{"id":1777,"date":"2023-06-10T03:04:00","date_gmt":"2023-06-10T03:04:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/?p=1777"},"modified":"2026-10-02T01:33:10","modified_gmt":"2026-10-02T01:33:10","slug":"an-upside-to-postmodern-scholarship","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/?p=1777","title":{"rendered":"AN UPSIDE TO POSTMODERN &#8220;SCHOLARSHIP&#8221;"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">I find it interesting that biblical scholars are all forced to deal with the postmodern mindset. The same twisted ideas and tortured (il)logic that show up in various &#8220;theories&#8221; like Critical Race Theory, Queer Theory, and Fat Theory have been set loose on the Bible as well.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Both of the books I read for my latest paper addressed to what extent something can be known and whether the meaning of a text is centered more in the author or in the reader.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">(For those who have been fortunate enough to avoid these conversations so far, the postmodernists believe that nothing can be known with certainty and that the meaning of a text lies chiefly with the reader.)<\/p>\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">You can guess what postmodernists do to the authority of Scripture! (Especially since religion is considered the enemy of the individual.)<\/p>\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Still, author N.T. Wright finds at least some use for the &#8220;studies&#8221; of the postmodernist &#8220;scholars&#8221;. They can serve as a counterbalance to those evangelicals who are a little too confident that the Scriptures can be fully known and that we can have 100% certainty in our grasp of the message of every page.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">In other words, the postmodernists are <i>kinda <\/i>right in their outlook on the limits of knowledge and the result for the serious interpreter of the Bible should be a renewed humility.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I find it interesting that biblical scholars are all forced to deal with the postmodern mindset. The same twisted ideas and tortured (il)logic that show up in various &#8220;theories&#8221; like Critical Race Theory, Queer Theory, and Fat Theory have been set loose on the Bible as well.\u00a0 Both of the books I read for my [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1777","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1777","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1777"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1777\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1778,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1777\/revisions\/1778"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1777"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1777"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1777"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}