Can you tell me why?

It is very common among biblical scholars and among informed pastors to modify our readings of the Bible, even theology, on the basis of sound scholarship. Sometimes it is by way of discoveries but more often than not it’s just someone does some really good work on the texts and says, “Hey, we had this one more or less wrong and there’s a better way.”

I begin with a simple one that few can contest. I begin with a simple report in Matthew 8.

8:5 When he [Jesus] entered Capernaum, a centurion came to him asking for help: 8:6 “Lord, my servant is lying at home paralyzed, in terrible anguish.” 8:7 Jesus said to him, “I will come and heal him.” 8:8 But the centurion replied …

There it is: Jesus enters Capernaum and has a conversation [directly] with a centurion about the centurion’s servant. Jesus has a conversation with him and then decides to go to the centurion’s house to heal the servant.

Now we turn to Luke 7’s version of this event.

7:1 After Jesus had finished teaching all this to the people, he entered Capernaum. 7:2 A centurion there had a slave who was highly regarded, but who was sick and at the point of death. 7:3 When the centurion heard about Jesus, he sent some Jewish elders to him, asking him to come and heal his slave. 7:4 When they came to Jesus, they urged him earnestly, “He is worthy to have you do this for him, 7:5 because he loves our nation, and even built our synagogue.” 7:6 So Jesus went with them. When he was not far from the house, the centurion sent friends to say to him, “Lord, do not trouble yourself, for I am not worthy to have you come under my roof.

Luke shows us that the Matthean version was “truncated” or “compressed” (like a zip file) from a double encounter of a centurion and his elders friends, but it was the elders who talked to Jesus on behalf of the centurion. In reading the first one we could easily contend that Jesus spoke to the centurion; in reading the second one we’d say he did not. The second text doesn’t “correct” the first text but clarifies a historical reality: those sent represent those who sent them. We have “learned” about the first text from the second text and the second text prevents us from saying things about the first one. More: if we had only the first text we’d be mistaken sometimes. The second text keeps that from happening. The second text teaches us to modify our reading of the first text in light of historical information.

I use this to illustrate how further study can enlighten former studies and alter them.

This happens all the time in biblical studies: we have learned oodles and oodles about Judea and the Galilee from archaeology, and some of it means we have learned to read the Bible differently. We have solid evidence for the time of David in Jerusalem; we have stuff about Megiddo etc. These discoveries lead us to reshape some of our interpretations and, quite frankly, sometimes they challenge traditional interpretations. [A standard read for this is: The Bible Unearthed: Archaeology’s New Vision of Ancient Israel and the Origin of Its Sacred Texts.]

The same applies to historical studies: the Dead Sea Scrolls changed (some would say revolutionized) our reading of the New Testament because we discovered so much concrete and tangible evidence about a first century Jewish sect. We found out things about John the Baptist and perhaps Jesus; we learned about terms that were being used. We discovered that a text like Matthew 11:5-6 was an expression also of what the Messiah would be like in other groups besides Christians, and that text led me to change my own view (I used to think “the one who was to come” was Elijah from Mal 3–4 and not the Messiah, and I was not alone, but now this text makes “the one who was to come” a cipher for “Messiah”). I also think of how Gilgamesh Epic and AtraHasis have helped us understand parts of Genesis, and changed what we are looking for when we read those texts.

I bring up one major issue and drop it quickly: the New Perspective on Paul. This approach to Paul is nothing other than a revisioning of how we read the New Testament in light of what we have learned about Judaism.

The same applies also to progress in social sciences and sociological studies. While a bit more tenuous at times, social scientific studies have informed us of how strong groups work; we have learned how apocalyptic sects think; we have learned how leadership works and how it shifts over a generation or two. And these insights help us understand how Jesus interacted with Judaism and its leaders; we learn more about Paul in his Roman/Jewish world and we learn about how institutions like churches and elders and deacons function.

So now our question:

Can you tell me then why we can adjust our knowledge about the Bible from archaeology, historical studies, and social scientific studies, but the minute someone suggests that the empirical sciences, like evolutionary theories and the origins of life, are leading us to adjust how we read Genesis 1–3 they are accused of letting something other than the Bible determine what the Bible says and that such a procedure is wrong?

Why is it OK to adjust our Bible readings to historical study but not to scientific study?