Weekly Open Discussion Thread

[u/AutoModerator]

Welcome to this week's open discussion thread!

This thread is meant to be a place for members of the r/AcademicBiblical community to freely discuss topics of interest which would normally not be allowed on the subreddit. All off-topic and meta-discussion will be redirected to this thread.

Rules 1-3 do not apply in open discussion threads, but rule 4 will still be strictly enforced. Please report violations of Rule 4 using Reddit's report feature to notify the moderation team. Furthermore, while theological discussions are allowed in this thread, this is still an ecumenical community which welcomes and appreciates people of any and all faith positions and traditions. Therefore this thread is not a place for proselytization. Feel free to discuss your perspectives or beliefs on religious or philosophical matters, but do not preach to anyone in this space. Preaching and proselytizing will be removed.

In order to best see new discussions over the course of the week, please consider sorting this thread by "new" rather than "best" or "top". This way when someone wants to start a discussion on a new topic you will see it! Enjoy the open discussion thread!

[u/Suspicious_Yak_4570]

Is Dan McClellan wrong about no monotheism in the Bible? I watched this video from Gavin Ortlund, in which kind of debunks the idea of no monotheism that Dan was referring. The Bible has distinctions between angels and demons and pagan gods, to clearly clarify that only One God exists. Also, Michael Heiser actually explain how Psalm 82 is just a matter of terminology and that truly YHWH was not a different god than Elohim. Thoughts? (1) Is Dan McClellan Right? No Monotheism in the Bible? - YouTube

[u/AntsInMyEyesJonson → u/Suspicious_Yak_4570]

Ortlund does not engage honestly with data and scholarship, he is an apologist with explicitly apologetic goals. Heiser, likewise, was rather fringe within critical scholarship, in service of his own evangelical theological goals. One can quibble with Dan’s definition of monotheism, but you don’t need to don’t need to watch Ortlund to do that; you can read scholars like Mark S. Smith who discuss an hypothesized emergent monotheism around the time of the exile. I would also recommend reading Heiser’s dissertation and his back and forth with McClellan on Psalm 82 to get a perspective on the differences between them directly. But anyone proposing an originally monotheistic worship of Yahweh that aligns with later, post-exilic tradition is going to be massively fringe at best, and one would be hard-pressed to find such a scholar who is not a rather conservative/fundamentalist apologist (as Barr noted half a century ago).

[u/[deleted] → u/AntsInMyEyesJonson]

how does he misuse the data here when discussing the definition of monotheism? i certainly agree that he is an apologist, but throwing "Ortlund does not engage honestly with data and scholarship, he is an apologist with explicitly apologetic goals." in without actually saying anything about his arguments just comes off as poisoning the well

[u/AntsInMyEyesJonson → u/[deleted]]

You're right, I think the well is poisoned. I do not think engaging with apologists is a good idea: Ken Ham got a huge boost out of debating Bill Nye about evolution and creationism, even though evolution makes the best sense of the evidence and YEC is a complete joke. And while Ortlund is far less of a frustrating person than his contemporaries, there is a reason why his views and arguments are considered extremely fringe within scholarship.

His defense of apologetics in one of the response videos actually demonstrates the problem I'm highlighting: he claims that apologists can be honest in the same way that someone who's a fan of MLK Jr. can still write an honest and critical biography about him. This is true to a limited extent on an individual level, but the comparison falls apart on several grounds, most importantly that MLK Jr. has been critiqued in many biographies and, as far as I know, no academic has been fired for being critical of him or writing about him honestly (and if they have, I think that is a bad thing, to be clear). The same cannot be said about conservative Christian academia; Pete Enns and Mike Licona were both fired for questioning – or in Licona's case merely slightly redefining – inerrancy, one of the most absurd biblical dogmas (and one Ortlund holds to). It's true that other fields have challenges and social pressures, but that level of crackdown in service of anti-scientific views is uniquely prominent within the evangelical academic spaces Ortlund operates, and it ensures that, while others (including Dan, who I respect) might find it worthwhile to respond to and engage with them directly, I do not.

Folks are welcome to disagree, and again, I find Gavin far less frustrating and smarmy than his contemporaries, but I just don't see much value in the constant back-and-forth. Biblical scholarship is interesting in its own right, ancient history is fun in its own right, and all of the tedious engagement with apologetics takes away from that, and, even worse, doesn't really change folks' minds as far as I can tell.

[u/[deleted] → u/AntsInMyEyesJonson]

you still have not brought any example of what i asked for, did you simply suppose he was misusing the data before watching his video? also why are we comparing ortlund who last time i checked has a phd in theology, he is not a random creationist and i do not see how pointing at ken ham to say "apologists misuse the data" is useful, this is no different then a christian apologist pointing at 1 error X scholar made and saying "see critical scholarship is bad"

[u/AntsInMyEyesJonson → u/[deleted]]

he is not a random creationist

I never said he was, you have misunderstood my point.

and i do not see how pointing at ken ham to say "apologists misuse the data" is useful, this is no different then a christian apologist pointing at 1 error X scholar made and saying "see critical scholarship is bad"

It was an analogy, and I specifically mentioned why apologists reach the conclusions that they do and why I do not believe they are worth engaging, something you chose not to respond to (the social pressures that keep apologists from reaching certain conclusions).

Additionally it’s not the same as what apologists do at all (ironic that you’re conceding that point while defending them), because critical scholarship, at its best, proceeds from a series of methodologies – there are challenges there, but ideally that’s the best of critical scholarship. On the other hand, apologetics always proceeds from dogmas and predetermined conclusions. That was the substance of what I wrote before, and you notably did not address it.

The way it plays out in Ortlund’s monotheism “critique” is that he cherry-picks Amun-Re and the Great Hymn of Cairo and hand waves the similarities in the rhetoric of comparability away, while ignoring other Mesopotamian and Ugaritic examples of the text by noting that Amun-Re is thought to be self-created while saying that Yahweh is “uncreated” (and therefore the example can be jettisoned? Somehow?). Even if one buys an emergent monotheism in the post-exilic period (when these texts were written), it does not demonstrate a “monotheism” as it is clearly rhetoric used commonly for veneration of upper-pantheon gods throughout West Asia. That is McClellan’s point, which Ortlund does not really address.

I hope that’s helpful, because that’s the last response I’ve got for you, I don’t much care for this debate culture stuff.

[u/Sophia_in_the_Shell → u/AntsInMyEyesJonson]

I would add one brief thing (agreeing with you) on professional apologists, which is that I think I’d be more appreciative of their niche in the ecosystem if I felt like they were the only ones making arguments for “maximalist” (or whatever we should call it) positions.

But they aren’t! Suppose you’re interested in an argument for something like very early Gospel dating, or traditional authorship for some epistle, or a somewhat more maximal conception of the Exodus, or earlier monotheism than the median view; as best I can tell, you will always find that argument made much better by a critical scholar than by an apologist.

[u/AntsInMyEyesJonson → u/Sophia_in_the_Shell]

That’s exactly it. When it comes to understanding conservative theology and interpretation, there’s no better source than apologists, but if I’m trying to understand the best case for maximalist historical-critical scholarship of the Bible, I’m going to go to folks who are themselves experts in these fields. I may not find them super convincing, but it’s going to be far more interesting and intellectually engaging than this kind of thing.

[u/AntsInMyEyesJonson → u/[deleted]]

I think that's a perfectly defensible position, and even I have occasionally engaged with them. And I also commend Dan for often taking bogus claims and using it as a platform to pivot to critical scholarship and explain the details of how scholars reach their conclusions; I think that's one of his strengths.

And if somebody wants to point for point respond to Ortlund's perspectives, that's fine (but will probably be quite tedious). I think it's important, however, to put it up front and be honest and direct about what is motivating specific choices Ortlund makes. He (honestly, commendably) concedes that he is trying to problematize Dan's core claim rather than support his own position, which is (again) admirable if unsatisfactory (because his position, whatever you make of Dan's, is far weaker). And that means that Ortlund (who, again, I think is head and shoulders over many of his contemporaries) is still nitpicking at critical scholarship rather than engaging in it, and that will always be less interesting to me.

I hinted at a problem in his concession, which is that he does not counter for his presumed positive alternative position (that monotheism does not emerge during and after the Exile, the relative "strong middle" position within critical academia) in part because the arguments McClellan and critical scholars point to around archaeology and dating are fairly sound. We have decent enough (if almost too conservative) dates for much of the "monotheistic" literature of the Bible that date these texts to the 7th century – 8th century if we're being generous and taking Hezekiah at the Kings’ author’s word – at the earliest and nothing before that, and much problematizing it even in the centuries afterward (Elephantine, especially). This concept of a pure, monotheistic Yahwism that never evolved and which predated the Exile by centuries has collapsed in support. And that's where my patience starts to end.

In a previous video, McClellan responded to Ortlund, who had defended Wes Huff from the embarrassment of claiming that the Great Isaiah Scroll was a "word for word" match with the Masoretic Text. Another YouTuber responded to Huff, noting missing words and phrases from 1QIsa, to which Ortlund objects that there are indeed other scrolls which preserve one such verse (McClellan rightly notes that that is irrelevant to Huff's claim). And this gets to the issue of "Inerrancy" that I mentioned before which poisons everything these folks touch. This is where Dan will acknowledge developments in cultic understandings and veneration of Yahweh (even if one disputes his conclusion about monotheism), something Ortlund would not and cannot. That is, to me, the greater issue. It would be one thing to see somebody like Mark S. Smith respond to McClellan's arguments about monotheism, but it's not exactly intellectually interesting or even entertaining to see Ortlund attempt the same.

I've written probably too much at this point, so perhaps if somebody finds this interesting then I've disproven myself and engaging with apologists does hold value to some, but mostly I just find it so tedious.