BSN: Modern Biblical Scholarship versus Ancient Biblical Scholarship

  • Modern Biblical scholarship has tended the follow the pattern of modern scholarship in general, which is to which is to disregard ancient scholarship as inferior.
  • C.S. Lewis called this tendency “chronological snobbery” and defined it as “the uncritical acceptance of the intellectual climate common to our own age and the assumption that whatever has gone out of date is on that account discredited.” Lewis went on to say, “You must find why it went out of date. Was it ever refuted (and if so by whom, where, and how conclusively) or did it merely die away as fashions do? If the latter, this tells us nothing about its truth or falsehood. From seeing this, one passes to the realization that our own age is also “a period,” and certainly has, like all periods, its own characteristic illusions. They are likeliest to lurk in those widespread assumptions which are so ingrained in the age that no one dares to attack or feels it necessary to defend them.”
  • Regardless of what it’s called, this combination of arrogance with ignorance will only help you misunderstand the Bible. There are at least two notable examples of this:
    • Creation and Other Miracles – Modern biblical scholars tend to either deny creation and other miracles or else avoid discussing them. The few who stand firm on this issue tend to be held in less esteem by the academic community. For the most part, modern biblical scholars aren’t willing to lose their reputations as scholars for the sake of being more biblical. As a result, their opinions say more about academia than about the Bible. There’s no good reason to deny that creation took place in six days, or to deny any of the other miracles documented in the Bible.
    • Authorship of the New Testament Texts – Modern biblical scholars ignore the rigorous vetting process that ancient churches underwent to determine authorship of each of the 27 texts. They make no serious attempt refute the decisions of the ancients; they just make their own pronouncements as if that’s all that’s necessary. Their rationale often turns on claims they make about the style or vocabulary on the Greek text which, of course, most laymen can’t question. But how can they claim to know more about ancient Greek than ancient Greeks? There’s no good reason to reject the New Testament authors that were verified by ancient sources.
    • Authorship of the Old Testament Texts – Modern biblical scholars also often dispute the authorship of the 39 Old Testament texts. I treat it as a separate issue, however, because OT authorship is 1) not as well attested as NT authorship, and 2) not as important as NT authorship.
      • 1) Jesus’ acceptance of the Jewish OT as the word of God is all the attestation we need; by contrast, the NT did not come into being until after Jesus had ascended into heaven so more work was needed to vet its contents. Still, I trust ancient scholars to know the authors of all biblical texts more than I trust modern scholars for the same reason that I trust Aunt Millie’s closest relatives to know more about her recipes than I do her more distant relatives.
      • 2) It’s almost always helpful to the understanding to know which human wrote something even if it was God speaking through that person. It’s particularly important when it comes to NT texts, however, because authorship was the determining factor for inclusion in the NT. It had to be a contemporary of Jesus. For more, see the books Apostolic Apologetics and/or The New Testament From a Distance.
  • Ussher’s Chronology is a very useful tool that seldom gets used these days because of chronological snobbery (or whatever you want to call the disdain modern scholars have for ancient scholarship). James Ussher was not an ancient, but he did precede the age of Darwin.

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