Get Smart

This is a little belated... but props to TIME for their cover story on teaching the Bible in schools. David Van Biema makes an unapologetic case for adding the Bible to school curricula. Forceful and poetic:

Without the Bible and a few imposing secular sources, we face a numbing horizontality in our culture--blogs, political announcements, ads. The world is flat, sure. But Scripture is among our few means to make it deep.

Van Biema states and anwers arguments across the spectrum. I note that The Revealer had some positive words to say today about the emphatic feel of the piece, rare in one of the glossy behemoths: "It's good stuff, wherever you stand -- it's not a declaration from Big Media, it's an argument -- so read and argue."

Van Biema mentions the recent decision in Georgia to add Bible courses at the high school level (as electives). He doesn't ask, however, a question I think is fruitful (and which I blogged about here): does a secular study of the Bible strengthen faith... or weaken it?

Well, I ran across an excellent article about just this... in the Biblical Archaeology Review. of all places.

It's called "Losing Faith," and it's worth a peruse.The author interviews four scholars to see whether a life spent studying the Bible hurts or helps your belief in God. Bart Ehrman and William G. Dever lost their faith. James F. Strange and Lawrence H. Schiffman kept theirs.Here are a few great quotes from both sides:

Strange: My faith is not based upon anything like a propositional argument. When I indulge myself in all this scientific research and explication, I’m not doing anything about faith.

Shanks: What is your faith based on?

Strange: I'm still a baptist minister... my faith is based on my own experience—a good old Protestant principle..... Based on my own experience with God. For a lot of people, this makes me sort of a mystic in a cave or something. But I think it’s eminently practical and out there....

Shanks: Does this God of yours have any attributes?

Strange: I suppose so, but I’m not really much interested. If I’m passionately in love, I hardly ever want to discuss the attributes of the person I’m in love with. Or if I do, I wind up saying superfluous things for everybody listening. “She’s wonderful.” “Can you give me some more information?” “Yeah, she’s really wonderful.” [Laughs] When you’re in this state, you don’t utter propositions.

and

Ehrman: ...faith is rooted in certain historical claims. As historical claims, they can be shown as either probable or improbable. And I got to a point where the historical claims about Jesus seemed implausible, especially the resurrection. Not the crucifixion—I think Jesus was crucified like a lot of other people were crucified, and I think that, like a lot of other people, he stayed dead. And so, for me, that had a damaging impact on my faith.

and

Schiffman: From a Jewish point of view, these kinds of problems aren’t problems. First of all, the Bible was never taken literally in Judaism. It doesn’t mean that it’s not historical, but it is not taken literally in the Protestant sense. It’s not an issue in Judaism. Admittedly there is a literalist strain in a minority of medieval Jewish thinkers and a minority—maybe a growing minority—in modern Judaism, but it’s not classical Judaism. The Talmud doesn’t take the Bible literally in the Protestant sense. Jim [Strang]'s approach of taking a kind of experiential approach to the whole thing is one that is much more primary in Judaism.

I get into debates about these historical types of issues all the time, especially within the Orthodox community. I don’t want to say they aren’t important—they are important. We sit around and debate these kinds of questions all day.

and

Dever: ...the call of Abraham, the Promise of the Land, the migration to Canaan, the descent into Egypt, the Exodus, Moses and monotheism, the Law at Sinai, divine kingship—archaeology throws all of these into great doubt. My long experience in Israel and my growing uncertainty about the historicity of the Bible meant that was the end for me.

Shanks: Well, then your scholarship did destroy your faith?

Dever: Absolutely. Next year will be the 50th anniversary of my first trip to Israel. I worked there for 49 years and let me tell you something: Seeing Judaism and Christianity and, God help us, Islam up close and personal does not help. Living in the Holy Land, I became extremely cynical about religion. I began to think, more or less, maybe like all of you, that I had no talent for religion, that faith might be a matter of temperament as well as training. I never had a pious bone in my body. And I realized I was never really a believer, but it just took me 40 years to figure out that it was no longer meaningful. That’s when I converted to Judaism. [Laughs] I did it precisely because you don’t have to be religious to be a Jew. And I’m perfectly comfortable where I am.

Good mindbending stuff. What's interesting to me is the fact that none of them give much credence to literalism, and that the archaeologists who continue in their faith practice it on a metaphorical level. If this is the outcome of more biblical scholarship, then bring it on - in the schools, on TV, on the web.