Oh, I was once so naive…
I once believed that if I just get a Ph.D., it will give me the authority to speak on matters that are important to me. Now, I realized, I was very much wrong. People, especially Christians, don’t seem to really respect people with advanced education. If I bring up the fact that I have both a bachelor’s and master’s in Bible, it’s often immediately assumed I’m bragging–which can lead to people ignoring everything I say. Which absolutely bamboozles me.
Perhaps it’s a bit self-serving, but allow me for a moment to defend advanced Biblical education. I believe they have so much to offer the Church.
Yet I need to put out some disclaims: I DO NOT think Bible scholars or those with advanced degrees are BETTER than those without. I don’t think they are more spiritual or even “smarter.” They can and do make mistakes. And I have certainly critiqued the tendency of Christian scholarship to divorce praxis from academic work, hanging out in the ivory tower pretending that faith doesn’t mean anything in everyday existence. HOWEVER, people with advanced degrees do know some stuff. It is a grave mistake to dismiss them and the vital role they play in the church.
I want to highlight four reasons why we should pay attention to those with advanced Biblical and theological training (who I will now just call “scholars”):
1) Scholars Have Studied a Lot
Yes, anyone without a degree can study the Bible and know it upwards and downwards. However, the study that a scholar does is different than what the average person does. In order to write one paper, for instance, I’ll probably consult a dozen Bible commentaries, several peer-reviewed journal articles, and a few monographs. For my master’s thesis, I spent a whole year drilling down on four verses, trying to glean everything I could from them.
A scholar covers more BREADTH of knowledge than most people. And often these resources are from different perspectives and from people who have spent their entire lives on Scripture. It’s about drawing from the great cloud of witnesses, both living and dead. I have the utmost respect for churchgoers who regularly study the Bible, but with Biblical scholars, they often can afford to study more (it’s their day job) and the nature of the task means they read more widely.
2) Scholars See the Consensus of Scholarship
Diving into Biblical or theological studies means you get really familiar with the views which are widely adopted. It means you know what opinions are considered probable and which are not. Like that virtually no Old Testament/Hebrew Bible believes in a literal six-day creation. Or that many of the foremost and respected New Testament scholars don’t see that scripture prohibits women from teaching in a church contest. Or that the idea of the Rapture is based on a huge misunderstanding of what “meet Jesus in the sky” means.
OF COURSE just because the majority believes something doesn’t automatically mean it’s right. But don’t you think you should at least pay attention? When lots of people with tons of access to resources and tools come to a certain conclusion, I for one perk up because I want to know how countless hours of study lead to their conclusion.
3) Scholars Know the Original Languages
Hopefully, we can agree that some things, typically minor, are lost in translation when we take the original languages of Scripture and translate them into other languages. But even when we read a word-for-word literal translation, words take on different meanings in our time compared to their meanings 2,000 years ago. How do guard ourselves against accidentally reading modern ideas into ancient texts?
Knowing the original languages helps us pick up the nuances, the tone, and the context. It’s more complicated than “this Greek word means this according to this Greek-to-English dictionary.” I wish it were that easy, as someone who struggled when taking Elementary Greek. But it’s way more complicated. Even if you think Biblical scholarship is useless, the fact that you read a Bible in any language other than Hebrew, Greek, and a little Aramaic means you owe a debt to Biblical scholars. We need Biblical scholars who can explain what these ancient words mean.
4) Scholars Get the Fuller Picture
One thing that frustrates me about how most people read the Bible is that they are so concerned with “gotcha” verses. To believe anything, they want chapter and verse. But our faith is so much more than a list of verses. When it comes to bringing Scripture to bear on our lives today, we also use the resources of theology and church history. Theology is the working out of God’s nature as it applies to all matters of our practices. Church history reveals to us that there are very few doctrines that have remained unchanged over time. Christian scholars who study Scripture, theology, and history understand that a variety of disciplines inform the work of being a faithful Christian.
We Need Bible Scholars
The Bible is complicated. Trying to wrestle with the doctrines of the faith is no easy task. We need scholarly guides to navigate us through these treacherous waters. I believe academics can and should serve the church, not necessarily as the last word, but as an important part of the conversation. We need all kinds of voices–we shouldn’t read the Bible nor live out faith without the community present. Scholars are one aspect of that faith community.
So please don’t immediately dismiss those who have spent countless hours studying Scripture in an academic setting. Please support your local Biblical scholar!
