Grassy Knolls and Slippery Slopes (or, Having Fun with Biblical Scholars)

The mind of the professional biblical scholar must truly be a complicated mess. Biblical scholarship is the only discipline in which the lack of evidence to support a theory makes the theory more plausible. Take, for instance, the conventional wisdom concerning the authorship of the four Gospels. It is more likely, scholars say, that Mark and Luke were the actual authors of the documents bearing their names, but less likely that Matthew and John actually penned the works attributed to them. The rationale behind these conjectures is that since Mark and Luke were relatively insignificant traveling companions of the Apostles, it would have made little sense to attribute their Gospels to them unless they had actually written them. Conversely, since Matthew and John were pillars of the early church, actual companions of Jesus himself, their names were attached to their Gospels to give them credibility.

What this convoluted logic leaves us with is two self-contradictory scenarios. On the one hand, the credibility of Mark and Luke hinges on accurate attribution of authorship even if that means acknowledging the actual authors were relative unknowns while, on the other hand, the credibility of Matthew and John hinges on Apostolic authorship even if that means not acknowledging the actual authors. If the first scenario is true, why would it be necessary to cover up the actual insignificant authors of Matthew and John? But if the second is true, why would it not be necessary to replace insignificant second stringers Mark and Luke with, say, Peter and Andrew, thus giving the church a four-volume set by the acknowledged "inner circle" of the Twelve?

But there is more convoluted logic as the theory unfolds. Mark wrote first, scholars say. Matthew and Luke then used Mark as a source when writing their accounts. But they also used another common source, which scholars call "Q." The fact that no manuscript of this "Q" source has ever been found does not dissuade the professional scribes. This lack of hard evidence merely proves the source once existed, they say. Likewise, no manuscripts of the alleged independent sources for Matthew ("M") and Luke ("L") have turned up. But, once again, the scholars would have us believe this is proof positive of their existence.

This is a form of logic akin to that of kook fringe political conspiracy theorists. There is no one who has been born during the last forty years who hasn't been told it is an "undeniable fact" that there was a second gunman in the Kennedy assassination precisely because no one has ever proven there was a shot fired from the grassy knoll. Not surprisingly, some of the more kooky scholars have developed a number of elaborate theories about how certain texts were "suppressed" by conspirators in the early church. Such theories had their fifteen minutes of fame a few years back with the phenomenal success of The Da Vinci Code. It was mildly disappointing that even some of the conservative scholars who ably refuted such fringe theories nevertheless accepted much of the conventional wisdom which is largely the product of revisionist scholarship over the last century and a half. The simple believer is left yearning for a calm, reasoned defense of the orthodox faith that is rooted firmly on the solid rock of Jesus Christ and the inspired Word of God, rather than precariously balanced on the slippery slope of dubious biblical "scholarship."