Answering Your Letters

Dear Jim,

Might I ask, what do you see as the value or purpose of blogs?  Do they have any use other than just announcements and that sort of thing?  I apologize if you have answered this before.

Al

Dear Al,

If I might put it this way (since this is actually a question that comes up from time to time)- in my estimation blogs, blogging, and biblical scholarship are like classical music.

Blog posts are like Divertimenti; light, airy, quick, and entertaining as well as informative.  But they aren’t capable of the full ‘development of theme’ that other musical genres are.  Successful blogs are those which inform and entertain.  Unsuccessful blogs are those which either don’t entertain or are not informative.

Blogging is like conducting.  The better conductors know both their audience and their orchestra.  They know what they can bear, what they are interested in, and what they are capable of.  They push the envelope, but they never burst it.

And biblical scholarship is like a symphony- a fully developed piece which contains a beginning, a middle and an end.  Biblical scholarship belongs in printed media.  Sustained argument and the full discussion of and exposition of technical and complex ideas cannot be accomplished in any other way and the deeper and more profound and important the subject, the more worthy it is of full exposition.  So, in a symphony the themes are introduced in the opening section and then developed fully throughout.  Likewise, scholarly publications.

Music isn’t just Divertimenti or Symphony; it’s both and more.  Biblical scholars worth their salt engage in both styles just as musicians are able to play both short light pieces and long complex pieces.

Biblical scholars who don’t blog or who see no value in it are missing a very important opportunity to engage the larger public.  Pure and simple, their fixation on the ivory tower makes them uninteresting and boring.  Blog postings are capable of getting corrective word out when nonsense appears in public view (like the Noah’s ark stupidity we’ve all just witnessed recently).  But they can’t and shouldn’t attempt to cover everything.  Everything can and should only be covered in print.

Similarly, biblical bloggers who only blog and who never publish; who never go deeper, are missing out just as much in making a contribution to the guild.

Blogging and publishing are two sides of the same coin.  Blogging opens the scholar up to the public and the public up to scholarship; and publication opens the writer up to scrutiny from his peers and correction when error appears.

Only the short sighted, blinkered, or self absorbed reject one or the other of these important avenues for the dissemination of scholarship ‘down’ to the people and ‘up’ to our peers and colleagues.   Good musicians can do Symphonies and Divertimenti.  Good scholars can do good blogging and good publishing.  And they should.