and add their voices to the chatter. Jim West needs Wikipedia. But Wikipedia also needs Jim West. Every other academic discipline has entered into the fray. Not because they think Wikipedia is a trustworthy source of information but quite the contrary. It is a big mess of muddled thinking and recursive hearsay. A scholar can help bring order to an unruly article.
Abandon ship, my friends, and find refuge and salvation in the rabble’s Tower of Babel.
http://jwest.wordpress.com/2008/12/07/why-does-david-ker-hate-scholarship/
oh geez. this ought to get some comments.
i’ll need some time to formulate a proper response. let me say, i do agree with a part of your premise. but, it’s easier to reform from within.
as you know, i’m torn on wiki. i love the power of the technology, but am scared pooless about the notion that some nut with some axe to grind can hijack an article if she/he is tenacious enough. (it’s the same problem with democracy – every nut gets a vote.) there is a place for scholars in society, and it should rightly be above the rabble of the hoi polloi. but in a nation that disdains authority – especially intellectual authority – in favor of celebrity, it is difficult to show people that while everyone has a right to their opinions and interpretations, some opinions are better than others (and some opinions are downright stupid).
Geez, what an interesting post. Thanks, David.
BTW, what you say in this post is why I took it as a bad omen when you gave up your credentials as an AG pastor.
In any case, I agree with your basic diagnosis. I know from my blog stats and emails what the hoi-polloi want: help with their Christian tattoos and translating John 3:16 into Hebrew for that purpose; a lot more on the 144 names of God in the Bible; a translation of the Psalms that smacks them up with the same energy as the original. I can’t bring myself to do the first project, but I really should give some priority to doing the second and third.
The hoi-polloi throw better parties but the hors d’oeuvres are better at the elite tetes a tetes. All I’m advocating is crashing both.
In response to Jim I can only say, no, I don’t hate scholarship. I love it. I’ve never had the opportunity to master Greek and Hebrew but am glad for those who have. But why isolate yourselves from the crazy currents of culture? Why cut off your nose to spite your face? Why turn a silk purse into a sow’s ear? As both Tim and John say in their posts, there is a great mass of humanity who reveres the Book and yet feels affronted and rebuked by the scholars. Your wikiphobia isolates you but at the same time prevents you from engaging with those who would most benefit from your learning.
Perhaps Mao’s Chinese, or was it Pol Pot’s Cambodians, had the right idea: send all the intellectuals out to work the fields until they understand the real world. Of course I don’t endorse the cruelty involved, but you need some cruelty to be kind. Nor do I endorse the economic chaos often caused by past experiments with this kind of thing, but what economic damage would be caused by closing the ivory towers for a year or two?