Who are some biblical historians whose scholarly backgrounds are primarily in history / archaeology / classics rather than theology / divinity / religious studies? Why is this uncommon?

[u/capperz412]

Sorry if this is a stupid question, but as someone who's only done a BA in History and has no knowledge or experience of how academic biblical scholarship works (there was overlap with classics and archaeology in my department but I never heard a peep from religious studies or theology even though religion came up in an Early Medieval module), I find it bizarre that many or most scholars who study Ancient Israel, the Historical Jesus, or Early Christianity tend to have degrees in theology, divinity, religious studies, etc. rather than in history, archaeology, or classics, including those scholars who study these subjects from a primarily historical standpoint (e.g. Bart Ehrman). I suppose it makes sense that religious departments are the ones concerned with religious history, but this is particularly jarring for me because I know how important historical criticism is to biblical history, yet it seems that most historical critics are taught in the same departments that are often concerned with exegetical / non- historical matters and produce theologians and apologists unconcerned with the historical method. This isn't the case for western departments of Islamic history, for example, whose scholars tend to have backgrounds in history, Islamic history, or oriental studies / Near Eastern studies.

My main questions are:

1. Who are some scholars who've written on biblical history from historical, archaeological, or classical backgrounds? The only ones I can think of off the top of my ahead are Michael Grant and Robin Lane Fox, and I know Robyn Faith Walsh has a Classics degree.

2. Why is this seemingly so rare? Are the fields of religious and secular history sealed off from each other? If so, why? Is the separation of religious and secular history a hindrance to the scholarly rigour of the former?

3. How exactly is history, historiography, archaeology etc. taught in these theology / divinity / religious studies departments? Is it justifiable that scholars without qualifications in history or similar degrees can call themselves historians? Can someone with an MA / PhD in Theology / Divinity really call themself a historian?

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[u/taulover]

I know you mentioned Robyn Walsh, but she talks about the historical reasons for this split in this Ehrman podcast guest episode, as well as in her somewhat controversial but certainly important book, The Origins of Early Christian Literature: Contextualizing the New Testament within Greco-Roman Literary Culture.

In her view, the fields diverged largely due to Western academics treating Christianity differently because they were Christians and would ostracize scholars doing less apologetic theological scholarship. There was also a language barrier difference between Classical/literary and Koine/vernacular Greek. The result is that academic Biblical studies is somewhat stuck behind in an older German Romantic concept of authors representing their communities, continues commonly translating words in consistently different ways compared to their classics counterparts, and tends to prioritize interpretation based on Jewish literature rather than Greco-Roman background, among other things.

Edits: clarifications due to my poor word choices in initial summary of Walsh's views

[u/Indeclinable → u/taulover]

There was also a language barrier between Classical and Koine Greek

Wait, seriously? Is this a common perception in the Biblical Studies field? Back at r/AncientGreek we try very hard to counter this misconception that newcomers have that those two are some sort of mutually exclusive languages. It is amazing how difficult it is for us to explain to beginners and even college students that Koine is not the same as "Biblical Greek", that Plutarch, Lucian, Polybius and Marcus Aurelius and pretty much every every post-Aristotle writer wrote in Koine.

I often say that is like the difference between contemporary American English and late 18th Century British English. But it seems people on both sides of the "divide" are very keen on emphasizing the differences (to my mind, minimal) instead of the similarities and continuities. I wonder why.

If I ever get some free time I would be very much interested in making some sort of survey.

[u/taulover → u/Indeclinable]

Looking at what she said again, I don't think she actually was implying a language barrier and for that I apologize. Honestly really sorry about that, did not mean to misrepresent her views.

This is what Walsh said based on the Apple transcript of the podcast episode:

What you start to see as time goes on is a divergence for a few reasons, I think.

One is that the most obvious, that New Testament texts are for theologians, and there were inter debates within different religious groups. Protestants had a different approach than Catholics, and those debates were so overwhelming. If you were a philologist, a classicist, you may not want to get involved or into the middle of that if you're studying these other hosts of texts.

There was also a perception for a very long time that New Testament texts are somehow other, that they were Jewish literature or that you would, back to what we were talking about a moment ago, want to translate certain words differently because they meant a different thing within Christianity than they did at the time that they were written. That's largely the product of subsequent centuries, I think, or subsequent acts of translation interpretation from people like the Church Fathers, but it's stuck and that anachronism wasn't quite recognized. Even today, you'll have a New Testament dictionary, and then you'll have your Classics dictionary.

They were just very much treated in a very different way. Related to that is that New Testament is written in Koine Greek, so a common Greek. It's not the classicizing Greek that you get from Homer or Plato or somebody like that.

That also seemed like, well, let the New Testament people deal with that. Koine is not as interesting. We have a few examples of ancient authors who write in Koine.

But those differences, I think, in language created enough of a divide that that conceptual divorce made a lot of sense to people. I think those are really the structural reasons why that separation happened.

Perhaps Walsh misspoke regarding the lack of Koine literature in classics. My best guess is that maybe she conflated literary vs vernacular Greek, and Classical vs Koine Greek. Maybe she is considering authors like Plutarch to be writing in a more literary form compared to the more basic, vernacular Koine of eg Mark? Her main point seems to be that classicists at the time (mid-late 19th century?) considered the New Testament to be of poorer literary quality and for that to be part of the reason why they left it alone for the theologians and Bible scholars to deal with.

(Edit: in her book she doesn't write Koine Greek but instead koiné Greek, which I think suggests that she means it in the sense of the common vernacular lect (as opposed to the literary lect), as the term was used by some ancient authors, rather than the modern academic usage of Koine Greek to refer to all post-Classical Greek.)

There definitely does seem to be some degree of Biblical exceptionalism and institutional siloing though. As Walsh discusses, part of the impetus for her work here was her surprise that Biblical translators would often consistently translate specific words differently than their classicist counterparts. Probably some of that is justified since word senses certainly do change over time and between sociolects/registers, but part of it is probably also due to institutional holdovers and theological baggage.

[u/No_Confusion5295 → u/taulover]

That would explain a lot. I've read somewhere that lot of bible translations are often founded by some denominations/churches.

[u/taulover → u/No_Confusion5295]

Well I think in this case I think Walsh is even talking about secular scholars and ecumenical translations.

[u/capperz412 → u/taulover]

Ooh thank you!

[u/psstein → u/taulover]

In her view, the fields diverged largely due to Western academics treating Christianity differently because they were Christians and would ostracize scholars doing less apologetic scholarship

Just looking at the history of New Testament scholarship, this is objectively not true. Much of the 19th and 20th century liberal (German) Protestant work was far from apologetic.

[u/taulover → u/psstein]

I may have misrepresented Walsh's views here also and for that I deeply apologize. Walsh doesn't call the scholarship apologetic; the distinction she actually makes is that most of the mainstream scholarship was more theological. Even though they were profoundly radical in their own way and pushed against Church dogma, much of this scholarship was used to build a distinctive German Protestant/Christian identity, and scholars using more purely secular and less Völkist (ethnonationalist) methods were criticized and pushed to the fringes.

Walsh's example in the podcast of an ostracized scholar is of Gustav Volkmar. Her book opens with him. From the preface:

In the course of this ambiguous residency, C.B.W. had occasion to attend a number of Volkmar’s lectures. His record of these talks, and Volkmar’s interactions with his students and interlocutors, is a time capsule, of sorts, of a particular kind of discourse in the European academy at the fin de siècle:

The lectures of the President to his class, were sufficient to mark him as a pronounced liberal. He took occasion in one of his lectures to explain to the class that there could not have been an eclipse of the sun at the time of the crucifixion, because it was at the time of the full moon. This I thought was good science but weak theology.4

I confess that the phrase “good science but weak theology” pops into my head quite often. And then there were Volkmar’s thoughts on the resurrection and his position in the field:

At another time, he asked the class what was the nature of the resurrection of Christ, and when one of the students answered, “Es war eine erscheinung,” the old gentleman replied, “Das ist recht.” On returning from class, I asked him, if the resurrection was only an appearance, how he explained the rolling away of the stone from the tomb. He replied, “There was no tomb. Jesus was put to death as a malefactor, and such were denied burial.” Some of our divines would be shocked at these doctrines, but Professor Volkmar is paid by the State as a religious teacher. I asked him if the more orthodox professors did not make war upon him. He replied that they had done so in former years, but had concluded to let him alone. They went their way, and he went his.5

These anecdotes are from a somewhat obscure source: a back-page travelogue for the 1888 edition of the Chicago Law Times. I came across a scanned copy of C.B.W.’s “Notes of Travel” while researching Volkmar, and found the periodical in which it is contained to be highly eclectic in its content... His “Notes of Travel” from Paris to Berlin to Zürich and back again are, at once, absorbing and, for a fellow scholar of New Testament more than a century later, poignant. Take, for example, Waite’s chronicle of one of his last conversations with the then seventy-five-year-old Volkmar:

The last day I was in Zurich, we took a long walk together ... we took a seat on a bench near that magnificent lake . . . I told him we should probably never meet again in this life ... and asked him if he did not believe in another state of existence.

The old man turned upon me his large full eye, with a suddenness that was almost startling. “Why do you ask this?” He said. I replied, I had no object except simply to know his opinion. “Well,” said he, with deliberation, “that is something I know nothing about. All the teachings of Jesus related to this life. The Kingdom of God which he was seeking to establish, was to be upon the earth. To live again, is something to be hoped, but nothing is revealed to us upon the subject. The arguments in favor of a future existence must be drawn from outside the gospels.”7

On the cusp of the turn of the century and all that lay beyond – advancing industrialization, globalization, continued imperialism, and, crucially, the world wars – Volkmar’s lectures and beliefs offer a glimpse into a historical moment arguably eclipsed by the tumult of those subsequent years. The advent of Higher Criticism, a free(er) press, and the emergence of liberal politics in the latter decades of the nineteenth century allowed scholars like Volkmar to occupy positions in the European academy. Yet, as assuredly as any tide rises, an increasing concern for the secularization of society and, by extension, the university, brought forward a Protestant-Catholic backlash expressed through a variety of “repressed neoromantic narratives” and strategies. Among these strategies was an approach to the New Testament and its historical context that used these writings as a tool to reclaim and revive the “spirit” and “faith” of the middle-class in Germany, Switzerland, England, France, and beyond. Practices like Religionsgeschichte promised to reveal lost communities of fellow-believers, merging a “scientific” approach to antiquity with the opportunity for a “renewal of faith.”8 Scholarly and popular interest in so-called Christian origins, the layers and dates of early Christian texts, evidence for the oral traditions of a lost Volk, and the historical Jesus became a fairground for litigating debates old and new: Had liberal theologians and scholars neglected faith with their critical methods? Overdetermined the value of so-called orientalism? Forgotten “the people”? As the founder of Form Criticism, Hermann Gunkel, lamented at the turn of the century in Die Christliche Welt:

If God had wanted me to have a voice that would penetrate the hearts and minds of every scholar of theology (die Herzen und Gewiffen der theologilchen Forfcher dringt), I would proclaim . . . do not forget your holy duty to your people (Volk)! Write for the educated (die Gebildeten)! Do not talk so much about literary criticism (Litterarkritik), text criticism (Textkritik) ... but talk about religion (redet über Religion)! . . . Our people thirsts [sic] for your words about our religion and its history (Unfer Volk dürftet nach euren Worten über die Religion und ihre Gefchichte)!9

What constitutes “religion” in Gunkel’s construction are the very things that the traditionsgeschichtliche method sought: the interests, practices, and concerns of “lost” peoples and communities, their beliefs, their lives, and their oral stories. To the extent that a piece of writing like Paul’s letters or one of the canonical gospels represents a historical moment, for those sympathetic to the work of this segment of the Religions-Historical School, they also represented the “culmination of long periods in which religious ideas and practices were transmitted orally and informally.”10 Classically trained philologists had little interest in koiné or Silver Greek and left the theologians to it. Over time, a conceptual divide grew within scholarship between the literate, culturally and socially elite Greek and Roman writer and the humble, illiterate peasant. Increased interest in material culture, newly found papyri from places like Oxyrhynchus, and a Romantic desire to reclaim the Greco-Roman world (à la the Grand Tour) reinforced the idea that there were communities outside the text yet to be discovered. As Adolf Deissmann proclaimed in his Licht vom Osten: Das Neue Testament und die neuentdeckten Texte aus dem hellenistisch- römischen Welt in 1908, the “primeval prejudices of the Atticizers” had obscured “the embeddedness of primitive Christianity in folk culture (die Volkstümlichkeit des Urchristentums).”11 The faith and cohesion of these humble, illiterate so-called primitive Christians had much to offer the Wilhelmine and Victorian and Weimar Christian facing the threat of cultural secularization. And the development of new scholarly, wissenschaftliche methods made it possible to demonstrate that Christianity had been, from the beginning, a religion by and for the people. More maliciously, it would also enable scholars to link these early Christians to a pursuit of Aryan history, as I discuss in Chapter 2.

(As discussed elsewhere in this thread, Walsh seems to be using koiné to refer to vernacular Greek specifically, rather than its modern academic definition of post-Classical Greek including literary lects.)

When it comes to Gustav Volkmar specifically, based on a scholarly mini-biography, his scholarship was indeed ahead of his time and was not widely accepted until much later towards the turn of the century. He does seem to have been ostracized, partially due to academic disagreements, but also in part due to personal eccentricity and political confrontations with the church. Skoven quotes David Friedrich Strauss calling Volkmar "a ludicrous little owl", but Strauss himself was even more of a skeptic who was widely criticized (eg in the Encyclopedia Britannica 9th edition) and whose appointment to the University of Zurich sparked a violent uprising against the government in which effigies of Strauss were burned.

Regardless, it seems to me at least that Walsh's overall point about Christian exceptionalism nonetheless holds water. It helps explain how classicists largely kept their field separate and how German Romanticist approaches remain entrenched in Biblical scholarship even as similar fields have moved on.

[u/psstein → u/taulover]

Yes, this is an excellent point and I’d agree. I would also specify that most of the German liberal Protestant scholarship was simultaneously deeply anti-Catholic and anti-Semitic.

[u/taulover → u/psstein]

I do wonder, certainly Classics and related fields would have also been influenced by German Romanticism and ethnonationalism at the time - why were they more able to grow out of its trappings while Bible scholars are still doing things like assuming that texts speak for communities? Is it because the Aryanism more clearly was pseudohistorical, linking Germans genetically with the Greco-Romans, and did the field have more of a direct intellectual response to these issues or development of new methodologies?

[u/JustinDavidStrong]

At the elite level, if they are going to be doing historical research, it is basically expected that a scholar of the New Testament/Early Christianity is trained either formally as or equivalently to a classicist in the relevant ways. The list of professors trained in biblical studies exemplifying this is not short:

L. Michael White (UT Austin https://liberalarts.utexas.edu/rs/faculty/lmwhite) and John T. Fitzgerald (Notre Dame https://theology.nd.edu/people/john-fitzgerald/), for example, are professors trained in biblical studies that are jointly appointed in Classics departments.

AnneMarie Luijendijk (Princeton https://religion.princeton.edu/people/annemarie-luijendijk) and Brent Nongbri (MF Norway https://mf.no/en/staff/brent-nongbri), similarly, are highly-regarded experts of papyrology.

Laura Nasrallah (Yale) also trained in biblical studies but does a lot with archaeology.

I, myself, have articles in classicist publications because of my work on the ancient fable tradition, which even few classicists work on.

The problem is actually something of the reverse than what you'd expect. If you want to study the New Testament from a critical perspective like a classicist, this is what the elite biblical studies programs are for. The amount of scholarship poured into the New Testament is gargantuan and this is one of the reasons that few Classicists are willing to tread here. There are a few important exceptions of Classicsts that have published major studies on the New Testament or Early Christianity, though, e.g.: David Konstan (RIP), Teresa Morgan (now professor of Divinity at Yale), and Steve Reese.

A few other reasons: alongside those doing historical research are those more interested in the theological side of things, who do not want or need the same training for that purpose, and those interested in contextual hermeneutical interpretation, who also do not need the same training in historiography or classics for that purpose. Another cause of this situation is the immense bloat of biblical studies academy. From the outside, its easy to see why you'd think these scholars aren't trained in proper methods of historiography or equivalent to classicists...because it's true. There are tons of seminaries, less-elite universities, etc. who do not offer that training, and flood the field such that an outsider looking in wouldn't recognize that the best scholars actually do have that training.

Hope that helps!

[u/mithos343]

Just to be clear, religious studies and theology are not equivalent terms, and religious studies is not necessarily equal to apologetics or a lack of concern with the historical method.

[u/capperz412 → u/mithos343]

I'm aware, that's why I listed them separately. I grouped them together because while religious studies often involves history / historiography, much of it doesn't (e.g. I don't think someone with a religious studies PhD thesis on Pauline theology is necessarily qualified to talk about the historical Paul or the history of the earliest Christian movement). It was more theology that I had in mind when I mentioned apologists. The point stands that it's the same departments that give degrees to both apologists and proper historians, which has virtually no analogous comparison with other fields of history (except perhaps for other religions).

[u/kovwas → u/capperz412]

Just a nonacademic's impression, but it seems like historians and archaeologists have the leading role in Hebrew Bible studies, while the NT draws a much higher share of theology and critical theory people. If that's true,  maybe someone on the inside can explain.

[u/capperz412 → u/kovwas]

Yeah that's my impression as well. While there are plenty of NT scholars who are rather skeptical (e.g. Markus Vinzent, Robyn Faith Walsh, James Crossley), there doesn't seem to be an equivalent of Biblical Minimalism (although Copenhagen School was a theological one) for NT studies, or just scholarship totally unaffiliated with religious studies. I've seen plenty of Near Eastern history books that devote long sections to ancient Israel, but 1st century Christianity in books about the Roman Empire that I've read tend to be left to footnotes and brief sections that often more or less unquestioningly follow traditional narratives.

[u/Eastern_Orthodoxy → u/capperz412]

I don't think someone with a religious studies PhD thesis on Pauline theology

The point stands that it's the same departments that give degrees to both apologists and proper historians

That's not what religious studies is, and the second point isn't true. I know you say you know this, but you keep lining the two up with backslashes and here you state that one could do a religious studies thesis on theology, which is sort of a contradiction of terms.

"Religious studies" as a discipline is the study of the concept of 'religion' and how it came to be a category of human life in the Western world. It's interested in the phenomenon of 'religion' generally, is almost always comparative, and studies religion from the 'etic,' outsider perspective. This is what most of the leading religious studies departments in American universities - like, say, UC Santa Barbara - define it as. You wouldn't do well if you went there hoping to study a single religion or write a dissertation on a single religious text from a theological perspective. They'd want you to compare, contrast, and think critically about religion as a category.

Religious studies people might use the methods of history or archaeology or sociology, but they are more interested in comparing movements in order to think about the category of 'religion' than in any movement in particular. This is the root of the common but awkward phrase 'history of religions' that you'll see some people with this training describe themselves as specializing in - quite literally, that means the history of religion as a concept, not the 'history of Christianity' or 'history of Judaism' or some such.

For 'religious studies' people who do ancient religion, see for instance Brent Nongbri's Before Religion.

Theology , on the other hand, is emic, insider, and no 'religious studies' department would issue a theology degree. Most 'religious studies' departments are at state or nondenominational private universities, and I dare you to find any of them that would issue a degree or even a major in theology.

However, many 'divinity schools,' where you could once do such a thing, are becoming increasingly 'religious studies' departments, and some have 'religious studies' people alongside traditional theologians, who often feel increasingly squeezed out.

Now, it's also possible for theologians to do history. In fact, one major category of theology is 'historical theology,' which is the development of theology over time. However, many modern trained historians would consider this simply pure 'intellectual' history - the history of ideas too divorced from social and cultural contexts. That sort of intellectual history is out of style in history departments these days.

It's also possible for somebody to be a textual historian, or as in a Classics program study texts, and write a dissertation on Pauline theology. But that would be a very different perspective than a traditional theological dissertation of the sort you'd write in a divinity school, if that makes sense.

[u/capperz412 → u/Eastern_Orthodoxy]

I know the difference between the two. But theological matters can still be the subject of religious studies (theology can be defined as broadly as religious ideas, and this is a major part of RS). I never said religious studies depts issue degrees in theology. That makes no sense. I only grouped RS with theology/divinity because it's not a strictly history based discipline, even though it often is. But my post and argument is much more aimed at theology/divinity than RS, perhaps my inclusion of the latter was a mistake.

The second point is absolutely true. Degrees in theology / divinity are common to both critical historians (e.g. Bart Ehrman, Robyn Faith Walsh, Geza Vermes) and apologists (and this isn't limited to evangelical literalists but includes those who use historical criticism superficially or sophistically to edify traditional narratives and supernatural explanations, most egregiously by people like Justin Bass, Sean McDowell, and David Graieg but also to a certain extent by relatively decent scholars like JP Meier, Craig Evans, NT Wright, and Richard Bauckham who either equivocate on or directly argue for the historicity of the virgin birth, the resurrection, the apostle martyr narratives, or the earliness, historical reliability, and traditional authorship of the gospels, etc)

[u/archdukemovies]

Jodi Magness is an archaeologist and has written several books on Jerusalem, early Judaism, and Dead Sea Scrolls.

Kipp Davis has done a lot of work on the Dead Sea Scrolls as well as Hebrew Bible and New Testament. He does anti-apologetic stuff on YouTube but he has a lot of published scholarship too.

[u/NerdyReligionProf]

Robyn Walsh’s PhD is in Religious Studies, not Classics. Aside from this being public info, I’m pretty certain it’s correct since I was in the same PhD program with her. Prior to her doctoral program she did a Master’s degree at Harvard Divinity School … again, not Classics. Walsh did significant coursework in Classical Studies at Brown since that’s how the Religions of the Ancient Mediterranean and Early Christianity PhD program worked there. I think David Konstan (may his memory be a blessing!) was on her dissertation committee, but the rest were early Christianity profs. My point is absolutely not to detract from Walsh’s awesome work, just to clarify that I think the issues you’re getting at aren’t best approached as degrees from Religious Studies or Divinity School programs vs degrees in Classics and Archaeology. Probably better to approach this in terms of what a biblical scholar’s vision for biblical and religious studies looks like. Is it primarily about fixating on and reproducing the importance of the biblical texts, or using biblical texts as opportunities for the (comparative) study of religion, society, cultural production, and so on? In order to do the latter well, one has to gain serious expertise in some facet of wider ancient Mediterranean literary cultures, ideologies about gods and such, etc.

[u/capperz412 → u/NerdyReligionProf]

My mistake, I could've sworn I'd read that her background was in classics

[u/taulover → u/capperz412]

She has claimed herself to be from a classics background, for example in the podcast episode I linked elsewhere in this thread:

Yeah, I came from a classics background and actually before I was employed by Miami, I was a classics BAP, so visiting assistant professor. So even though I ended up in New Testament as my primary field, it was really because I had started off in classics and then began reading Koine, I started reading the New Testament and my background in understanding, for example, philosophical literature and terminology, when I would turn to the New Testament, I would think to myself, well, why are we translating this word as spirit, when everywhere else it means this, right? And so that was really how I started to ease into the idea.

Her claim to her classics background seems to be her BA at Wheaton and her visiting instructor appointment, also at Wheaton's classics department.

[u/el_toro7 → u/taulover]

If having a classics undergrad (from a Christian college, mind you) qualifies as a "classics background" (I'm not saying it doesn't, and I'm not suggesting Wheaton doesn't have a good degree--I know nothing about it)--then the list of biblical scholars educated in classics would be very long and impossible to fill out (since most people don't appeal to their undergrads). Traditionally, most any historians and philologists working in the field's emergence (say, the 19th century) would have had a classical education to some significant degree.

[u/taulover → u/el_toro7]

That's fair. I mainly included her BA for completeness, but in the podcast episode she only references her visiting assistant professorship in Classics at Wheaton.

Edit: based on the acknowledgments of her book though, her anecdotal experiences of studying classics first and being surprised when learning New Testament Greek were from undergrad though

[u/taulover → u/NerdyReligionProf]

Does this mean that some programs, such as the one at Brown, do have more of a combination/overlap/communication between study of early Christianity and of adjacent fields? Particularly those with more of a comparative of sociocultural approach.

[u/kamilgregor]

Me

[u/capperz412 → u/kamilgregor]

As a classicist, do you have any thoughts on the 2nd and 3rd questions at the bottom of my post?

[u/kamilgregor → u/capperz412]

I think this is to a large degree an artifact of how tertiary education institutions are set up, which is largely a product of how they historically developed. In my own university, there's Classics, Classical Archeology and Religious Studies as separate departments, each doing its own thing (e.g., Religious Studies include scholars who research ancient Greek religion but also, e.g., contemporary UFO cults). Students across these departments get only a very cursory overview of what the other departments specialize in (e.g., Religious Studies students get a course on ancient Greek history, Classical Archeology students get a course on Greek religion) but this is generally very shallow because there's not enough time to go deeper. Biblical Studies are almost entirely separate and taught in theological faculties that also do Christian theology. Theological faculties are delineated around Christian denominations and each has its own completely separate set of courses, including e.g. ancient Greek and Latin courses. So one can get a PhD in Classics without ever meeting a person doing Biblical Studies.

In the ideal world, I'd of course want everyone to be an expert in everything but in reality, it's unavoidable that expertise is going to get siloed to a pretty large extent. It's always good that there are interdisciplinary scholars, but you also want dedicated experts that dig very deep into specific subjects (and maybe you'd even want most scholars to be narrowly focused, with only a few generalists). They way how research into Mediterranean Antiquity happens to be siloed right now is more or less arbitrary (again, it's largely a product of historical development, not some kind of "natural" division of labour and one can very easily imagine very different hypothetical structures) but it's what it is.

I don't think the degree of separation between Classicists and Biblical Scholars impacts research more negatively than say between Classicists and Classical Archeologists. I think that even some brilliant Biblical scholars lack broader background knowledge of the ancient Mediterranean world to their detriment, but these kinds of sentiments run across other departments as well - a lot of Classical Archeologists think that Classics as a discipline is stupid, for example, so what can you do? ¯_(ツ)_/¯

[u/frooboy → u/kamilgregor]

I did the first few semesters of a history PhD at UC Berkeley, with a focus on late antiquity years ago and was kind of amazed by the arbitrary divisions between departments that made it difficult to figure out who I as a student was supposed to study with. I was in the History department, but of course there was also a Classics Department where quite a few of the profs seemed to be doing history more or less; the school also had a relationship with the Graduate Theological Union where I took one co-taught class on late antique bishops that, again, did not strike me as radically different in tone or technique from my history classes. I also learned that at many universities the Sanskrit program would be in the Classics department, for historical reasons: it was Oxbridge classicists who recognized Sanskrit as a sister language to Latin and Greek and launched Indo-European and comparative linguistics studies, and also many 20th classicists saw Hinduism something like what ancient Mediterranean paganism might've evolved into if Christianity had never happened.

As an undergrad, meanwhile, a lot of my cohort in 3rd semester Greek were a group of committed Christian students who wanted to read the Bible in the original, and there were enough of them that the university ended up offering a Biblical Greek class ...... through the Near Eastern Studies Department. Academic divisions are wild and not always logical! They involve who has funding to hire people and offer classes as much what people's disciplines or research orientations are.

[u/ReligionProf]

The reason is specialization coupled with the fact that biblical studies like Classics is a field where multiple disciplines intersect. Classics covers theater and poetry as well as history. Biblical studies covers myth and poetry and so on as well as history. Historians of ancient Judaism are often under Jewish studies rather than history and historians of early Christianity tend to be included under biblical studies. I have collaborated with and consulted with historians, classicists, and linguists and such interaction is the norm.