Recently, I read Peter Enns’ book The Evolution of Adam. I found it to be a rather interesting read, and a helpful addition to the field. One idea that Enns uses in understanding the Bible is the calibration of various parts of the Bible so that we can know what to expect from that particular text. For example, Enns calibrates Genesis 1-11 with Ancient Near Eastern mythologies. He shows similarities and differences and uses these other texts to help us understand what we can rightfully expect from Genesis 1-11. I think that from the perspective he starts with his work in this area is pretty solid. However, I found I didn’t know how to calibrate what Enns is doing in this book.
Growing up in a relatively conservative church and school, I didn’t end up hearing very much about any of the various forms of critical or historical scholarship about the Bible. If I did it was probably to say that it was just a liberal view of the Bible (liberal generally meaning anything less conservative than the beliefs of that particular denomination). In college I encountered some of this type of scholarship about the Bible but I just wrote it off as heresy and didn’t give it a second look. Now I’m in graduate school at Biblical Theological Seminary and I am paying more attention.
One particularly helpful lesson I learned is that there is a separation of scholarship about the Bible and theology. [Read more…] about Scholarship of the Bible and the Church