Many may know about the discussion raised by Hector Avalos about the “end of biblical studies.” For those who don’t, I will catch you up a little bit. The issue is about whether we should teach biblical studies as an academic discipline and, if so, how we should go about it. The issue obviously hits close to home for me, since I’ll be looking for a job teaching biblical studies as an academic discipline in a few years.

Hector Avalos is a trained biblical scholar (receiving his Ph.D. from Harvard University in 1991), now teaching as a professor at Iowa State University, who has become somewhat (in)famous for criticizing his own field. The book that has pushed this discussion forward is his The End of Biblical Studies, which I have to admit I have not yet read. As I understand it (and I may not), Avalos suggests that the Bible is irrelevant to contemporary culture. For Avalos, the guild of biblical scholars falsely maintains the illusion that the Bible is relevant in the interests of academic preservation. In short, we only say the Bible is relevant because we don’t want to lose our jobs.

Now, there are plenty of things that academia studies, writes about, and teaches that are not exactly thought of as relevant in contemporary culture. I believe Avalos’ major bone with biblical studies is that our study of Christian origins should not be confined to a religiously defined canon of texts. Why not also teach the Gnostic literature alongside the New Testament?

More recently, Helmut Koester (longtime professor of New Testament at the aforementioned Harvard) wrote a critique of Avalos in the September/October 2008 issue of Biblical Archeology Review (pages 11-12), the periodical of a society criticized in Avalos’ book. Koester (not surprisingly) defends the relevance of biblical studies, concluding, “The relationship of American religious life, Bible and scholarship is a vital and undeniable factor in our society—especially in the United States—however, controversial.” Avalos responds to Koester on the Debunking Christianity blog in a post entitled “Prof. Helmut Koester: A Reality Check for Him.” Avalos accuses Koester of being “short on facts and long on routine religionist apologetics for biblical studies.” Responding to this discussion, you can find an excellent treatment done by April DeConick, who attempts a kind of middle ground between Avalos and Koester.

I would like to zero in on one particular point: the relevance of the Bible to contemporary culture. Avalos suggests that people don’t actually read the Bible much and, hence, the Bible is irrelevant. On the blog post mentioned, he cites studies showing “that 21.9% of Mainline Protestants and 33.1% of Catholics ‘never’ read Scripture” and that “even those who read scripture more than ‘never,’ don’t read or apply much of it.” He says:

In fact, most Christians probably use a miniscule amount of the Bible in their lives because they do not find most of it relevant. This is not just my judgment, but that of many conservative evangelical scholars and sociologists.

[ . . . ]

1) The Bible has already lost much of its influence in American religion;

2) Any influence still left is partly the result of an ecclesial-academic complex, of which Dr. Koester is himself a part, which keeps promoting the illusion that the Bible is important. Without the constant effluence of “new translations,” among other marketing devices, the Bible would probably die.

First, I would like to ask, do people actually have to read the Bible for it to be a relevant field for academic discipline? How many people actually read the U.S. Constitution? Clearly, the Constitution is relevant. Does the mere fact that the Bible is a religious document while the Constitution is a secular legal document make the former irrelevant and the latter relevant? The Constitution is the foundation for our society’s legal system and must be constantly studied. The Bible (particularly the religiously defined “canon”) is the foundational “document” for the largest religious group in American society (people who call themselves “Christians”). Shouldn’t the fact that the Bible is little read but highly revered warrant academic investigation and education?

I can understand Avalos’ concern about jobs in academia and the “religionist” bias stronghold on biblical research. On the other hand, why do people even pursue this career if our job options are so bleak? Isn’t it because so many of us were so affected by people’s readings of the Bible (one way or another) that we became passionate about studying and teaching biblical studies? I know that’s my story. It’s the story of most every grad student I know in the field of biblical studies.

April hits the nail on the head:

Where does this leave me in terms of my thoughts on the subject? I understand Koester’s position on the reality of American religiosity and what this means for those of us who study and teach early Christianity. I understand Avalos’ position to rid the historical study of early Judaism and Christianity from its canonical limitations (including the name “Biblical Studies”), because these limitations support religious and theological interests. I personally have negotiated this front by breaking canonical boundaries in my own scholarship, creating sections at SBL which cross canonical boundaries, and teaching beyond these boundaries. But this doesn’t mean to me that the biblical texts aren’t essential to early Judaism and Christianity. In fact, their importance reverberates for centuries and centuries, and yes, they are still with us. In my opinion, teaching the bible is more important than ever in America. . . .

Amen. I may indeed be teaching at a school with a confessional stance in the future. But my hope is to help students with confessional understandings of the Bible to be awakened to the nuanced issues of history and interpretation. I hope to do my little part in aiding students with high views of the Bible to understand and apply that collection of texts in a more responsible manner.