Richard Carrier blogged this today:
Scientists prove Beowulf and the Iliad are true stories! Not. Sometimes scientists can be so clueless, you just want to pat them on the head and go “Aw, that’s so sad.”
Overall, I agree with him on the initial point that Scientists are not historians or theologians and don’t generally have a grasp on the function of our texts. We run into this problem on occasion when Scientists claim they can pinpoint the date of the crucifixion through tracking earthquakes because one of the Gospels mentions an earthquake, or we can determine how the Reed Sea was crossed because a gust of wind can sustain itself for a long time and permit the waters to part.
Read the whole thing. It is worth your time. And woe to anyone who really thought this scientist was on to something…
Filed under: Ancient Literature, Belief, Scholarship, Science Content
“Overall, I agree with him on the initial point that Scientists are not historians or theologians…”
Carrier didn’t mention theologians, maybe he thinks that theologians are just as competent as the scientists ;)
I added theologians, true. But when it comes to the value and function of our texts, when it comes to the Bible, theologians generally win hands down.
[...] that circulated a few months back (and was, in my opinion, thoroughly decimated by Carrier though I offered my own thoughts here), someone commented that ‘the era of joking around about the Odyssey being just a [...]