Scholars have a tendency to operate on shorthand and stereotype whenever they feel like they can get away with it. It is a somewhat ironic tendency, in that they general also insist on a more detailed and topic-specific discussion if it is something that they care about.\u00a0 Of such are life\u2019s paradoxes, no?\u00a0 (That one\u2019s for you, Frank)<\/p>\n
In this, I don\u2019t believe that scholars are being hypocritical; they just have to do a lot of thinking for a living and shorthand and habit quickly become important in any profession as they are necessary to get things done in a timely fashion.<\/p>\n
Now, one of the ways that sholars operate on stereotypes is that they pay attention to a given scholar\u2019s background.\u00a0 If a scholar knows the school another scholar studied at, who they studied with, and, sometimes, they religious background and leaning of a given scholar, they can get some idea about what that scholar is going to say before they say it (in this, it also helps to be familiar with the scholar\u2019s work \ud83d\ude09 ).\u00a0 For instance, it is arguably rare for Evangelical scholars to take seriously the notion of an embodied god in some books of the Hebrew Bible.\u00a0 Similarly, Evangelical scholars presumably will prefer readings that let the text stand as it is received and that, generally, promote the Evangelical view of things.\u00a0 This is by no means always the case and I wouldn\u2019t name it apologetics or anything like it.\u00a0 Rather I would say that their religious outlook holds some sway over the problems they try to solve and may influence which reasonable solution of many that they prefer.\u00a0\u00a0 Other scholars know this and, for instance, understand that when they read a work of scholarship by noted Evangelical Egyptologist and Biblicist Kenneth Kitchen, it will most likely support the Bible as written and not argue against it.<\/p>\n
Of course, there are problems with this: it can blind us to something new in Kitchen\u2019s writings because we always expect more of the same old; it can lead us to ignore the important contributions of a student, because we expect the student to mimic the ideas of a given important teacher; and it can lead us to assume interpretations of the text that are not intended because they are what we think such a person would have said.\u00a0 Nonetheless, stereotyping arguments, as the argument goes, stereotypically goes well.<\/p>\n
So, assuming that Mormon Scholars are beginning to be able to address the greater world of Biblical and Religious studies at large, what assumptions should they insert into their shorthand for us?\u00a0 What biases do we generally exhibit and strongly should they be read into our scholarship?\u00a0 I don\u2019t know the answers to these questions, but I believe that it would be useful to develop some.\u00a0 Therefore, I am offering a tentative list of 10 \u201cLDS biases\u201d that one might usually expect to find in LDS Biblical and Religious Scholarship.\u00a0 In so doing, I expect you all to critique the list, add to it, subtract from it, and argue about it.<\/p>\n
I would think that at least the following 10 biases would be present in LDS Scholarship, to a greater or lesser degree:<\/p>\n
So, there you go.\u00a0\u00a0 What do you think?<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Scholars have a tendency to operate on shorthand and stereotype whenever they feel like they can get away with it. It is a somewhat ironic tendency, in that they general also insist on a more detailed and topic-specific discussion if it is something that they care about.\u00a0 Of such are life\u2019s paradoxes, no?\u00a0 (That one\u2019s […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":459,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27,11,20],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-369","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-bible-scripture","category-marginalia","category-speculation-doctrine"],"yoast_head":"\n