A Scholarly Shame

“But because the Bible is also a human book, written by human authors in human language in a wide variety of literary genres—narrative, poetry, epic, epistle, love song, proverb, apocalyptic, and so on—it must be handled, on another level, as any other text is handled: with care, thoroughness, exegetical precision, and academic integrity; in other words, by means of the most careful scholarship.  It would be a shame if our scholarship in Bible were less than it is with regard to The Odyssey or The Divine Comedy; if we paid less attention to its history, language and interpretation; if it required less of us intellectually than any other text in any other subject.” (Piety and Philosophy, p. 143)