If the United States and its western allies were conquered by a nation of outsiders with a different set of religious values - would New Testament scholarship be affected by these changing tides of history? If it is agreed that this true, why isn't the reverse also true - namely that the 'accepted' direction of Biblical research for the last two hundred years was 'influenced' by the triumph of the West AND its inherited theological assumptions that God rejected the Jews and transferred the 'promise' to the Gentiles'?There isn't a scholar alive who would OPENLY at least put forward that this understanding is scientific. But how many of these same academics would CHALLENGE these inherited assumptions when they are ultimately so self-serving on a personal level?
If Islamic 'hordes' swept through the modern 'kingdoms' of the West the universities would be filled with 'experts' teaching a whole different set of 'self-evident truths' - viz. that Mohammed was the awaited Paraclete of the gospel, that the original Aramaic gospel was corrupted by the Romans and all the rest of the 'truths' associated with that culture's inherited pre-suppositions.
Maybe also we would find in a thousand years when that Empire began to disintegrate, 'revisionist' scholars would emerge within Islam who - while superficially 'challenging' any explicit mention of theological concepts in 'science' - would still retain the same cultural bigotry that is plainly within contemporary western scholarship into Christian origins.
My question is only why are OUR set of inherited pre-suppositions any more scientific (or less absurd) than theirs ...
