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Putdowns of entire groups ("Don't discuss a topic that requires nuance with a Christian") are particularly to be avoided. Nothing good comes of those.
Even then, the entire history of the Western world, of publishing, and even of information itself is pretty much directly because of interest in the Bible. It’s relevant purely in a historical sense.
IMO it’s a tragedy that “religious literature” has become designated as something non-religious people shouldn’t bother with, because it’s pretty much just willingly ignoring the entirety of human culture and history.
"they believe the Bible is divinely inspired"
There is a big difference between divinely inspired, and divinely dictated.
Many of the people who do this research are Christians. The people who buy books and read the articles about it are mostly Christians. The same with the many books on topics such as interpreting "books" of the Bible in the context of the original culture and what we know of authors, intended audience, etc.
I am secular person and I find it interesting how ideas evolve over time. I think it was around the year 1000 that Jewish scholars started to wonder why the old testament didn't mention the planets which where a Greek discovery and cultural "meme". People where worried about things like that, but couldn't formulate a good answer. Also most people don't know but ancient Judaism was a polytheistic religion, and only became monotheistic after the return from the Babylonian exile.
I think a lot of christians give this impression, but ultimately mostly of them give up studying when their studies start to diverge from what they've been taught or what they want to believe. The ones that are actually interested in fact finding tend to stop being christians after a while.
Isaac Asimov had an amusing very short story about the practicalities of divine dictation [1].
[1] https://www.patheos.com/blogs/religionprof/2011/12/how-it-ha...
My own experience is completely opposite in that I grew up in a completely secular atheist environment and found it direly lacking in spiritual and philosophical enquiry and have later in life found faith. The type of Christianity I'm exposed to (ranging all the way from the Jesuit Teilhard de Chardin to modern day Baptism) is, and has been, a fresh breath of life for me and has lend me far more zest for science and life in general than atheism ever did. The caveat here is of course that I never attended a faith based university - I may well have ended up writing a very different comment!
*actually feel it's got a touch of GPT here and there..!
I have yet to find a strongly dogmatic tradition where this doesn't apply, religious or not. Many intellectuals also fit your description, you just have to find the right context.
Despite what they might say outloud, most people (including many who identify as intellectual or rational) are not looking for truth, but rather confirmation for their dear held beliefs. Beliefs they're sometimes unaware that they hold, but around which rest the foundations of a sizable part of their identity. An expensive investment. Nobody wants to be told, "yeah, you were doing it wrong all these years". Better people find out after we've passed. In that context, research is a gamble, a risk, as each truth invalidates multiple wrongs. Very upsetting.
Some books of the Bible don't even claim to be divinely inspired. Corinthians is a set of administrative memos. From: Paul, head of the church. To: Christians at Corinth. Subject: Plans and operating rules
There are, unfortunately, a huge range of people with widely varying beliefs who refer to themselves as “Christians.” Some of them are indeed not actually interested in theology, only in their own subcultural tradition.
But there are also Christians who are extremely interested in textual analysis, understanding the original languages of the texts, seeking out archaeological evidence to understand events better, etc. In my experience these are also the people who follow Jesus’ teaching to love their neighbor, not judge others, and to “give unto Caesar that which is Caesar’s” (ie. don’t be a political movement).
Very common to hear about students who don't care about the material at all, they just want a job. So they are bored and frustrated by anything, especially theoretical material, that isn't going to be obviously useful for interview prep or their future careers.
> So who is this research for?
The first work on links between the gospels goes back to about the 3C, and there have been discussions on the origins of the different books since before there was a canon of the Bible - in fact this was one of the early motivations. The academics currently working on origins of texts are a mixture of Christians and non-Christians, and as such, their motives differ. These academics are usually found at traditional universities, not the Bible colleges you refer to. Non-Christian scholars have the usual motives of academics. Christian scholars have the same motives, but add the drive to get back to the original teachings as far as possible. As to who uses it: generally priests, preachers and the like preparing services, and Christians in private study. It tends to be discussed in commentaries working at the level of whole books of the Bible rather than verse-by-verse commentaries. For the specific case of Q (or the alternative Farrer hypothesis), this will generally be found under the heading "The Synoptic Problem", though verse-by-verse commentaries will often discuss parallels between gospels.
By the way, for those who are interested, there is a reconstruction of Q here: https://www.livius.org/sources/content/q-text/ - but bear in mind that this assumes a single Q document, which to my mind is not necessarily true.
That being said, even if we did find Q or something like it, would it change much about our understanding of that time in history?
There is a huge amount of early Catholic/Christian history that comes down to oral traditions and the flowery language of the Bible. Which forces us to wonder what parts are metaphor and which parts were real history.
Like we know St. James somehow ended up in Spain (erm, Iberia or whatever it was called back then). But did they take with them oral tradition alone or did they have books to help keep the story consistent?
If Q existed, it may have been a book or reference for the early Bishop/Apostles. It's be insight to how they lived and worked.
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Oral Tradition is how the world worked back then. But it also existed in a time of writing and documentation (see the Roman Empire around that time).
I think most people are happy with oral tradition as an explanation. But the gospels seem too similar for oral tradition alone.
I'm not a biblical scholar by any means, but I don't think Q needs to be a specific individual source (although it could be), you just need to understand that the later books all incorporate shared material that came from somewhere other than mark. It could be that all incorporate the same subset of oral histories, or the same material from multiple sources. It's just the idea that there is some larger source of material that predates mark that the others are pulling from.
But, imagine if we did find a Q text. Let’s assume that it was the real one. We’d still be debating it till kingdom come.
And yes, that’s my experience of evangelicals as well. Almost an anti-curiosity about the source of their beliefs.
It was eye-opening for me to get out from under that sort of lifestyle (thankfully pre-college). I began to understand there is a much wider set of beliefs under the "Christian" label, many of which are not anti-science nor politically motivated.
Out of curiosity, Catholic or Protestant?
> By and large, Christians are extremely anti-intellectual and hostile to research into the origins of the Bible as they believe the Bible is divinely inspired. Some even go so far as to talk about literal possession of the Bible authors by the Holy Spirit.
At least in the catholic world, the history of biblical studies is very much tied to philology and philosophy. For example, pretty much no one in the catholic clergy will look at creation as a description of real facts, because the genre is not that of a historically accurate description. The idea is that any tool is good if it helps taking more out of what was purportedly inspired by the divine.
After I finished my BA in English, I considered going for a MA in Catholic Studies because it offered an opportunity to study Philosophy, Theology, and Literature in a way that was fascinating to me, but by that time my faith had withered and died.
> Right, which is probably part of why most Evangelicals think Catholics aren't Christian.
Someone who thinks most Christians are not Christians (even more so historically) and their own traditions and scriptures were passed on to them by people who are not Christians are rather undermining their own claim to be Christians.
At least they are honest about their beliefs, as odd as they are.
Also look what the catholic church does in Africa. They are NOT reformed.
You also seem to have become a bit of anti-intellectual yourself. Dismissing a fundamental question in textual criticism (about one of the most influential texts of all time) to a mere "interesting puzzle" and "fodder" for academic journals strikes me as openly hostile to scholarship as such.
But even leaving that aside: Do you really think it would make no difference to our understanding of early Christianity were it conclusively demonstrated that a collection of Christian logia were circulating prior to the writing of the canonical gospels? Or, conversely, that no such collection existed?
People have devoted their scholarly lives to this, because the question is so rich. Did Paul have any knowledge of this collection (and if he did, why doesn't he appear to quote it)? Did only Mark have access to it, or is it the source of sayings in more than one gospel? What is its relation to the Gospel of Thomas (and is the GoT itself a "sayings gospel" akin to Q?) If Q existed, why wasn't it preserved? What if (and this isn't a mainstream view) some kind of "proto-Matthew" existed in, say, Aramaic? Could Mark -- again, a minority view -- be, as some ancient commentators seemed to have believed, a condensation of Matthew?
It just goes on and on. I fail to see why the idea that "most Christians" (an already problematic generalization) are bored by the subject has any bearing on whether this is important work. It's like saying, "theoretical computer science has no bearing on the lives of working programming. So who is it actually for?"
The answer is, other scholars trying to understand the the subject at hand more deeply.
Btw, it is a myth that the Council of Hippo established the Christian canon.
After that experience, I basically left the church for 10 years, I was so frustrated with many human-related aspects of the church, and I knew I couldn't sit under the leadership of the types of people I went to college with.
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Now, to answer your first question, yes there is value. In the same way I'm a programmer, but I don't care about the historical authenticity of who actually discovered the Pythagorean theorem. Some people care, and I think that's great, that's an area of interest for them. Now, the flip side is, Christians should care that they can trust the documents that form the basis for their beliefs.
For your next statement, "most of the students were bored and frustrated...didn't want to know anything about the texts themselves," a person who has no historic knowledge of the scripture should never be a pastor. It sounds like you went to university with people who liked the idea of being a respected leader, and the power that comes with it, and you'll find people like that everywhere, even in your secular workplace.
If you truly believe Christians are extremely anti-intellectual, you need to remember, basically every educational organization (ie even secular universities) were originally founded by Christians in the western world, and many of them were likely far more intellectual than you or I. What's crazy is you can also find extremely anti-intellectual non-Christians, too - there are anti-intellectuals everywhere. Typically big sweeping statements like this are from hurt people, and that's horrible that people claiming to be part of the church were so destructive on the things you previously believed.
There are a lot of bad apples in the bunch, even the bible says a little leaven will work it's way through the whole dough [1] [2].
[1] https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Galatians%205%2... [2] https://www.gotquestions.org/little-leaven-leavens-whole-lum... (does a decent enough overview of the verse and other references)