On the Biblical Bias of the 'Academic'

The importance of recognizing bias exists in all scholarship

“What do you mean ‘in a Jewish manner’? Remember, you’re talking to actual scholars of Judaism.”

The above is a response to an exchange of mine from Twitter with a professor of religious studies from a four-year public university. I knew from the reply that the conversation was ultimately over because no matter what I claimed with supporting evidence, even from scholars of ancient Judaism, my overall thesis would be rejected from the self-proclaimed experts. What was my claim? The Synoptic Gospels, namely Mark, makes divine claims regarding the person of Jesus in a Jewish manner. In the professor's view, I could not be an expert—never mind that I graduated cum laude with a degree in history or summa cum laude with a Master’s in Theology focused on Sacred Scripture. And the reason I could never be an expert. in biblical studies, in the view of secular academia and this professor, because I believe in God. My belief in God makes me damaged—biased.  

The truth is that folks have a distorted notion of what is bias. The notion of bias, in many disciplines of academia, views it with suspicion. Bias, in their view, can be avoided by scholars, especially by those who do not believe in God—complete nonsense. The truth is that bias is universal in every person; it's unavoidable. The atheist is not a free agent among biblical scholars. The atheist scholar plays on the team of atheism—and that’s okay, so long as he or she acknowledges the fact and steps into it.

One of the realities of biblical study by those who do not believe in God is that they must operate strictly by the historical-critical method, also known as the diachronic method. Nonetheless, the discipline of history is far from settled in its methodology, which is why History departments at universities have recognized and embraced the notion of bias as being unavoidable for historians. Historiography is the study of bias among historians. The types of questions asked under the sub-discipline historiography: what is history? What kind of historians are there? Is there objectivity?

What becomes problematic is a lack of religious diversity among historians and biblical exegetes at our universities—namely public. Avowed atheists or agnostics dominate many university departments, and so groupthink has become rampant and spreads even among those who may believe in God. In my anecdotal experience, the few religious professors I’ve known have felt obliged to keep silent not to upset the status quo of cultural progressivism, a movement founded on the idea of the grand march and deification of humanity. The modern atheist exegete then becomes the overseer of scholarly integrity and what constitutes as bias without acknowledging that their bias openly drives their scholarship. The environment is now set for these modern exegetes to present the atheist bias of the bible to impressionable (and probably poorly catechized; if religious) students without any counterarguments regarding the facts—no checks and balances.

In his 1988 Erasmus lecture, Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, the future Pope Benedict XVI, explains regarding biblical bias, “At its core, the debate about modern exegesis is not a dispute among historians: it is rather a philosophical debate.”[1]

History is important. The reported fact of the empty tomb is significant to the evidence supporting whether the resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth happened. The inquirer, though, will never accept any facts regarding the gospel witness of the resurrection as a possibility unless there is an acknowledgment of a metaphysical reality. To put it more clearly: Is there something beyond material reality? Does God exist? If answered in the negative then Ratzinger commenting on Rudolph Bultmann, explains the methodological limits regarding bias, “He is certain that it cannot be the way it is depicted in the Bible, and he looks for methods to prove the way it really had to be. To that extent there lies in modern exegesis a reduction of history into philosophy, a revision of history by means of philosophy.”[2]

So, how does this play out in real-time biblical exegetical debate? Let’s return to the initial quotation that began this essay. The quote from the professor was a response to my claim that the blasphemy charge by the High Priest in the gospel of Mark 14:64 was triggered by a divine claim made by Jesus because claiming to be the Messiah is not blasphemy. Before the blasphemy charge, Jesus quotes Daniel 7:13 and Ps. 110:1 in v. 62. The focus regarding Jesus' quote seems to center around the book of Daniel and the Son of Man, Jesus' favorite claim for Himself. Nonetheless, another quoted scripture verse exists in the text, the most quoted Psalm in the New Testament, Psalm 110.  

What was the response of the ‘actual scholar’ to my claim? It is an “old conservative apologetics trope.” Again, let me remind readers that my interlocutor is a professor of Religious Studies at a public university. The Religious Studies professor refused to engage me in dialogue by dismissing it and poisoning the well. Any evidence that I would present to support my thesis would be tainted by my believe in God. Going back to Joseph Ratzinger’s quote, the professor is certain divine claims in the Synoptic Gospels “cannot be the way,” and can never be read in such a way—it’s not possible. Bias.

It’s important to remember that the Synoptics are the historical backbone relating to Jesus of Nazareth. Any claim that the gospels are ahistorical is disingenuous at best considering the whole of ancient history. If the current prevailing narrative within biblical scholarship can simply dismiss any thesis on divine claim in the gospels purely because of the bias of groupthink, then the rest of the New Testament's pedagogy on the divinity of Jesus is moot via the keepers of the historical-critical method.  The Acts of the Apostles, the Letters of St. Paul, the pastoral letters, etc. can be portrayed as merely historical evidence of a superstitious movement. Christianity is a house of cards.

The matter of biblical scholars’ bias relating to the philosophical predisposition of the belief in God and how it relates to the discipline of history and the historical-critical method in biblical studies needs to be explored further explored when it comes to contextual analysis of biblical texts. The professor challenging my thesis with a degree of certainty—because he and others were actual scholars of Judaism—called into question the cultural context of my claim regarding Mark 14:62-64. Pope Benedict XVI, a well-respected biblical scholar himself, warns against such certainties:

“We have to keep in mind the limit of all efforts to know the past: We can never go beyond the domain of hypothesis, because we simply cannot bring the past into the present. To be sure, some hypotheses enjoy a high degree of certainty, but overall we need to remain conscious of the limit of our certainties—indeed, the history of modern exegesis makes this limit perfectly clear.”[3]

The importance of contextual analysis in biblical studies cannot be overstated. What is at stake against this institutional groupthink bias of “it cannot be the way” is the introduction of credible theses from Christians. Michael J. Gorman explains, “context is so crucial to interpretation that it is no exaggeration whatsoever to say that if you alter the context of a word or sentence or paragraph, you also alter the content of that text.”^[4]

It's important to note a danger when undertaking to recover the historical understanding of biblical texts by applying the discipline of contextual analysis. Gorman explains, “One issue for beginning exegetes, especially when reading biblical narratives, is the failure to distinguish between the historical context of the text’s author and audience, on the one hand, and the narrative context of the characters in the story, on the other. It is the former, not the latter, that we mean when we discuss the historical context of a text.”^[5]

To be Continued in Part 2…

So, let’s apply this understanding to the question on whether Jesus, or the Gospel of Mark, is making a divine claim about Jesus of Nazareth.

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[1] Pope Benedict XVI, “Biblical Interpretation in Crisis: Benedict XVI,” First Things, accessed January 16, 2023, https://www.firstthings.com/web-exclusives/2008/04/biblical-interpretation-in-crisis.

[2] Ibid.

[3] Pope Benedict XVI, The Pope Benedict XVI Reader, ed. Robert Barron (Park Ridge, IL: Word on Fire Institute, 2021), 161.

^[4] Michael J. Gorman, Elements of Biblical Exegesis: A Basic Guide for Students and Ministers, Third Edition. (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2020), 76.

^[5] Gorman, 79.