User:Blue Hoopy Frood/Essays/Bible POV

Bible scholarship and POV
It has recently come to my attention that there is an effort on Wikipedia to suppress minority (read: traditional) points of view on Bible authorship (Noticeboard). I have yet to determine whether this is by community consensus, or is merely the effort of a militant few.

To be clear, I am not a Bible scholar. I don't read Bible journals, let alone write for them. I am not prepared to debate theories on Bible authorship, nor do I particularly desire to. I certainly wouldn't claim to know the authoritative interpretation of the Book of Daniel, as some appear to. But I've been around enough to know that there are at least a significant minority of Biblical scholars with doctoral degrees from respected universities (does Oxford qualify?), who regularly produce scholarly works on the Bible, yet who disagree with the prevailing view on some of these issues.

I ask nothing radical, only that people respect established policy and guidelines.
 * 1) Do not make exaggerated statements about scholarly consensus, e.g., "Today scholars are virtually unanimous in rejecting Mosaic authorship of the Torah" (Composition of the Torah).
 * 2) Do not make original assertions unsupported by (or contradicting) sources, e.g., "The idea [of original sin] ... was introduced by the Apostle Paul..." (Adam).
 * 3) Do not assert as fact statements that are contested by a significant minority, or may plausibly be refuted by future evidence, e.g., "The Book of Daniel is a 2nd-century BC biblical apocalypse...", where the notional evidence could be a 3rd-century BC manuscript (Book of Daniel).

I recognize that the community consensus may not support me on this. If not, I'll let it drop. I have no interest in fighting a lost cause.