Alan Lenzi has gone out on a limb and articulated a series of complaints over recent reviews written by Evangelical Christians in the Review of Biblical Literature. I’ve been following Lenzi’s posts on this and I have to say that I am in general agreement with him–to an extent. I do think that in some cases RBL really ought to require a more nuanced review from their reviewers. At the same time I want to be careful that requiring a more nuanced review does not lead to requiring the consensus position among critical scholars. I realize that this isn’t what Lenzi is suggesting, but it is a danger. Let me try to flesh this out a little by giving a concrete example.
The most recent review that Lenzi complains about may be found here. When I read this review I was taken aback by the following statement (also quoted by Lenzi):
Those who believe that the Bible is the literary product of divine revelation will agree that Oswalt has shown that the Bible is different from the other religious writings from the ancient Near East. Those who reject the notion that God has revealed himself in the history of Israel will remain unpersuaded that the Bible is a unique book containing divine revelation and that the religion of Israel is different from the other religions in the ancient Near East.
Why was I taken aback? Simple–I believe the Bible is a literary product of divine revelation, but based on the review I seriously doubt that I would agree that Oswalt had shown that the Bible is different from other documents in the ANE and thus divine revelation. I imagine I would come to the conclusion that Oswalt merely wanted to believe that to be the case, and so strung together a rather lengthy list of assertions to that end and called it a book. This is the kind of either-or thinking among Evangelicals that frustrates me. The thinking is that either the Bible must be entirely unique and unlike any human document or it is not divine revelation. I don’t understand why the Bible can not be quite similar to other ANE documents and still be divine revelation. Apart from this, the idea that one can prove that something is divine revelation is silly at best.
So, on the one hand I think that RBL needs to demand that reviews not simply summarize what is in a book, but rather offer thoughtful critiques of the good and bad within a book. On the other hand, I have no problem with RBL publishing a review of a book such as The Bible Among the Myths. I don’t even have a problem with the author of the review saying that in his or her opinion the book would be a good fit for some confessional schools (no matter how much I might disagree). However, there needs to be some critical engagement with the material. There needs to be a reason for why the reviewer concludes that the book might be a good fit for confessional schools. There needs to be some acknowledgment that the book steps outside the bounds of history, literary criticism, source criticism or anything else and enters into the realm of theology. My primary concern is that if one goes too far to the other extreme, any book written by a confessional scholar would simply be deemed “theology” and disregarded (e.g., Exploring the Old Testament: A Guide to the Prophets by J. Gordon McConville is published by IVP, and certainly comes at things from a confessional perspective. However, it interacts with critical scholarship and would be, in my opinion, an excellent introductory text for use at confessional schools). In other words, I think there is a place for scholarship that has a confessional audience in mind, but having a confessional audience in mind does not absolve it from the requirement that it be scholarly.
Balance is needed in this, as in all things.
well said, calvin. I agree. Balance is needed. i’ve been following alan’s posts too and shared his incredulity at some of the examples he found. I’ve just started a book called Critics not Caretakers by Russell McCutcheon about this divide in religious studies (but especially biblical studies) between scholarly and confessional. It was amusing reading about how offended a group of theologians got when he informed them that they were not his scholarly peers, they were his data.
Yeah, I’ve been complaining a lot lately (and writing letters to RBL). But I think sometimes that’s what it takes to get institutions to change. I’m glad you’re on board with the “engage the author and do some analysis” part of what I’m saying.
In the spirit of doing something constructive rather than simply complaining, I’ve volunteered to review a book. I haven’t received the thumbs up yet from the editors (and it’s been a month!). But I’m trying to make a difference in RBL by offering to do a review. I’ve done three so far but the last one was in 2007.
My next blog post will be an encouragement for people to volunteer.
@Doug – Can we expect to see your comments about McCutcheon’s book on your blog when you finish? I imagine I’d find your comments insightful. The book does sound interesting, perhaps it’s worth being put on my summer reading list.
@Alan – I agree completely that sometimes vocal complaints are required to get the attention of an organization. I imagine that in the end you and I largely agree on what RBL ought to be doing. I’ve taken up your challenge and volunteered to review a book myself.
Here’s a quote from McCutcheon, page 88, that I use in my book, Secrecy and the Gods, 16, n. 73:
“[I]f we understand religious discourses not to be about the hereafter, as the people we study maintain, but instead take such dehistoricizing claims as the object of study, we will contextualize and historicize them and see them as being about the here and now. In this way, claims of ahistoricity and autonomy can be understood as powerful rhetorical and ideological vehicles that authorize and normativize certain systematic distributions of power and privilege in a social group. Despite the fact that the people we may study profess to be talking about other-worldly concerns, we as scholars have nothing to study but what we can observe in this world and what we can organize theoretically; therefore, what we observe and study are socially and materially entrenched human beings engaging in certain behaviors, maintaining specific institutions, and deploying artful rhetorics for this or that material or social end.”
In another place he says “like all other aspects of human behavior, those collections of beliefs, behaviors, and institutions we classify as ‘religion’ can be conceptualized and then explained as thoroughly human activity, with no mysterious distillate left over” (xi; emphasis original).
This kind of thing bothers biblicists because it undermines their theologically-oriented normative sensibilities (i.e., they like the idea of the Bible being a unique revelatory witness to a god). But it shouldn’t. Physicists who are also theists are not dissuaded from faith because they can explain certain stellar phenomena thoroughly without invoking a deity or the effects of gravity on matter without appeal to theologoumena. Scientists explain everything—or at least, that’s the goal. Such a goal should motivate biblicists, too, without leaving aside a mysterious “extra” that is beyond human capacity to understand or theorize. There may be something to the idea that the Bible is a genuine revelation from a transcendent being. But historical, literary, and sociological scholarship can’t prove that. It is therefore outside the pail of discourse, or, it should be within the academic discipline of biblical studies.
Sorry, got carried away (again).
Alan, I agree. I think that the idea that god(s) can be proven to exist or not is simply silly. It’s not what the field of biblical studies is about. At the same time, I think that it needs to be realistically acknowledged that there is a place for books written to a confessional audience (a book, for instance, that asks questions about how such and such interacts with one’s faith). The issue, I think, is that being for a confessional audience does not mean a book should be less rigorous.
As I said, I think we largely agree on the big picture issue: scholarly books, articles, reviews, etc need to be scholarly and therefore interact with the data as data, without recourse to faith or God apart from the discussion of how those ideas played a part historically in the development of the text, etc, etc.
calvin, I plan to work mccutcheon into my thinking on these issues, though I don’t know if I’ll engage directly and extensively on the blog. he’s new to me as I try to add some academic religious studies theory and method to my knowledge-base, but obviously, he’s familiar territory for someone like alan. (sorry for the delayed response, i got busy and lost track of my wordpress comments threads.)