Preface

Summary

This book will largely apply the writings of Noam Chomsky, Edward Herman, Edward Said and several others on international politics and the supportive role of the media, intellectuals and academics to Christian origins and New Testament scholarship since the not insignificant date of 1967. The major features of this book are to explain why two major developments in New Testament and Christian origins scholarship took place when and where they did and the ideology that keeps them buoyant. While numerous theorists could have been chosen to analyse intellectual culture (e.g. Gramsci, Foucault), Chomsky, Herman, Said and the others were chosen deliberately because they are ruthless in illustrating the harsh contemporary realities of the cultural contexts of elite culture, avoiding mere abstract presentations of hegemony. This is obviously particularly significant given my aims of a precise historical contextualization of scholarship and ideology.

The book will be set out in three parts, each containing two chapters. Part I will look at the ways in which New Testament and Christian origins scholarship has historically been influenced by its political and social settings over the past hundred years or so. Moving on to the present, I will then apply Edward Herman and Noam Chomsky's propaganda model of manufacturing consent in the mass media to the recent explosion of biblical scholars writing, often many times daily, on the internet, in particular scholars who have taken up “blogging.” This is particularly important because it provides an outlet for scholars to talk politics as well as biblical scholarship.