What’s wrong with “biblical scholars”? The adjective “biblical,” like (subjective/objective) genitives in the Greek, can do several things from its adjectival position. That is, “biblical” can describe the character or some trait of the “scholar” (like your examples, biblical sense, biblical proportions), but it can also describe the object of scholarship that makes the scholar a scholar (in a quick scan of your own blog, I find “biblical studies” used frequently, even as a tag for this post. Of course, we do not understand this to be a description of the character of the “study,” but rather the object of the “study.” Why not the same for “biblical scholars”?). In sum, biblical can mean to say “Wow! She is a wonderful scholar with many wonderful biblical characteristics.” Or it can mean to say “Wow! She is a wonderful scholar of all things biblical (i.e., texts, history, language, etc.).” That other disciplines do not use adjectival forms in the latter way does not mean that biblical scholars cannot.

Patrick,

A good question. However, there is a plenty of warrant for the standard diction. It is analogous to “classical scholar,” which means, a student of Greek and Latin.

What I object to: people being called biblical scholars though they do not read biblical literature in the original languages.

That’s funny, I don’t hear people being called “classical scholars” at UCLA. They just say classicists. It seems to me that a “classical scholar” would carry some other sense to it — one who does scholarship “classically” or perhaps “traditionally,” whatever that means.

In any case, I’m with you on the issue of people who are not “biblical scholars” being called biblical scholars.

Okay, so, taking the same test to the American Philological Association site, I see that “classical scholar” is used by them significantly less often [66x] than “classicist” [603x]. So, around a tenth as often for the official classicist organization.

So, in theory, I agree with you. But if we look at it from an outsiders’ perspective, it does seem a little questionable. Shouldn’t our labels make more sense to outsiders? You’ll see it around my blog because I hadn’t really considered this before. And “biblical studies” sounds less ambiguous.

John mentioned “classical scholar,” which appears to be significantly less utilized than “classicist” by classicists. Can you think of any other comparable academic label to “biblical scholar”?

This all has me wondering what the history of term is.

[...] – Pat McCullough asks what if biblical scholars should be called “biblical scholars”. [...]

Aye “biblical scholar” today tends to mean different things to different people as the criteria can be vastly different depending upon which community makes the statement.

For example, a church community may describe their Rector/Pastor/Priest as a “biblical scholar” it usually implies an expert in their church’s tradition of Bible interpretation and application but depending upon the denomination that may or may not imply critical or academic study.

On the other hand, a University that describes one of their faculty as a “biblical scholar” tends to lean more towards the academic nature of things, with some qualifications or exceptions made if that University has a religious affiliation.

A newspaper or magazine, however, more often than not does not make a different (and more often than not can get qualifications wrong as we’ve seen in recent publications…!).

What makes it even worse is that more often than not, in some contexts a title is considered something bestowed upon someone else (like a degree or a recognition), rather than something claimed by an individual themselves, so one person’s “biblical scholar” is another person’s “charlatan” and sometimes both or *neither* can be the case in other contexts (which can cause conflict).

I, for one, never really refer to myself as a “biblical scholar” but others have bestowed that title upon me after exposure to my work. When asked in person about my research interests I simply say “I’m involved with Biblical Studies” or when asked in person about my business or grant work I don’t refer to myself as a “translator” or an “Aramaic scholar” but say “I research and translate Aramaic languages” and leave it for others to come up with titles.

And to take one step further, in trying to find a better set of criteria as to what a “Biblioblogger” is over at the Reference Library, I’m hitting head-on with the same problems. John Hobbins has noted that there is no one previously established set of criteria that runs the whole gamut to everyone’s liking, and I cannot agree with him more.

With all of that in mind it’s a big mess…

Perhaps the generic title of “biblical scholar” should be selected based upon context and outside of appropriate context qualified so that one’s audience can understand better.

So, in the meantime I’ll close with, “Hi, I’m Steve and I like biblical studies.”

Peace,
-Steve

[...] McCullough recently wrote a blog post on what we should call ourselves. While I have always thought the only respectable title was “biblical scholar” it [...]