Hector Avalos - The End of Biblical Studies

66rooks, much like films, are productions involving a large cast of characters and behind-the-scenes personnel. This production would not have been possible without the help of my wife, Cynthia Avalos, who, as executive producer, kept my life in order so that I could write the bulk of this book in one intense summer in 2006. She helped proofread the manuscript, and she provided a sympathetic ear for all the usual vexations authors have.

Quincy Miller, my research assistant and stagehand, gathered many of the materials used in this book, and he proofread portions of the manuscript.

Writing critiques of friends, professional colleagues, and former professors is not easy. With regard to my former professors, I hope that they see my critiques as partly due to their success in imparting a sense of critical analysis and devotion to truth, no matter where it leads. In particular, I would thank William G. Dever and Frank Moore Cross, whose work I critique here.

Raz Kletter, of the Israel Antiquities Authority, was kind enough to grant his permission to use two figures from an article of his that I critique, and he also provided additional bibliographical references to his work.

My thanks also to Steven Mitchell and Paul Kurtz who, through Prometheus Books, have provided an important forum for voicing my ideas.

As usual, I must thank Rusty, our omniscient squirrel, and his friend, Skippy, who provided endless entertainment when writer's fatigue subjugated me.

I hereby absolve them all for my transgressions.

ur discussions of the Bible translations and textual variations necessitate the use of various versions, as no one version illustrates our arguments. But unless noted otherwise, all of our biblical quotations are from the Revised Standard Version, as presented in Herbert G. May and Bruce M. Metzger, The New Oxford Annotated Bible with Apocrypha (New York: Oxford University Press, 1977). For the Greek, Aramaic, and Hebrew text, we depend on the following:

GREEK: Kurt Aland et al. The Greek New Testament, 4th rev. ed. (Stuttgart: Deutsche Bibelgesellschaft/United Bible Societies, 1998).

HEBREW: K. Elliger and W. Rudolph, eds. Biblia hebraica stuttgartensia, 2nd ed. (Stuttgart: Deutsche Bibelgesellschaft, 1983).

We use foreign words in our main text as sparingly as possible, and only when deemed necessary for understanding our arguments. However, in cases where foreign language sources were available, we have included more complete foreign language extracts in the footnotes for the benefit of scholars.

t_Zbe only mission of biblical studies should be to end biblical studies as we know it. This book will explain why I have come to such a conclusion. In the process, it will review the history of academic biblical studies as primarily a religionist apologetic enterprise, despite its partial integration of secularist epistemologies. The majority of biblical scholars in academia are primarily concerned with maintaining the value of the Bible despite the fact that the important questions about its origin have either been answered or cannot be answered. More importantly, we will show how academia, despite claims to independence, is still part of an ecclesial-academic complex that collaborates with a competitive media industry.

Most standard histories will grant that biblical studies began as an apologetic enterprise.' Few biblical scholars will admit that it is still just that. The largest organization of professional biblical scholars, the Society of Biblical Literature (SBL), began as the Society of Biblical Literature and Exegesis in New York City in 1880, and its chief members included Philip Schaff, Charles A. Briggs, and Francis Brown. Some of these men represented the more liberal streams of scholarship. A few were friendly toward the then emerging "higher criticism," which dared to question the authorship and historicity of many biblical events.' Yet all were religious in some way. They all believed the Bible was worth keeping in the modern world.

Today, the Society of Biblical Literature is larger and more pluralistic in representation. One will find Jews represented, whereas there were none at the first meeting of the SBL. Secular humanists, such as myself, have participated in reading many papers. Although still heavily dominated by men, the SBL has more women members than even twenty years ago. The SBL is no longer centered in the northeast, and its members come to its massive annual meetings, usually in the United States, from countries all over the globe.

But important features have remained constant. The main bond is bibliolatry, which entails the conviction that the Bible is valuable and should remain the subject of academic study. Equally important, the Society of Biblical Literature, while now relatively more free of denominationalist agendas, is still religionist in orientation. Scholars still are either part of faith communities, or see their work as assisting faith communities directly or indirectly. One of the most prominent Jewish biblical scholars today, Jon D. Levenson, comments: "[T]he motivations of most historical critics of the Hebrew Bible continues to be religious in character. It is a rare scholar in the field whose past does not include an intense Christian or Jewish commitment."3 Atheists may read papers at the Annual Meeting of the Society of Biblical Literature, but usually only when such papers do not challenge the relevance of biblical studies itself.

For our purposes, we can summarize our plea to end biblical studies as we know it with two main premises:

1. Modern biblical scholarship has demonstrated that the Bible is the product of cultures whose values and beliefs about the origin, nature, and purpose of our world are no longer held to be relevant, even by most Christians and Jews.

2. Paradoxically, despite the recognition of such irrelevance, the profession of academic biblical studies still centers on maintaining the illusion of relevance by: