The Day A Scholar Said Scholars Aren’t Scholarly

I was a campus minister at UCSB for five years. At that time, (back in the eighties) they had a reputation for offering the best religious studies department in the country. On this particular day, I was attending an open seminar from one of the professors. His premise? Jesus did not really claim to be the Messiah. He was just a good Jewish rabbi. who said or taught nothing original.

Naturally, the speaker made some immediate qualifications. “Of course, we must limit our discussion to the synoptic gospels, Matthew, Mark and Luke. John doesn’t count because I do not believe John was written until AD 200 from Alexandria.” Exactly how he knew this about John, the prof didn’t bother to offer.

I raised my hand. “Ok. This is from the synoptics:

Matt. 16:15-17 “But what about you?” he asked. “Who do you say that I am?”Simon Peter answered ‘You are the Christ, the Son of the living God.”

Jesus replied “Blessed are you, Simon, Son of Jonah, for this was not revealed to you by man but by my father in heaven.”

I added only one sentence of commentary: “So Jesus did claim to be the Christ.”

“Well,” he replied, “I believe the text is corrupt at that point.”

“Sir, aren’t you involving yourself in circular reasoning? You say Jesus didn’t make the claim. But then, whenever someone shows you that he did, the text is conveniently corrupt at that point.”

“No, it is not a matter of mere opinion. This is what scholars say about the text.”

“That’s not accurate, sir. Isn’t it true that there are many scholars who disagree and would say the text is trustworthy?”

“Well, yes, Sure…But that doesn’t settle anything. I’m talking about GOOD scholars. Just because somebody has a PhD, it doesn’t necessarily mean he’s being scholarly.”

I almost replied, “Boy you can say that again!”

Who knows? Maybe in some future movie version, that will be my reply.

This is Bob Siegel, making the obvious, obvious.