All Bible Scholars Are Biased…Except Those Who Agree With Me

Ian Paul, conservative Anglican theologian and blogger:

Gary, you have mentioned ‘scholarly consensus’ previously. But you need to realise that theology and biblical studies are not like physics or other hard sciences. A consensus doesn’t often exist, and even if there is a majority view, it means nothing in terms of any sense of objective truth. The discipline as it is practiced is much more like eg English Literature. Just because the consensus ‘view’ is post-structuralism, it does not mean that this is the only or right or even best way to read a text.

Many academic approaches to biblical studies are deeply embedded in philosophical presuppositions, which are not made explicit, not examined, and not challenged. The main one of this is a programmatic assumption of anti-supernaturalism. The result is that many ‘mainstream’ theories are completely circular. The position they end up in is not much more than a reflection of the assumptions made at the beginning. Or, as they say in computing, garbage in, garbage out.

Gary: It is certainly possible that there is an anti-supernatural bias among liberal Protestant scholars and certainly among atheist/agnostic scholars. And if these were the only scholars who favored the non-eyewitness authorship of the Gospels, I too would be suspicious of their position. But that is not the case. A very large number of Christian NT scholars who very much believe in the supernatural also doubt the eyewitness/associate of eyewitness authorship of the Gospels. Who is this group: Roman Catholic scholars! Here is a quote from the website of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops on the authorship of the Gospel of Matthew:

–The questions of authorship, sources, and the time of composition of this gospel [Matthew] have received many answers, none of which can claim more than a greater or lesser degree of probability. The one now favored by the majority of scholars is the following.

The ancient tradition that the author was the disciple and apostle of Jesus named Matthew (see Mt 10:3) is untenable because the gospel is based, in large part, on the Gospel according to Mark (almost all the verses of that gospel have been utilized in this), and it is hardly likely that a companion of Jesus would have followed so extensively an account that came from one who admittedly never had such an association rather than rely on his own memories. The attribution of the gospel to the disciple Matthew may have been due to his having been responsible for some of the traditions found in it, but that is far from certain.–

When I have pointed out this fact to other conservative Christian apologists, their response has been “Roman Catholic scholars are biased against the supernatural”.

Preposterous!

The idea that Roman Catholic bishops and Roman Catholic scholars have a bias against the supernatural is outrageous. Where is the evidence for this preposterous claim?

So claiming that the majority scholarly position on the authorship of the Gospels is due to a bias is not accurate. One must explain why such a large percentage of scholars who do believe in the supernatural still doubt the eyewitness authorship of these ancient Christian texts.

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End of post.

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