A recent comment caught my attention: ‘Such-and-such a book is worth getting because it doesn’t assume a late date for Daniel.’ This is certainly not the first I’ve heard such a suggestion, nor will it be the last, but I am ever surprised by it.
‘I won’t read so-and-so, because he’s a conservative scholar.’
‘Stay away from so-and-so, that text presents a non-traditional approach for the writing of Torah.’
If you already agree or align with a particular perspective, why keep reading more into it? If you wanted to better learn, wouldn’t it be to your advantage to try out a different viewpoint, even if you leave it on the coffee table when your done with your reading? I want to suggest that reading differing perspectives on a topic not only a good investment in time and energy, but paramount for actually understanding your topic of interest. And, I wouldn’t expect you to change your beliefs/viewpoints.((While I’m not directly addressing political beliefs or materials, I suspect this might be equally applicable there.))
When I decided that I wanted to study early Christianity, I decided to start at the library. I found a text which promised to introduce me to early Christian writing by Bart Ehrman. I proudly brought it home, and discovered that much of what I thought I knew about early Christianity was wrong. Non-canonical gospels definitely preceded the four canonical gospels? And these present a different perspective from ‘mainline’ Christianity… I knew very little, and Ehrman was my introduction, so I swallowed the ideas whole.
Yet, as I read more widely, I slowly came to realize that Ehrman (at least in his popular work) is rather fond of making unwarranted assumptions and placing texts/people/etc. as parallel, even when they are certainly not.((Two examples will suffice. The first has to do with the life of Apollonius of Tyana (died c.100 CE) known from a single text written in the third century, who (quite debatably) might have comparable characteristics to Jesus’ ministry and Christian beliefs about Jesus. We can point out that the Gospels compose four first century texts, so any borrowing would have gone the opposite away. Second, the rather circular arguments to get so-called Gnostic texts to be dated in the first century. (Or, at least, the unwarranted assumption that sayings Gospels must precede narrative gospels.) In short, Luke and Matthew shared an entirely hypothetical source called ‘Q’ which must have been a sayings Gospel. We know that these were earlier because the Gnostic gospels were also sayings Gospels, and saying gospels were earlier…)) Listening to Ehrman nowadays, I’m a bit embarrassed by my gullibility — though I do think Ehrman still has interesting questions to ask and useful observations to make it (I do still listen/read him, after all). In telling this story, I wanted to make two observations. First, I think it is worth bearing in mind how much you know about a topic. If you’re just starting out, maybe get some recommendations for where to start. Usually these authors will engage their opponents which then provides a useful way to approach alternative views. Second, even should you be led astray through rhetoric and a lack of roundness on the existing data, that’s okay. Go back and read a scholarly review of the text or the next book from a differing perspective.
I wanted to briefly present some reasons for which you may consider it worth your time to invest in reading alternative perspectives.
First, different viewpoints help us realize the holes in our own viewpoints. It often takes another individual to point out to us our own assumptions — for this reason, we may ask a friend, spouse, parent, or child to look over a text/email we are about to send to make sure it sounds alright. We need a second opinion. And, while we may not include all of their suggestions, we ask them because they are quite likely to catch a problem — ‘You wrote Saturday, didn’t you mean Sunday?’, ‘That sounds a little harsh, maybe turn it into a question?’, etc. We are not particularly self-critical to our own work nor our beliefs. Engaging with texts allows us to attend a personal lecture with some distinguished scholar. Once we know where the holes in our armor lie, we can begin to repair them — or, possibly, if the suit needs a completely new design.
Second, exploring conflicting perspectives allows us to better understand differing opinions. Too often (as in politics as well) the reasoned logic of one’s ideological opponents is replaced with a rather dumb and less-foreboding straw man. While these may make our opponents look foolish (at least in our own minds), it fails to accomplish anything useful. We can’t learn from them, and we have refused to ever listen or acknowledge their concerns with our outlook. If you wanted to convince me that our perspective is superior, how could you do it if you don’t actually understand what I think? Strawmen removes dialogue, creates unnecessary barriers, and is quite the opposite of learning.
Third, we will learn that viewpoints are not binary. People’s perspectives rarely boil down to a X vs not-X. Angles are approaches are far more complex and diverse. This will also present cases in which, while disagreeing with one of your opponent’s points, you may discover that you share most of their theological outlook. Two scholars may disagree on the dating of the Torah, but agree in its usefulness and its place in the canon of Scripture.
Fourth, you will gain a deeper understanding of the topic as a whole. While you may entirely disagree with a particular approach (e.g., the existence of a ‘Q’ document with certain characteristics which Matthew and Luke both used in their composition), reading a text on ‘Q’ may prove useful in learning about oral transmission, etc., and present new questions that you hadn’t before considered. For example, did the first century Christians prefer oral or written sources? Why? Which do we prefer nowadays?
Fifth, as anticipated in the fourth point above, reading new perspectives often opens the door to asking more (and better) questions. One anecdote which I heard concerned a prestigious president of my university for whom the library was named. Apparently, when you sat in a meeting with him, you would get the impression that he didn’t know all that much — he asked a lot of questions. Quite the opposite was true, however. He was quite willing to ask all the questions about the topic for which he did not know the answer. He did not let his assumptions go unchallenged. Somewhat unintuitively, the one who asks the most questions, often knows the most. Relatedly, it is often the person who is least confident who knows the most — they have explored enough to know how much more there is to explore.
Find a book on something you know a bit about, but which presents a different viewpoint — beit religious, political, or something else you feel confident about. Ask good questions of it, and use it to fill in your own blindspots.