I don't have time to write this morning, but I thought I'd refer anyone interested to some good scholarship on Mark Goodacre's blog about the hullabaloo James Tabor and others have been generating for some time about a supposed "lost tomb of Jesus" found in Israel.
Here's his summary of the situation.
Bad scholarship is when one refuses to let the evidence modify your hypothesis. Tabor and friends are, in my opinion, a good example of bad scholarship. However, they do not represent the vast majority of biblical scholars who are really interested primarily in truth and in following the evidence to its most logical conclusion.
Unfortunately, Tabor and others play easily into America's current problem with "expertophobia," the ironic instinct Americans seem to have that if someone is an expert on a subject, they should be viewed with suspicion because they're probably evil. For example, according to a recent comment in the public sphere, I am a snob for hoping more people can get a college education. This is actually as strong a sign of our decline as a nation as any other. The "greatest generation" didn't feel that way--not at all.
Most experts in a field are exactly that--experts, people who by definition are more likely to be right about that subject than you or me.
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"the vast majority of biblical scholars who are really interested primarily in truth and in following the evidence to its most logical conclusion."
Boy, I wish I could believe that. So many seem to be interested in reinforcing their faith no matter what kind of hare-brained theory they have to invent.
I am reminded of Bauckham's theory that specific names mentioned in the gospels actually provide us the names of the eyewitnesses to the events. I guess that could be true but it sure sounds like an attempt to justify his own belief in the reliability of the gospels.
Similarly N.T. Wright's excuse for believing Matthew's story of corpses leaving their graves and wandering Jerusalem: "Some stories are so odd that they may just have happened."
These are highly respected scholars and I am sure that much of their work is quite erudite but to doubt that their work is concerned with more than shoring up their faith, that they would ever be lead to a logical conclusion that undermines their primary beliefs stretches my credulity beyond its breaking point.
Scholars should be aware that "confirmation bias" will be their instinct, if they do not use their critical thinking skills to pursue "truth" where ever it may be found and whatever it might reveal...
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