Nijay Gupta partially reviews Gordon Fee’s commentary on the Thessalonian letters. In the course of his reflections he says this:
This seems to me to be a problem with new commentaries -though they are written by general experts (experts on Paul), ones like these are not by people who have spent their career on this one book (Fee has covered the field, for sure, but doesn’t have a mastery of the secondary literature, as he admits in the intro)
I admit to finding it frightening that just studying Paul qualifies one as a general expert, but a real expert has devoted their lifetime’s study to reading everything anyone has ever written about five short chapters of Paul in his (comparatively theologically lightweight) juvenilia.
I know that the obituary of Renaissance man [sic] has long been written, but this simply exemplifies the maxim that an expert is someone who knows more and more about less and less. A scholar is not meant to be incompetent outside of a specialist knowledge that has vanished up its own fundament.
An idiot savant ought not to be the ideal model of an academic.
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My comments for Fee’s commentary overall are quite positive. My criticism is not against generalists – in several of my posts I praise them, and I hope to be one myself. Within the context of my post, the issue is whether new commentaries (a specific genre) are going to be helpful to readers, especially by those who have not spent their lifetime studying that epistle. I do like commentaries by generalists (and generalism is relative, so your comment about someone studying all-of-Paul and being a generalist shouldn’t be as perplexing as you think). But there are several commentaries by generalists. What we need in NEW commentaries? That’s the issue.
On generalism and expertise – I am currently in the middle of interviewing for jobs – what seems to be desired is someone with real expertise in one area – a very narrow and defined area. But also someone who can teach and think and work broadly – especially at a manageably broad level (Gospels or Paul or Catholic Epistles or whatever) and also has some very basic knowledge extending outward. I neither value pure expertism (is that a word?) or generalism, but a nice balance.
If you read one of my older posts on SBL conference – I say that at SBL I always go to sessions outside of my normal stomping grounds – several of them, to broaden my knowledge. So, I think to take my words out of the context of modern commentary writing (with millions of options) is a serious distortion of my meaning.
Also – very few scholars today, especially ones who have spent significant time in the Thessalonian epistles, would demote it theologically or rhetorically simply on the guesswork that it was written early on in Paul’s career – and thus exemplifies his immaturity in one way or another. That is shaky ground for making such a conclusion and the letter bears the marks of advanced and deep thinking. Does Philippians, which is probably later in Paul’s life, seem remarkably different in depth or maturity or theological insight than the Corinthian epistles? Hardly.
But thank you for your comments, as I can see now how my words could be misunderstood.
Sorry, it wasn’t my intention to take you out of context, but even for commentary writing I would question whether this is right. For example, Thiselton on 1 Corinthians models, I think, the kind of expertise you are talking about, yet sometimes it is remarkably easy to get entirely lost in the thickets of secondary literature he cites, and end up just as uncertain about Paul.
Agreed! After all, simple knowledge of data does not make someone a scholar. What do they do with that data? That is the mark of a real scholar.
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