As we blog, the mighty Society of Biblical Literature is holding its annual meeting for pointy-headed biblical scholars. In keeping with a pattern of five years' standing, we are not attending, thanks to other, more pressing travel obligations of an academic-administrative kind that keep us away from the classroom enough already. So we feel a little bit left out of the biblical studies party.
But we are intrigued nevertheless that last week's Chronicle of Higher Education ran an article by one Jacques Berlinerblau of Georgetown University critiquing the work of the august scholarly society (link will work fully only for paid subscribers).
What intriuges us is that Berlinerblau is in part concerned with what bugs us about the SBL, but in part he seems to object to what makes it possible to have such a society.
In sum, he complains that the society does little to address people who actually read the Bible outside the academic context. We agree.
But he also complains that the society is dominated by people who read the Bible from a faith perspective. We agree that it is so dominated, but we doubt that Berlinerblau's complaint can ever be addressed to his satisfaction. He wants more scholars of no particular confessional identity engaged in the study of the Bible for the sake more objectively informing its use in public discourse. But we aver that (a) people without a faith perspective are generally not interested in doing this at all; (b) those who are aren't so much nonreligious as antireligious, militantly opposed to faith and lacking in objectivity at least as much as religious people.
In particular, we are amused by Berlinerblau's desire that the SBL discover whether the rumors are true that the society is dominated by conservative Christians. As one of them, I can tell the world that such a study is unnecessary. There are lots of such folks who attend the SBL, but they probably don't constitute anything close to a dominating majority of attendees, and not even a coherent minority, not least when one considers the array of confessional perspectives that constitute what Berlinerblau would call "conservative." Further, the SBL's meeting and publication program is so much not dominated by conservatives that they continue to operate separate meetings (the Evangelical Theological Society and the Institute for Biblical Research) to do what they care about. And in addition to these other, big societies, there are lots of little groups holding what are called "additional meetings," meaning privately arranged meetings during the main society meeting, to get done what they really care about. That there are multiple groups holding such side meetings, and that many SBL members openly confess that they attend the annual meeting entirely for such side meetings and the book discounts available in the display area, illustrates perfectly that there's no way on earth that a conservative group can now or would ever control proceedings.
Once upon a time, the SBL was an elite organization composed of the most prominent biblical scholars at the oldest, best endowed mainline Protestant seminaries and university divinity schools in the United States. Some of the oldsters who remember those days still pine for them. Berlinerblau wants something else, mostly more room for folks like him.
We don't object to folks like him. We just don't believe that there's enough interest in what he imagines should be done to carry the day.
In our not-so-humble opinion, mostly what ails the SBL is what ails biblical scholarship. That's not the confessional perspectives of the scholars. Wish as we might, that situation isn't going to change. It's the minutiae with which too many scholars concern themselves in their quest to find something original to put in the dissertations that earn their degrees and the publications that earn their tenure and promotions.
Scholars' worthwhile ideas about the Bible almost always find their way into scholarly discourse. Some of them manage to filter down to where some members of the public hear about them. But they don't generally need the intentional support of the SBL for that. And the filtering-down will always take place in confessional contexts, i.e. churches and their ilk, to the chagrin of Berlinerblau's ilk.
3 comments:
There are (at least) two ways to understand the phrase "read the Bible from a faith perspective": (1) read it as a believer, and (2) read it as a believer would read it. 1 implies 2, but 2 doesn't imply 1.
If Berlinerblau is advocating the inclusion of scholars in the SBL who refuse to "read the Bible" in the sense of 1, I think SWNID is right. There certainly is room for those who would interpret the Bible from a non-faith perspective. After all, even non-believers can have important insights into the Biblical text.
But if Berlinerblau is advocating the inclusion of scholars in the SBL who refuse to "read the Bible" in the sense of 2, he's barking up the wrong tree. The Bible is a sacred text and should be read as such if it is to be correctly understood. To read it as anything but a sacred text--even if you are an unbeliever and reject its message--is to distort its meaning from the very outset. No one would read a poem (for example) as if it were a scientific tractate. In the same way, no one should read a sacred text as if it were a secular document.
I should clarify: there are lots SBL members in good standing who refuse to do sense 1. Berlinerblau wants them to be more numerous and powerful.
But he never really clarifies whether he also wants to refuse to do sense 2. And JB, you're right as usual, that this refusal, explicit or implicit, does horrible damage to the interpretive process.
Thank you for providing a link to Berlinerblau's work, it actually fits very nicely into a research project of mine. At the same time, I am saddened in part returning from my first SBL experience knowing it would have been fuller with the presence of the magnificent and magnanimous SWNID as a part.
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