{"id":27913,"date":"2019-10-20T04:52:22","date_gmt":"2019-10-20T08:52:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/admin.patheos.com\/blogs\/exploringourmatrix\/?p=27913"},"modified":"2019-10-15T14:34:34","modified_gmt":"2019-10-15T18:34:34","slug":"all-things-bright-and-biblical-biblical-studies-as-religious-studies-and-as-theology","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/religionprof\/2019\/10\/all-things-bright-and-biblical-biblical-studies-as-religious-studies-and-as-theology.html","title":{"rendered":"All Things Bright and Biblical: Biblical Studies as Religious Studies and as Theology"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

Let me start this post with a quote from an alumnus of the Religion program at Butler University, something that he said on Facebook. Karl Hofstetter provides one of my favorite answers to the question \u201cWhat can you do with a degree in religion?\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

This post began several years ago as I started collecting posts related to the different sorts of things that \u201cbiblical studies\u201d can sometimes be in different contexts, a state of affairs that creates confusion among some outside of academic circles. At seminaries, the approach to biblical studies can be decidedly theological. This is true whether one is talking about a conservative seminary that restricts faculty and students from pursuing the application of, or embracing the conclusions of, methods such historical criticism; or a liberal seminary that is completely on board with those methods. The latter overlap much more with the literary, historical, and postmodern approaches that are typical of secular scholarship, and can participate to a large extent in a shared endeavor on that basis. Yet there is still a distinction inasmuch as at seminaries, the aim is to serve the needs of church or synagogue.<\/p>\n