(BA) Biblical studies

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23 July 2022

Biblical studies is one term for the field of, well, biblical studies, the study of the Bible and related matters. I'll occasional reference the term, or "scholarship" more generally, or "mainstream scholarship" to refer to those scholars who treat the Bible in the sort of scholarly way one might expect to find at, say, Yale or Oxford or Harvard. This general approach is to be contrasted with the approach called, pejoratively, "fundamentalist", or less pejoratively "traditional" or "[religiously] conservative".

Generally, this website won't treat the more seriously scholarly approaches to the biblical text as if they were of equal status to the more religiously-determined approaches. Of course, you are free to read the Bible however you like, but this website is built around reading the Bible as a series of historical texts, be understood, as far as possible, in terms of the historical evidence available within and outside the texts.

At the risk of over-simplifying, we could divide readers into those who read the Bible in terms of a sober appraisal historical data and those who don't. This division doesn't necessarily map onto "religious" vs. "non-religious" readers. You can read the Bible in an evidence-based way and be religious (think, for example, of John Hobbins). You can read the Bible in an evidence-based way and not be religious (for example, Hector Avalos). You can read the Bible way outside of where the evidence points and be religious (Ken Ham). You can read the Bible way outside of where the evidence points and not be religious (the guy who made Zeitgeist).

Enough about that. This website is here to discuss the Bible, not religion per se.