NCBCPS vs. TFN: Much Smoke, Some Fire

The Texas Freedom Network calls itself “A Mainstream Voice to Counter the Religious Right”. Unsurprisingly, it is a consistently left-wing outfit that pushes alarmism about shadowy Christian conspiracies. It recently garnered publicity with a report denouncing The Bible in History and Literature, a “curriculum guide” published by the National Council on Bible Curriculum in Public Schools and adopted, according to the NCBCPS, by about a thousand high schools nationwide. The stated purpose of the guide is unobjectionable by any reasonable standard:

The curriculum for the program shows a concern to convey the content of the Bible as compared to literature and history. The program is concerned with education rather than indoctrination of students. The central approach of the curriculum is simply to study the Bible as a foundation document of society, and that this approach is altogether appropriate in a comprehensive program of secular education.

That this blurb is awkward and ungrammatical makes one wonder about the guide’s quality. The TFN report, prepared by Mark Chancey, a biblical studies professor at Southern Methodist University, finds a great deal more reason for concern. To quote from the TFN’s press release,

As a national debate rages over the proper place for religion in public education, more and more public schools are adding elective courses in Bible literacy. When taught with credible materials and from a nonsectarian perspective, such courses are an appropriate and even laudable way to help students learn about history and literature. This report, commissioned by the Texas Freedom Network Education Fund, reveals that what may be the country’s most aggressively marketed and widely used Bible curriculum fails on both counts. . . .

Dr. Chancey’s report shows how the curriculum advocates a narrow sectarian perspective taught with materials plagued by shoddy research, blatant errors and discredited or poorly cited sources. . . .

The NCBCPS curriculum goes beyond a study of the Bible as literature or a description of the importance of the Bible for beliefs and practices of religious groups. It, in fact, improperly endorses the Bible as the “Word of God.” It also attempts to persuade teachers and students to adopt views of the Bible that are common in some conservative Protestant circles but rejected by most scholars. While such views are certainly appropriate for individuals or religious groups, public schools should not present them as fact. . . .

The curriculum contains many passages in which the developers have distorted history and science . . .

The curriculum is full of errors (such as the dates of historical events, the identities of key individuals, and the details of biblical stories), faulty logic, unsubstantiated claims and unclear wording. . . .

The curriculum is shockingly lax when it comes to properly crediting sources – inexcusable in any scholarly writing at either the high school or college level. . . . In fact, a considerable amount of the curriculum’s content – Dr. Chancey estimates one-third or more of its pages – is reproduced word for word from its sources (both cited and uncited), often for pages at a time, though the curriculum does not note this or indicate that permission has been granted to reproduce these passages.

The problems detailed by this report – a blatant sectarian bias, distortions of history and science, numerous factual errors, poor sourcing – reveal a curriculum that is clearly inappropriate for the 1,000 public schools the NCBCPS claims use its materials.

That sounds pretty damning, and the NCBCPS’s response does little to answer the main points of the indictment. Instead it combines abuse of the TFN with insistence that the curriculum passes Constitutional muster, leaving aside the more central question: Whether or not The Bible in History and Literature is legal, is it any good?

To form a proper judgement, one must read not just the press release but the report itself. The picture presented there is a bit more nuanced than the TFN’s précis would lead one to believe.

But before getting to reservations and nuances, let me state firmly that, unless Professor Chancey is baldly inventing, the guide is shoddy work. The charge of copying without proper credit is amply documented. Worse yet are howlers that make it obvious that the text did not come from competent hands. Here are a few egregious examples:

■ The guide states, “Respected scholar, Dr. J. O. Kinnaman, declared: ‘Of the hundreds of thousands of artifacts found by the archeologists, not one has ever been discovered that contradicts or denies one word, phrase, clause, or sentence of the Bible, but always confirms and verifies the facts of the Biblical record”. As Professor Chancey observes, this “respected scholar” –

argued in his book Diggers for Facts: The Bible in Light of Archaeology [(1940), from which the guide’s quotation taken] that Jesus and Paul visited Great Britain, that Joseph of Arimathea was Jesus’ uncle and dominated the tin industry of Wales, and suggested that he himself had personally seen Jesus’ school records in India.

This is the only portion of the criticism of its scholarship to which the NCBCPS specifically responds:

Professor Chancey attacks the credentials of one scholar identified in the curriculum, Dr. J.O. Kinnaman, as being “largely unknown in contemporary academic circles.” However, a search of the library of Professor Chancey’s own alma mater, Duke University, reveals that two of Dr. Kinnaman’s books are on its shelves, including the one cited by NCBCPS.

Well, how can one doubt the auctoritas of a man whose books grace an academic library?

■ The guide, according to Professor Chancey, asserts –

that the “[Dead Sea] scrolls contain definite references to the New Testament and, more importantly, to Jesus of Nazareth,” that one scroll mentions the crucifixion of Jesus (p. 173), and that some Jews at Qumran accepted Jesus as the Messiah (pp. 174-175).

Authority for these startling propositions is – oddly in light of the conservative Protestant auspices under which the guide appeared – ultra-modernist Robert H. Eisenman, whose highly speculative equations of figures mentioned in the Scrolls with historical personages have drawn virtually no scholarly support. They are, however, of stellar quality compared to another of the guide’s statements:

The genealogies recorded in both Matthew and Luke’s Gospels, reveal that Jesus was the only one who could prove by the genealogical records kept in the Temple that He was the lineage of King David as the “Son of Jesse.” Since the tragic destruction of the Temple and its records in AD 70, it would be impossible for anyone else to ever prove their claim to be the Messiah based on their genealogical descent from King David. . . . The evidence from the scroll suggests that the Jewish Essene writer acknowledged that Jesus of Nazareth was the “suffering Messiah” who died for the sins of His people.

Professor Chancey:

Though my own research has focused on the Historical Jesus and early Judaism, I have never before encountered this extraordinarily idiosyncratic theory. To say that it is beyond the bounds of academic scholarship would be an understatement.

■ The guide repeats, with no apparent skepticism, an old hoax: “the interesting story of the sun standing still in [Joshua,] chapter 10. There is documented research through NASA that two days were indeed unaccounted for in time (the other being in 2 Kings 20:8-11).”

■ Here is an very odd bit of literary analysis:

Read “The Magnificat” [Luke 1:46-55] and Hannah’s “Song” in I Samuel 2:1-10. Compare and consider the simple monosyllabic words used by Mary to those of Old Testament poetry. How is this typical of the Hebrews?

Does the writer imagine that Mary and Hannah spoke English?

Not all of the “errors” identified by Professor Chancey are in fact wrong. For instance, he points to the following as a case where the guide “contradicts itself . . . within a single paragraph”:

After centuries of cruel repression by the Romans, Christianity was officially accepted and adopted during the reign of the Roman Emperor Constantine. . . . In 313 AD the emperors Constantine and Licinius met to co-establish a policy of religious toleration, and although this meeting marked the triumph of Christianity and the termination of imperial persecution, it did not officially establish the Church as the official religion of the Empire(s).

That statement is accurate. In 313, the Edict of Milan legalized Christianity. Later in Constantine’s reign, it became the Empire’s established religion. Still, allowing for the possibility that Professor Chancey has erred here and elsewhere, it is clear that much work is needed to make the guide a sound basis for pedagogy.

Unfortunately, the critic wants to prove not just that the guide is of poor quality but that its use in public schools violates the First Amendment. Here he writes as an amateur lawyer rather than a professional scholar and puts forward arguments that are, on their face, extremely weak.

He regards the guide as unconstitutionally sectarian for two main reasons: First, its discussion centers on the Protestant Bible, with little attention to such matters as the arrangement of the Jewish Bible, the “Apocryphal” books and non-Protestant translations of Scripture. Second, it supposedly overstates the historical influence of the Bible on American institutions, to the point that it “appears designed to persuade students and teachers that America is a distinctively Christian nation”. Assuming that these features are present, they do not, in and of themselves, render the curriculum legally unacceptable.

1. If it is possible to have a nonsectarian Biblical course at all, it is possible to have one that concentrates on the Protestant Bible, which, after all, has had a far greater impact in the United States than any other version. What is important is that the teacher and textbook refrain from proselytizing for a particular faith, not that they furnish information about all the faiths that exist.

2. Ideas about how much influence Christianity historically had on our country and the extent to which it underlies our institutions are secular, not religious, regardless of their truth or falsity. Professor Chancey calls attention to some misstatements and exaggerations in the NCBCPS’s materials, as well as to their dependence on less than first-rate sources. Those faults are not, however, of a sectarian nature. Nor are various questions for discussion that about which he complains, such as “Explain what effect there would be on our American way of life if legislators adopted the Mosaic Civil and Moral laws” and “Should the laws of our society be based on moral values?” Dark hints that asking such questions reveals “strong points of contact with the sectarian Dominion theology movement” suggest that the report sponsor’s paranoia has at least marginally affected its author.

So far as I can judge without laying out two hundred bucks for a copy, the guide seems likely to pass First Amendment scrutiny. The NCBCPS appears to have devoted considerable effort to shoring up its legal position. It’s a pity, particularly in these days of spreading Biblical illiteracy, that it didn’t also strive for a well-written product reflecting accurate, up-to-date knowledge of its subject.

Comments

[Huw Raphael]

Given the errors you cited tend to err not only towards bad scholarship but also towards proving a theological (rather than literary) point about the text, it does seem the material is teaching religion rather than theology.

I don't think that passes First Amendment Muster, even using only the text you cited.

If for no other reason than it tends towards an inaccurate picture, and an incomplete picture of the Bible (even the KJV until recently contained most of the Apocryphal Books) and because it was not written by people qualified to teach the Church's book, as an Orthodox Christian I'd not want that material presented to my children for it is indoctrination in what we believe to be heresy and schism.

Sign me up for the ACLU lawsuit and pass me a blank Amicus Brief.