In a couple of weeks I'm scheduled to be interviewed about my book on the Pauline authorship of Hebrews. I'm sure some are wondering why I've taken to defending such an obscurantist position.
I suppose a good place to start would be to confess my decades-long adherence to the majority position. Which reminds me of a saying I ran across on one of my visits to China:
"If you want to know what water is, don't ask a fish."
One's first reaction to this statement might be to ask, "Why not?" After all, fish can't survive without water. They depend on it for their very existence. In fact, they are literally immersed in it. Still, they have no clue what water is. It's such a big part of their lives that they're oblivious to it.
Perhaps there's an application here to our culture today. Specifically, to our evangelical subculture. Believe it or not, we can exist in the midst of this environment and become so much a part of it that we become oblivious to it and to what it's doing to us. Before long we find ourselves thinking like everyone else in this subculture. I call it "evangelical group think (EGT)." We don't see what's actually happening. Instead, we react to it. Before we know it, we've succumbed to the ever-present pressure to fit into it like a hand in a glove. Such unthinking conformity is not what the Lord wants for his people.
When I began teaching at Biola I met a young hiree in the New Testament department who'd just completed his doctorate. He had written it on the Gospel of Matthew. He was kind enough to show it to me. Now, the dissertation had nothing to do per se with the synoptic problem. Yet I noticed that in the introductory chapter he had come out in support of Markan priority. When I asked him if that was a strongly held conviction of his, he was very honest with me. "No," he said. "But I knew that my dissertation would have never been approved had I espoused any view other than the two-source hypothesis."
This is perhaps a simple reminder that in the realm of New Testament studies it's easy to be caught up in what we're oblivious to. The tendency is to allow the subculture around us to squeeze us into its own mold. I see this happening all the time. I should know, as I'm a charter member of the EGT club.
(More in part 2.)