Some years ago now, a Christadelphian brother, who was doing a PhD in Biblical Studies at the time, said to me that the best bible study material was being done by scholars. I replied saying that the best examples of Christadelphian bible study from the past were just as good. He disagreed and the conversation moved on to another subject.
The point I was making was about truthful originality; I wasn’t denying the quality of some scholarship, but rather affirming the point that the community had produced truthfully original contributions to bible knowledge mostly in some key essays that had appeared in magazines over the years, but also in parts of some Christadelphian books. Although they lacked the apparatus of scholarship, these essays and books held their own in terms of their originality because of their intertextual work.[1]
This is not self-congratulatory back-slapping because the amount of material is small compared to scholarship; it is really just a call to recognise the original contributions the community has made to bible knowledge. Of course, the writing is not necessarily known now as people read what is produced today, this week or this month, rather than the material of previous decades; this is especially so when it comes to magazines and journals.
Original and truthful thinking comes about through studying and analysing the Bible using lexicon and concordance tools. It also emerges through challenge and conflict. If someone contradicts what you are saying, then this is an opportunity to think through your position more deeply and either meet the challenge or change your position. It is necessary for a magazine or journal to publish articles that carry original analysis of the text as well as contradictory material.
Why is originality important? Various reasons: because the answers are not known; the same questions keep on coming up; the stock ‘answers’ that are out there are not satisfying; doubts surround them; and difficulties are being pushed aside or ignored because they have not been answered. These are the reasons why original thinking is important in Bible study.
Standard advice for a new PhD student in Biblical Studies is to go to the primary texts first (and only those) and work out what you think about them. The reason is simple: PhD supervisors already know the secondary literature backwards on those texts and they want fresh thinking. If you go to the secondary scholarship first, the likelihood is that they will control your thinking about the primary texts.
So, if we want answers for the questions that go round in circles, we need to go first to the text. People can be in a cul-de-sac and not know it; we need to think in reverse (AG), go back to the text and do the concordance and lexicon work to work out the correct answers. Going to his Word first is what God actually wants for his children; not going to this or that church commentary. As another brother (JHB) said to me in my youth when I asked whether he could recommend a book on Acts; he said ‘Just the usual 66’.
Fellowship with the Maker and Brethren