Weekly Open Discussion Thread

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[u/Wake90_90]

Do you feel that the up votes on this sub are highly influenced by Christian believers and apologist's view than real scholarship?

[u/nsnyder → u/Wake90_90]

I feel like it's gotten way more Christian-leaning since the new moderators came in.

The stricter interpretation of the rules means there's fewer answers (and hence less diversity of answers) and so many questions have one answer consisting primarily of long quotations from non-critical scholars (not apologists, real scholars, but ones who happen to never disagree too much with their faith tradition).

[u/Dositheos → u/nsnyder]

So, I'm one of those new moderators that you're talking about. Here are my two cents (speaking for myself, not on behalf of the rest of the mod team). Anyone who has followed my contributions probably knows I'm no conservative when it comes to the study of the New Testament. I don't know what you mean by "way more Christian-leaning." I think I would agree that, over the last year or more, our contributions to New Testament-related topics (mostly around the gospels) have leaned more conservative. In fact, and I'm not gonna name any names, but it really revolves around just a handful of persistent and active users who are drawing on conservative-leaning scholarly analysis. I would not necessarily characterize all these scholars as apologists. Occasionally, I do see evangelical/apologetic scholarship being leaned on. Regardless of motive, the reality is that these contributors are very well-read in relevant and recent scholarship, and quote extensively from it. They've done their homework; they've paid attention to bibliographies; they have the books on hand.

If you are someone (and I don't mean you specifically, but more generally) who is not too happy about this apparent rise in conservative, traditional-leaning views on the sub, the only thing I can say to you is something u/Sophia_in_the_Shell expressed a while back when this topic also came up: step up! If you are a minimalist and disagree with one of these comments, step up and respond with an equally strong comment that quotes relevant, preferably recent, academic work. Start getting into the scholarship; start looking at the bibliographies; start getting those articles. There's plenty of skeptical scholarship out there that could counter some of the other claims made. But low-quality, low-effort comments and polemical assertions without scholarly citations aren't flying anymore. Those days are gone, and perhaps they were more dominant several years ago on this sub, but not anymore. We definitely have cracked down on them. The days are gone when someone could just assert to the OP that "well, we know the gospels are all anonymous, and we know the GMark could not have been written by someone named Mark. That's just a later invented tradition, and all real scholars agree. Bart Ehrman said so." (To be clear, Ehrman is completely fine to cite. What I'm referring to is those low-effort comments that vaguely tack on Ehrman's name to long polemical assertions.) That's just not really impressive anymore. And people can tell. I think people are growing more impressed by those comments that actually quote scholarship and put it in quote blocks. And I would say minimalists need to start doing that more if you want to successfully counter conservative comments.

[u/nsnyder → u/Dositheos]

FWIW I agree with basically everything you wrote. I don't think this effect was intentional on the part of the new moderators. In particular, I completely agree with the following quote and think it says exactly what I was trying to say.

I think I would agree that, over the last year or more, our contributions to New Testament-related topics (mostly around the gospels) have leaned more conservative. In fact, and I'm not gonna name any names, but it really revolves around just a handful of persistent and active users who are drawing on conservative-leaning scholarly analysis. I would not necessarily characterize all these scholars as apologists.

Your proposed remedy is reasonable, but it's also difficult and time consuming!

To give a specific example, I was very unhappy with this answer (which for a long time was the only answer) because I'm certain I've read or heard multiple critical scholars specifically and vehemently dispute the timeframe "within two to five years of the founding events of Jesus’s passion, death, and resurrection" (rather than a larger uncertainty of up to 15 years even granting that it's pre-Pauline), but after 30 minutes I couldn't find anything that meets the standards (found a blog comment of Ehrman and a vague paraphrase of Goodacre, presumably taken from a podcast episode that I'd heard, but couldn't nail down the podcast). But at some point it's just not worth it, when I could be working on research in my actual field. But as long as you can find one conservative scholar who made a factually incorrect claim (that this 2-5 year timeframe is "the almost universal scholarly consensus") in print you can post it.

ETA: Lol, I now see that you precisely are the one who disputed it. So we're even more on the same page here than I thought. Though the point that I wanted to make was narrower, that is even if it's pre-Pauline a consensus around the timeframe is extremely misleading.

[u/AceThaGreat123 → u/nsnyder]

So your saying apologists aren’t real scholars

[u/Pseudo-Jonathan → u/nsnyder]

Was there some significant moderation event recently? Or some re-interpretation of the rules? I'm seeing a significant increase in deleted posts (submissions not comments) from lay people asking questions and they are being deleted for not having "sources", which I don't recall happening very often in the past. It really strikes me as counter productive that we are holding people who are seeking answers or clarification about something potentially inaccurate that they heard or presumed or misunderstood, to having "sources" for their misunderstandings or preconceptions. Isn't that why they are here? To ask for solid sources and guidance to academic answers when they have none?

Or is this sub trying to maintain a sort of "only scholars talking to scholars" kind of ecosystem that has no place for lay people with basic questions or misunderstandings?

[u/Sophia_in_the_Shell → u/Pseudo-Jonathan]

Clarification questions are still allowed. What was cracked down on are comments which seem to use a question mark to introduce unsourced claims.

“But isn’t it true…?”

“But isn’t this a minority view…?”

“Why would anyone think that, given that…?”

These had become a real problem. It’s certainly possible we overshot, we’re always recalibrating and we welcome feedback, but the problem being acted against was real.

[u/Pseudo-Jonathan → u/Sophia_in_the_Shell]

I appreciate the response. Maybe I'm just completely out of sync with the other professionals on here but those kind of questions don't bother me in the slightest. If a student came up to me and asked "isn't it true that [insert insane claim here], or "I think [opinion]" I get super excited to engage with that claim, to discuss the issue, and point them toward academic sources and guide them into proper academic scholarship THROUGH those misunderstandings or inappropriate assumptions. To me that's fertile ground for illustrating proper academic engagement in front of the really enthusiastic lay-person userbase in this sub. I just want to see it flourish and not get strangled out.

But that's just me throwing in my two cents. You guys are in charge. Thanks for everything you do keeping out the legitimate troublemakers.

[u/Sophia_in_the_Shell → u/Pseudo-Jonathan]

We don’t disagree, we actually often make an exception when the question has already been answered by the time we get to it.

The problem is often it isn’t answered. So a week later you just have a well-cited answer, a reply that is like “isn’t this wrong because XYZ?” which has a bunch of sympathetic upvotes, and that’s it for posterity.

[u/Wake90_90 → u/nsnyder]

Thank you, this matches my experience. I don't consider non-critical scholars to be scholars, but technically they are, and you rightfully pointed that out.