Space For Doubt

People hate when they realize information has been kept from them.

That’s been universally true for all of time. Whether it be the result of an intentional action, or the result of simply being unaware, the perception is inevitably that knowledge was being gate-kept. It was intentional.

This is no less true in the realm of Biblical Scholarship.

I recently paid money to attend a live-stream event with Dr. Pete Enns and Dr. Dan McClellan, both very accomplished and published scholars. They led this live-stream (with the title of “MythBusting The Bible”) in pursuit of making widely accepted Biblical Scholarship available to the public.

These men have great differences in their own held theology and the angles from which they approach scriptural problems. There are things they obviously don’t agree on. However what I like to say, is that if you have both Pete and Dan agreeing on something, you better pay close attention to what that something is. Chances are incredibly high they are correct.

They each presented five “busted myths” of the Bible. I’d say half of these I was familiar with, but the other half were new to me. I loved every second of it.

One of the topics was how God was viewed in ancient Israel. Dan raised the point that during his schooling, it was already well accepted and known in the academic realm that El and YHWH were originally two distinctly different entities in ancient Israel. Later scriptural revisions were attempts to harmonize and unify the two under a more monotheistic-acceptable view. This was all just accepted as fact by the vast majority of serious scholars. Pete was in agreement.

Dan conveyed the frustration with the huge gulf that existed (and still exists) between the ivory tower of academia, and the pews and pulpits of our churches.

In the scholarly realm, the debate of and wrestling with the El and YHWH problem was so long since completed, that virtually no consternation still existed around them being viewed as two different entities.

However in the pews and churches, to bring this up is often viewed as heresy. The knowledge never made its way into the flock at large, despite the overwhelming scriptural and archaeological evidence in support of it.

The reasons for this make sense. It’s a difficult concept to wrestle with and “maintain the faith” or “maintain the story as traditionally told.” I’m sure the logic of many pastors is something along the lines of “this is too complicated for them.”

The problem with this thinking is that ultimately some of your congregation will encounter this. They will have questions. What happens then? They will feel like information gate-keeping has been happening this whole time. They will feel like they’ve been living a lie. 

Dan mentioned that he is getting feedback that due to efforts from people like him, more and more pastors are being confronted with congregants on these hard questions. They are having to start to answer these questions more regularly. Many are none-too-pleased with it either.

I get that explaining that what we were taught growing up isn’t correct, is hard.

I get that it’s difficult to explain how a polytheistic people morphed into a henotheistic and ultimately mono-theistic style of worship.

I get that you’d have to then explain that evolution and undo some faulty apologetic arguments that were employed to harmonize scripture.

I get that this undoes the concept of biblical inerrancy as many view it today.

That doesn’t mean you shouldn’t try.

This ivory tower issue extends to MANY topics. It’s not just El and YHWH, but things like:

• Abraham probably wasn’t a literal historic figure as we understand him today.
• The Israelites most likely started as loose group of already existing Canaanites and morphed together over time. They merged multiple traditions and stories into a text that clearly reveals those differences to the critical eye of scholars.
• The biblical authors of the books of the prophets probably did not have the law of Moses available to them. (at least not in the form we do)
• The entire book of Genesis is best read and understood as mythological story telling, and as an etiology for the Israelite people.

These are topics on which there is widespread scholarly agreement and acceptance. (This is by no means a full list)

These ideas feel uncomfortable don’t they?

Do you want to know why that is, at least in part?

It’s because that information was relegated to the ivory tower of academia for decades and you were not exposed to it.

Your beliefs and understanding were created without the full package of information. It was likely deemed to be “too much” to handle for you by those in positions of leadership. It may even be that those in positions of leadership for you were unaware themselves. Not every pastor is informed to the same degree 🤷. Few pastors that did know, wanted to pick that up and teach it, because it would undermine tradition. It may compromise their employment. It would ultimately….just be hard to explain.

The Ivory Tower Problem is harder to solve than people realize.

There are only a small number of well known and respected scholars working specifically to bring this information into the widespread public knowledge sphere.

There are relatively few people like me, who will intentionally engage with and listen to podcasts and presentations from those scholars.

It’s certainly more than the next-to-zero amount of 50 years ago, but by no means common enough. I wish more people would engage with it. I wish more people cared.

My children will hopefully be raised in a generation for which there is broad availability and acceptance of this knowledge. Where they are exposed to it from an early age, and raised up being used to wrestling with the tough concepts.

They won’t have instinctual denial and defense hackles raised upon hearing conflicting information, because they will know how to critically think and reason with that new information.

Peace

-A willing heretic-