There is a story I heard recently about a prominent biblical scholar.  Though he was not himself into social scientific criticism, he was invited to speak at a panel discussion of a book applying social theory to the Bible. This scholar was surprised to be invited. When he sat on the panel, he shared his honest opinion that there was nothing in this book that he had not thought of himself. He communicated to the audience that social scientific research was useless.

Similarly, I once overheard a scholar who emphasized theological approaches bemoaning his task as an outside reader to a New Testament dissertation. This dissertation spent a chapter discussing a particular social theory that she was using to frame her methodology. This scholar/outside-reader saw this sort of discussion as unimportant to what he considered the real work of biblical studies.

From what I gather, there is a significant population of biblical scholars who are entirely disinterested in social theories as applied to biblical texts. As far as I can tell, this stems from a belief that social theories merely dress up what biblical scholars already know in fancy jargon. On the one hand, point taken. If sociology and social psychology is being pillaged by biblicists merely to “sound new” while not really pushing the field any further, then shame shame.

On the other hand, social theory truly has the potential to raise new questions, frame stale discussions in helpful ways, provide new windows for insights, offer an alternative lens for viewing the social world of texts, etc. Social theory cannot be applied lock, stock, and barrel to ancient texts, of course, but rather serve as heuristic tools — incidentally, when I first learned the word “heuristic” as an undergrad, it took me years to understand what it really meant. Further, though, there are deeper issues here related to interdisciplinary fatigue (a nicer word than “laziness”) and ideology.

I’ll give you the difficulty of dealing with social theory on top of everything else that’s out there. Listen, it has taken me a long time even to begin to understand just one little piece of social theory (i.e., social identity theory). When I started reading literature  on the topic, it all seemed like a big confusing cloud of jargon. It’s easy to just toss it aside and not to try to wrestle with it. Heck, New Testament studies may own the widest gap in all of academe between the minute puddle of primary literature and its vast ocean of secondary literature. We have enough to read already.

But to say that there is nothing social theory can tell us feels a bit like the old-fashioned view that “Hey, what’s a shrink going to tell me that I don’t already know?” For years many people wondered (and still do wonder) why talk to a mental health professional [who has spent years studying the intricacies of the human mind and the behaviors associated with it] when my own common sense serves me just fine, thank you very much. Haven’t we figured out yet that these professionals have scientifically-tested ways in which to weed out the crap that we are unable to see and help us through uncharted territory in useful ways? Sociologists and social psychologists are applying scientific techniques to the collective behaviors of groups, communities, ethnicities, societies, etc. These people have years of research and experience to guide them in their conclusions. If there is a way to apply what people are seeing in our own times to the ancient world, making some sense of our texts, then why not give it a chance?

On the one hand, it’s possible (probable?) that a particular author has done a botched up job trying to use social theory with biblical research. On the other hand, it is also possible (probable?) that–speaking of social identity–many outsiders to social scientific methods don’t really make an effort to understand the complexities of the methods. And therefore, they do not really understand how these methods push the field in new directions.

I’ll take on ideology in my next post. Then, on to mistakes made by biblicists using social scientific techniques — even if the mistakes don’t disqualify the techniques themselves.