Can You Understand This?

We try to expose our readers to various scholarly viewpoints, even though we do not always agree with them. We have confidence in our readers’ ability to make up their own minds. It is in that spirit that we have tried to present the case of the Biblical revisionists, or Biblical minimalists, or as they are sometimes derogatorily called, Biblical nihilists. Whatever their name, they agree that there is little, if any, history to be found in the Bible—say, for example, the story of the Exodus. At most, we can learn something about the period, hundreds of years later, when the text—a fictional composition, they contend—was composed.

Sometimes it is difficult to understand the language of the minimalists. That presents us with a difficult situation: How do we present something to our readers that we ourselves do not understand? How do we fulfill our function as editors?