Some have suggested that NT Wrong may be multiple people. He has been identified as a straight white male, and as a black lesbian woman. She has been identified as a scholar of Hebrew Bible, of the New Testament, of the Dead Sea Scrolls, or of Monty Python.
Since this puzzle relates to a biblioblog, we should bring the most powerful tools that Biblical studies can offer to bear on the question. When we do so, the solution to the mystery of NT Wrong’s identity becomes obvious:
Clearly we are dealing with a blog author who is making use of multiple sources, and whose work in turn has been subjected to redaction.
A case in point:
In a recent post on Nick Cave (in which Cave’s music was obviously one source), we can see how an ecclesiastical redactor took the phrases “picks up on a” “number” and “Gnostic motifs” from a Catholic web site, and wove them together, adding the words “and Christian” in order to provide a more orthodox slant. This editor is presumably also responsible for deriving the phrases “more mundane” and “more spirit-filled” from the Confessing Evangelical site.
The possibility that NT Wrong is Nick Cave himself is also a possibility that deserves serious consideration, since it is Cave who is alleged to have woven together the Gnostic and mainstream orthodox Christian material in his songs. But we must still posit an ecclesiastical redactor with Evangelical leanings, since the standpoint NT Wrong is supposed to have would not assume that “Gnostic” and “Christians” are alternative, opposing categories.
The challenge is thus to distinguish source from redaction. And so the key question now becomes: can we identify the ecclasiastical redactor, the ultimate author-editor of the NT Wrong blog?
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