John Bugay, Peter Lampe and William Dever

In my previous thread, I shared an ongoing dialogue that I have been engaged in with John Bugay concerning his use of liberal, critical scholarship. The dialogue can be summed up with the following:

I believe it is inconsistent for conservative Christians to appeal to liberal, critical scholarship against other conservative paradigms for polemical purposes, whilst John sees no inconsistency in such an application.

In the combox of the previous thread, John posted:

But his overall conclusion is the result of a thorough examination of the history of ancient Rome. His views of the Scriptures form only one small part of that work. Lampe's "critical methodology" is to have seemingly examined each and every scrap of paper from that era, each and every inscription, each and every available public record, in order to come to his conclusions.

Tell me how his view on text-critical item 6d has any impact at all on his overall historical conclusions? (LINK)

I briefly responded to John earlier today, but would now like to expand my response.

I have given John two examples where Lampe clearly states that he believes the historical record contained in the New Testament is mistaken. When Lampe (and other critical scholars like himself) examine the historicity of the Bible, archeology and secular history takes precedence over the Biblical record. Some critical scholars refuse to give the Bible’s historicity any value at all, but Lampe at least sees some value in the Biblical record, even though he discerns errors in it. Such an approach has turned the status of early Christian history upside down for the vast majority of critical scholars, for such scholars one can no longer speak of early Christianity, but rather, one must speak of early Christianities. Not only does incredible diversity exist in the early post-apostolic churches, but also within the New Testament documents themselves. This is what happens when a scholar begins with the premise that archeology and secular history must take precedence over Biblical historicity. One cannot speak of an early “orthodox” group of Christians, spreading a pristine, consistent, theological position that was delivered to them by the apostles which was being corrupted by heretics; but rather, one must recognize that there was competing theological ideologies from the very beginning with an “orthodoxy” of sorts emerging after the rise of the ‘apologists’. The number of liberal, critical scholars who embrace such views is vast, and it certainly does not stop with the New Testament and early churches, the Old Testament and history of ancient Israel has suffered the same fate.

The trilogy of books pictured above from the pen of William G. Dever represents a solid consensus of recent critical scholarship that works under the premise that archeology and secular history must take precedence over Old Testament Biblical historicity. The results undermine much of the Old Testament’s historical and theological witness. Dever, and the consensus of critical OT archeologists and historians, like Lampe (as John pointed out above), “have seemingly examined each and every scrap of paper from that era, each and every inscription, each and every available public record, in order to come to his conclusions”, and his conclusions include: a pre-monarchy group of “Israelites” is a myth; an exodus of a large group “Israelites” out of Egypt to Palestine is a myth; Moses is not an historical figure; monotheism did not exist until after the Babylonian captivity; the pre-monotheistic Yahweh had a wife (and possibly wives—Mormon apologists love this kind of stuff). Once again, this is what happens when a scholar begins with the premise that archeology and secular history must take precedence over Biblical historicity.

In my earlier response to John I wrote:

Now, sometimes conservative and liberal scholars arrive at the same conclusions, however when two differing conservative paradigms differ over a given position I believe it is inconsistent for either side to appeal to liberals who may agree with them; but, in the field of polemics, this happens way to often. Conservative Mormons appeal to Dever, but when Dever’s methods are applied to the Book of Mormon, they reject those methods; conservative Muslims appeal Ehrman, but when Ehrman’s critical methods are turned on the textual history of the Qur’an they too end up rejecting such methods; and when conservative Protestants turn to critical scholars like Lampe to undermine the primacy of the bishop Rome and apostolic succession, when his methods are applied to the NT they reject the conclusions. That some liberal Catholic scholars agree with Lampe and other critical scholars concerning the early Church should come as no surprise, just as some liberal Protestant scholars agree with the Dever and Ehrman types should come as no surprise.

So, is the conservative apologist being consistent when he/she embraces some of the conclusions of liberal, critical scholarship that happen to coincide with their particular beliefs on a given issue, using such scholarship polemically against other conservatives who happen to disagree with them? I say NO; what do others think?


Grace and peace,

David

P.S. I see that Ken Temple in the combox of my previous thread has provided a link to a NEW THREAD at Beggars All that is germane to some of the issues of this post; I think some of his musings are addressed above—have a few more comments that need to made to deal with a couple of specifics in his post, but I have run out time for today—hope to add a few more reflections tomorrow (the Lord willing).