On Red Flags

I recently saw this circulating on the Facebook:

It got me wondering how non-experts can distinguish between legitimate disagreements within a field and denialisms of various nonsensical sorts. I want to use an example here, from something close to my own area of study.

In 2017, Josef Schubert published a book entitled Dating Deuteronomy: The Wellhausen Fallacy. In this book, Schubert argues that the entirety of Deuteronomy was likely complete by the division of the united monarchy in ancient Israel, c. 930 BCE. For those unaware with recent trends in Hebrew Bible and biblical chronology, this would be several centuries earlier than most scholars would want to date a more or less complete Deuteronomy. And frankly, I find Schubert's argumentation unconvincing. Now, let's be clear: the mere fact that something goes against current trends within a discipline does not make it wrong. My own Rethinking the Dates of the New Testament: The Evidence for Early Composition argues that biblical scholars had tended to date certain books of the New Testament about thirty years later than the evidence best warrants. So, why is it that I'm willing to argue that this is the case, while I find myself unable to affirm Schubert's arguments for a very early Deuteronomy? It has to do with the arguments that Schubert puts forth. Quite simply, Schubert makes a number of very questionable empirical judgments. One of his central arguments is that the Jewish and Samaritan Pentateuchs are "virtually identical," and that as such they must predate the schism between the northern kingdom (Samaria) and southern kingdom (Judea) c. 930 BCE. His reasoning is that the Samaritans would never have adopted a Jewish text, and thus the Pentateuch (including Deuteronomy) must predate the division between the two. Here's where he really gets into trouble, because leaving aside some very real questions about the virtual identity of the Jewish and Samaritan Pentateuchs and the historicity of the United Monarchy, the final schism between the Jewish and Samaritan people probably dates the better part of a thousand years later than Schubert assumes. Quite simply, Schubert's position reveals a fundamental misunderstanding of the history of the southern Levant and its peoples. As such, although Deuteronomy might well date earlier than often supposed, Schubert's argumentation does not suffice to establish that this is likely the case.

Now, I can make this evaluation because as a trained biblical scholar I have a deeper understanding of the Jewish–Samaritan schism than does something lacking such training. How does the non-expert begin to evaluate Schubert's claims? There are some real red flags to be noticed, before one even opens the book. The first comes in the author's bio on the back of the book, where we learn that Schubert co-founded the department of religious studies at the University of Regina "in addition to his duties in the Department of Psychology." That leads me to think that maybe Schubert isn't a trained biblical scholar. Maybe in fact he's a psychologist. And turns out that this is exactly the case. Which is completely fine; psychology is a quite venerable field of study; but it ill prepares one to write a book on the date of Deuteronomy. Heck, I am a trained biblical scholar; I have written an entire book on the dates of the New Testament texts; and Deuteronomy is far enough outside of my areas of expertise that I'd be extremely reluctant to write a book on its date of composition. That having been said, the mere fact that Schubert isn't a trained biblical scholar with expertise specifically relevant for thinking about the date of Deuteronomy does not mean that his arguments are mistaken; but that his training appears to be in entirely unrelated fields should give one pause.

A closely-related red flag is the sub-title of Schubert's Dating Deuteronomy, namely The Wellhausen Fallacy. A non-expert might not know who or what "Wellhausen" is, but a simple Google search that looks for both "Wellhausen" and "Deuteronomy" will quickly reveal that Julius Wellhausen is generally regarded as the father of modern Pentateuchal scholarship. Now, the term "The Wellhausen Fallacy" suggests that Schubert has identified fundamental flaws in Wellhausen's work and presumably by extension the foundations of modern Pentateuchal studies. Now, any number of trained biblical scholars have raised challenges—in some cases, very important and acute challenges—to Wellhausen's legacy in Pentateuchal scholarship. But generally speaking, to go fundamentally against a pioneering figure's legacy requires that one bring one's A-game. And this leads to a very reasonable question: how likely is it that the A-game of someone without specialist training in biblical and more specifically Pentateuchal studies is going to be sufficient to identify seminal problems with an approach to the Pentateuch that have generally withstood over a century of the most withering attacks from the most qualified critics? Or is it more likely that this non-specialist has in fact misunderstood certain key data, such as those surrounding the Jewish–Samaritan schism?

Are these red flags sufficient reason to dismiss Schubert's arguments? No. They are to be dismissed on the basis that they are empirically unsound. But a non-specialist has good reason to be wary when they find one book with these red flags which argues that Deuteronomy was complete by c. 930 BCE, while virtually all books lacking such red flags argue for a later date.