I'm feeling philosophical

You know, I saw this bad movie a couple of days ago - He's Just Not That Into You - hardly film you'd expect a Biblical blogger to be watching. It was a very bad film admittedly. Too many characters. Too many stars (Drew Barrymore was totally unnecessary). But even in this awful film there was a moment of greatness which I thought I might related to everyone.

The central character in the film is a non-star (some actress that reminds me of one of my wife's friends when we were first going out). She's a real klutz. Does everything wrong. She meets up with some expert guy (the actor who plays the Mac guy in those Apple commercials against the dumpy actor who looks a little like Bill Gates). He tells her when guys are really 'into her' or 'just not that into her.' You get the point. It turns out he's not that into her but she misreads the signs of course.

Anyway, there's a moment in the film where she gets rejected by the Mac actor and she turns to him and says basically that despite all her clumsiness she has something which he had to sacrifice in order to become so cool - truth. She may be fumbling around making mistakes but this clumsiness should be viewed as a consequence of her inherent openness to new experiences, new people and new ideas. She adds that only by remaining that open and vulnerable will anyone really attain anything worth keeping.

I know the film was stupid. I said that in my opening preamble. But I actually thought there was some wisdom in this. I remember how clumsy and awkward I was when I met my wife. I thought at the time - you know I really wish I was cool.

Now I am not saying that I am cool or was ever cool (Dad's are never cool). Yet I have to admit that when I was cheating on my wife before we were married it certainly was easier to appear cool when you had someone else in your back pocket or as a back up in case your efforts at love or sex didn't work out.

The point I am making I guess is that life becomes easier when you learn to play the game. You can actually get quite successful and proficient at 'scoring' women - even an egghead scholar like me. However I always felt that the only time in my life I would ever have met someone like my wife (virtuous, beautiful, enlightened etc) was when I was awkward and innocent.

I know it sounds corny and hokey but its true.

Outside of this personal stuff I guess this understanding also fits in with what I have learned about scholars the more I have gotten to know them on a personal level. Many of them are quite knowledgeable. However the truth is that there is so much information out there that it is difficult - if not impossible - to be a master of all the sides to the development of the NT canon, core Christian theological concepts etc.

So how do they do it? The answer is that like in the movie they simply learn to play the game. They master a very small sliver of the material that COULD be applied to the origins of Christianity and ignore or develop over generalizations about the rest to dismiss or limit its importance. They make the point of arguing that only what they know is important or at least more important than what they don't know.

Yet how can they be certain of this?

Take the example of the Samaritans. There were Samaritans at the beginning of Christianity (mostly heretics). Yet Stephen the protomartyr was likely a Samaritan. The author of the Epistle to the Hebrews was likely a Samaritan too. Marqe, the most important figure in Samaritanism for the last two thousand years (c. second century?) is identified by the Samaritans themselves as 'the unsheather of the Cross.' His theology is overtly Pauline. Yet, because of the way scholars learn to 'play the game' of advancing in academic circles the tradition is completely ignored.

There have never been any papers on the Samaritan influence over Christianity (at least without solely focusing on the heretics of Christians who were Samaritans). Yet how do we know that Marqe isn't key to solving the riddle of Christian origins if we haven't tried to make sense of his writings? How do we know that Samaritan theological concepts were as influential over nascent Christianity as they were over nascent Islam (see Patricia Crone and Michael Cook's works).

This is of course only one example. Scholarship ignores the unfamiliar in favor of the familiar because the focusing on the familiar leads to advancement and success. The examining the unfamiliar and charting your own course opens oneself up to ridicule and career suicide.

And this is what I thought was so important about the movie. There really is something virtuous about not playing the game and staying steadfastly attached to the search for truth. I was an idiot when I met my wife. I will continue being an idiot while I search for any kind of truth or wisdom because openness and imagination is a necessary part of good scholarship ... and in fact being a good human being.