I’ve caught myself in my prejudices.
William H. Shea has written a great article on the chiastic structure of Daniel, which, for the most part I would agree with. But, he is Seventh Day Adventist. To me, he is immediately under a cloud of suspicion when it comes to Daniel and Revelation, if not most other books. It’s not exactly like accepting a sociologist trained at Bob Jones University, but you get the idea.
So, I went looking for other examples of purposed chiastic structures in Second Temple Judaism. I found one that was quite interesting, detailing Chiasmus in Aramaic contracts. I was all over that until I realized it was from the LDS-backed BYU.
My hesitation to use the LDS scholar’s work was a great deal less than my hesitation to use Shea’s.
Here’s the thing – when it comes to accepting scholarship, if it is by someone who defines themselves as conservative or liberal (or, rather, if the scholars says my scholars is conservative/liberal), I will distrust it.
On the other hand, I do have issues accepting scholarship from certain groups.
Thoughts?
Joel L. Watts holds a Masters of Arts from United Theological Seminary with a focus in literary and rhetorical criticism of the New Testament. His interests include exploring the role of mimesis in human civilization, specifically in the study of religion and media, as well as science fiction and the way in which it has allowed mythology to be explored in light of scientific discoveries of the past century. He is the author of Mimetic Criticism of the Gospel of Mark: Introduction and Commentary (Wipf and Stock, 2013) and a co-editor and contributor to From Fear to Faith: Stories of Hitting Spiritual Walls (Energion, 2013).
Website: → Unsettled Christianity
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I would suggest that you have to evaluate the scholarship as scholarship.
I should mention that I took class from Bill Shea when he was a professor at the SDA Theological Seminary.
But still … evaluate the content, not the person — generally.