Reasons > Scholarship > Scholarly Authority
  Scholarly Authority Yes! History of Scholarship Amateur Scholarship
  Con: J. Z. Smith Con: AD Nock Con: BM Metzger Sourcebooks
"Scholars agree..."
Not all scholarship is serious scholarship

 

If you've read much about Christian origins, you've come across "Scholars agree..." Be careful. People, even very nice people doing their very best, often write this when it isn't exactly true.

"Scholars agree..." is like food. It is essential —"Scholars agree the New Testament is a book written hundreds of years ago." Insisting on direct evidence for facts like 'the bible is an old book' can be a time waster. But like food, too much "Scholars agree..." isn't good for you. "Scholars agree the disciple Matthew wrote the gospel of Matthew." No they don't. Or rather, some do, some don't. Like with tasty, crumbly-crust sugar-filling pie, it's easy to misjudge how little "Scholars agree..." is too much.

 
Deconstructing "Scholars agree..."

By the way: a rule of thumb
With so much "Scholars agree..." going on, you need to learn to spot the reason someone wants to tell you "Scholars agree..."
1 I'm repeating stuff I heard, but I don't know the actual supporting evidence. Ernest amateurs on both sides do this a lot, but so do professionals who ought to know better.
 

"Scholars agree..." is more often true when the claim is about hard facts about which there can be hard evidence.

"Scholars agree..." is much less likely to be true when it claims a conclusion about what those facts mean.
2 "This is a foundational fact on which scholars actually do agree." These are generally hard facts about which there is hard evidence: The Gilgamesh tablets contain a story about a world wide flood that is older than the bible's flood story.
3

"Scholars on my side agree—and that's good enough for me." These are generally judgments—opinions—about the meaning of hard evidence.

The bible's flood is very much like the Gilgamesh flood, and may have derived from it..
The bible's flood is very different from the Gilgamesh flood, and could not have derived from it.

Two of these reasons will trip you up. How can you tell which reason a person has for telling you "Scholars agree..."? The rule of thumb helps. But the truth is, the only way to know for sure is to understand the actual ancient evidence, and the position and motivation of the person making the claim. And if you know all that, you don't need to know what "Scholars agree..." anyway.

The size of the problem
You'll see how big a problem "Scholars agree..." is, Christian origins wise, when you read widely enough to start noticing how often folks say "Scholars agree..." when you know scholars really don't.

To understand why the problem is so big, you need to understand the history of Christian origins scholarship. Basically, in the 1800's rationalist analysis of the New Testament led many people to give up on the idea that the NT is history. They proved (to themselves) the gospels are only part history, or even completely mythical. Many people refused to believe this. The two sides split.

The disagreement between the NT is myth and the NT is history sides is so old and so fundamental that the scholarship on each side does not overlap. Which is why so many scholars, writing for other members of their own tribe, write "Scholars agree...", when they really mean, ""Scholars on our side agree—and that's good enough for us."