New Outlook on New Testament

* The June 8 article “Fountain Valley Author Takes on New Testament,” about the Dead Sea Scrolls scholar Robert Eisenman, was a breath of fresh air.

I graduated from the Claremont School of Theology in 1974, and I must say Eisenman appears to be a religious conservative compared with most of the New Testament scholars teaching then.

I do not know of any modern educated biblical scholars who still treat the New Testament as a historically accurate collection of eyewitness writings. The 1991 release of so many of the unpublished Dead Sea Scrolls has helped rewrite early church history and 1st century Judaism.

So many modern church scholars are now writing books on what is really taught in the establishment seminaries and not yet preached in the churches. The same kind of historical critical thinking that is applied to all other academic disciplines is now, finally, being applied to biblical studies and biblical archeology. Traditional fundamentalist assumptions are now turning into myths.

I think that when the primary sources that Eisenman has used are investigated objectively, we are going to see a total revision of everything that we were taught in the old-style Sunday schools. Eisenman has many allies in such reputable organizations as the Jesus Seminar and almost all of the contemporary departments of religious studies in the universities.

ALAN ALBERT SNOW

Balboa Island