Opposite Blogging

Rick Brannan has a wonderful idea: Opposite Blogging, whereby bibliobloggers would "don their alter egos and play devil's advocate, arguing opposite what they normally would". I think this would be a fun and healthy exercise. Good scholars are supposed to anticipate the strongest objections to their case anyway, and this would force one to actually make the opposite case oneself.

Rick lists two examples, Mark Goodacre arguing for Q, and Jim West arguing for the archaeological reliability of the Hebrew Bible. To these we could add: Michael Turton (if he were still around) arguing for Jesus' existence; Stephen Carlson proving that Secret Mark pre-dates the other gospels, and James Crossley telling us why canonical Mark post-dates them; Jim Davila revealing the pseudepigrapha to be thoroughly Jewish compositions; Richard Anderson acknowledging Luke's Gentile outlook at long last. I guess my own alter-ego blogging would be about demonstrating that the honor-shame model is based on racist stereotyping, and that Jesus and Paul shared more in common with introspective westerns after all.