I realized anew this morning why it is so difficult for scholars of the NT (or the Hebrew

Bible) to explain the results of their results of their research to non-scholars. Well, one of
the reasons. As is true, I suppose, for most fields of serious intellectual inquiry, the
*results* of scholarship are built on other results that are built on other results that are built
on and so it goes. If the scholar explains his findings without explaining the background
the assumptions based on previous findings that are built on the assumptions based on yet
previous findings and so on then it all sounds very arbitrary and rather easily dismissed.

Thats why it is so easy for a scholar to give an interpretation of a passage based on a

detailed analysis that is itself based on careful research only to have a non-scholar refute
it simply by quoting a verse from somewhere else. The non-expert simply assumes the
scholar doesnt know about this other verse, or hasnt thought about it, or taken it into
account. But that is almost always wrong if were talking about a serious scholar.

Ill give a simple example and then Ill explain the real, more complicated example, that
brought this whole business to mind to me this morning.

Simple example.

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The Sheep and the Goats

The Academic Study of the New Testament