If a committee may be defined as “a group of people talking about what they should be doing,” perhaps a scholar should be defined as “an individual writing about what he/she should be doing.”

In other words, does scholarship really matter?  Or, is scholarship just an unhelpful way of exercising my mental and digital dexterity?

I am working on a scholarly paper right now, so this is not an academic question for me.  (No extra charge for the pun.)

My scholarship focuses on the Bible and related matters that (may) help in understanding the Bible.  However, the question that always haunts me is this: Shouldn’t the Bible simply be read and understood, and then either taken seriously or rejected?

Certainly, there are many thoughtful people would argue that these are the two choices.  Read it, understand it, and then choose to either take it seriously or conclude that it is an ancient, irrelevant book.

So, as I indicated in the title of this post, I am struggling with a very basic question: What is the point of scholarship?

Biblical scholarship, at least as I see it, deals with two things.  On the one hand, biblical scholarship is concerned with understanding the original meaning of the Bible when it was written.  The second concern of biblical scholarship is suggesting how we might understand this original meaning today.  These two concerns might be encapsulated in two questions:

1. So, what was the meaning of this book, story, psalm, verse?
2. So what?!?

Biblical scholarship has been good about answering question 1—or at least arguing with other scholars about question 1.  We have not been nearly as good about wrestling with question 2.

However, the fact that we haven’t been very good at dealing with the so-what question doesn’t mean that the entire enterprise is a waste of time.

There are two things that help me to remember that what I am doing, and what other scholars are doing, matters.  One of those things is my own pastor.  He doesn’t claim to be a biblical scholar.  However, that says more about his humility than it does about his scholarship.

This past Sunday, for example, he pointed out that the Greek word for compassion is related to their word for “bowels.”  He said (quite truly, from my experience) that when you feel real compassion for someone, your guts hurt.  He even pronounced the Greek word correctly!

Another thing that I recall whenever I struggle with the apparent futility of biblical scholarship is something that happened when I was fifteen.  My dad and I were making several panels to pin up our hogs when we needed to work them into a smaller area for any reason.

My dad cut the first two-by-six boards, and then handed the saw to me.  I grabbed a board, and made my first cut.  Then, I picked up one of the boards and started to cut another board, but Dad interrupted me.

“Is that the original?” my dad asked.

“Does it matter?” I asked.  “Wouldn’t they both be the same size?”

Instead of answering, he grabbed the two boards, the one he had cut originally and the board I had cut.  He held them side by side, and one of them was ever so slightly longer than the other.

“That won’t be a problem at first,” he said, but every board you cut will be slightly further from the original.  Finally, you won’t be able to make the boards of the panels fit with one another.”

Biblical scholarship, unlike scientific scholarship, does not so much seek to discover new things, as it seeks to continually return to the original meaning.  Sermons, teachings, and blogs that do not continually return to the original meaning eventually become meaningless.  Scholars and scholarship do have something to contribute after all.

Well, I need to get back to writing my scholarly paper!