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Andy Naselli

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You are here: Home / Exegesis / “Biblical scholars who complain that those who do systematics are guilty of too much speculation should look carefully in the mirror”

“Biblical scholars who complain that those who do systematics are guilty of too much speculation should look carefully in the mirror”

November 13, 2008 by Andy Naselli

Tom Schreiner‘s primarily positive review of Larry Hurtado’s Lord Jesus Christ: Devotion to Jesus in Earliest Christianity has a critical paragraph ending with a gem:

One of the less convincing features of Hurtado’s book is his tendency to accept critical orthodoxy throughout. For instance, he includes his chapter on Q before consulting the Synoptic Gospels. Placing Q before the Synoptics is a rather strange procedure since the nature of Q is keenly debated, and some scholars question whether it even existed. Even if Q did exist, the document (or oral tradition) has never been unearthed, and so we do not know (contrary to the confident assertions of some!) what was actually contained in the alleged document. Therefore, it is rather speculative to write about the Christology found in Q to say the least. Perhaps Hurtado’s purpose is to demonstrate the plausibility of his theory even if one adopts a Q hypothesis, since he argues that even Q does not point to variant form of Christian belief regarding Jesus Christ. In any case, reading this chapter on Q reminded me that biblical scholars who complain that those who do systematics are guilty of too much speculation should look carefully in the mirror (Southern Baptist Journal of Theology 9:1 [2005]: 101, emphasis added).

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Filed Under: Exegesis Tagged With: Tom Schreiner

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Comments

  1. Denny Burk says

    November 13, 2008 at 10:34 pm

    Ha! That is a gem!

  2. Chris says

    November 14, 2008 at 9:05 am

    Great quotation. I think that just made it in to my NTI lectures. Thanks, Andy.

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