This is the first Mind on Fire Bible Study post. I’m still working on an overall structure, but I’m going to start with what I know best: the New Testament in general and the Gospels in particular. I want to be clear about my approach and purpose: my goal is to acquaint you all with the basics of Biblical scholarship–the sort of thing a grad student at a Protestant seminary might learn in the first few weeks of a class on Biblical criticism.

There’s a wide, wide divide between traditional views of the Bible (which the majority of American Christians hold) and what their pastors learned pursuing their divinity degrees. Sermons often cater to conservative elements (for fear of shaking their parishioners’ faith), though ministers may break out their scholarship when approached with questions by individual members of their flock. Fortunately, an abundance of resources on the web and popular authors like John Shelby Spong, Bart Ehrman, and Jonathan Kirsch have made much of this scholarship very accessible to the layperson.

I will do my best to summarize mainstream scholarship, accepted by the majority of Biblical scholars in the field (both faithful and secular). If I do get into a fairly controversial area (where there is no clear majority, or where I lean heavily on my own secular biases), I will let you know. I hope that you all (esp. Jonathan) will keep me honest as well, and present alternative views where it seems appropriate. I will do my best to cite sources and include links and further readings.

This scholarship will focus largely on the historical origins and context of the scriptures in question. Who wrote them? In what circumstances? What did they mean to people back then, and how does it contrast with how they are read today?

One note: I will not present approaches that support Biblical literalism (which are in the minority anyway), except maybe in passing. I want my anti-fundamentalist bias to be clear from the outset. I don’t want this to degenerate into a debate with Biblical literalists, and I may delete without warning any fundamentalist arguments that pop up in the . There are better places on the web for that sort of debate.

I will try to do this on a weekly basis–my goal is to put something up every Sunday. I think it will be a fun ride. I hope that, like many efforts here at Mind on Fire, it will become a community endeavor, where I host the party and provide the appetizers, and a fascinating mix of skeptics and believers engage an intelligent discussion on a relevant topic.