How many people read Shakespeare? Is the study of Shakespeare realy important to us? Is this a growing field or a declining one?

First, I do most of my Bible reading on line these days and electronic gadgets with Bibles are starting to glow in the pews on Sunday morning. This will complicate Bible stats considerably.

Second, you might want to pick some other field of study as a control. For example, MBAs have a demand cycle that correlates with the economic cycle.

Third, I haven't heard that seminaries as a whole are suffering. It may just be that parsing Hebrew is being passed over for other topics that are more vital to the life of the church.

http://www.publishersweekly.com/article/CA62792...

Again, how literate do people have to be in order to substantiate the claim that the importance of the bible in Christianity is an "illusion"? I can set up any study hypothesis to set the data up in order to seem as if it makes sense. Are Fred Phelps congregants Biblically literate? Nope. Is the Bible essential to their positions against homosexuals? Indispensable even if for only five or so verses. While this is an extreme example it illustrates that the Bible can serve as a constitutive and regulative object for a religious community or for any group formed around ideological premises and this is the aspect of social theory that you have completely missed.

The question is where the secularization of the academy is taking place? You can go back as far as Moberly's work which discusses that. We know about that. It's nothing new. Hart's work clearly describes the trend of theological studies including biblical studies which became marginalized and placed firmly in the seat of divinity schools. This is over 100 years in the making so that is not the claim that I think you have got wrong.

the claim I do not think you substantiate is that because of this trend biblical studies is on its way out. That the supply is quite healthy and the interest in the fields is healthy is clearly indicative that divinity schools are in no position to eliminate chairs at this point in time. That would be an institutional mistake since the revenue streams are bringing good money in graduate degree dollars. That would be saying, let's eliminate a few servers at the diner this year because our customer base is more than we can handle. That's totally irrational.

Biblical studies is more rigorous and more specialized that ever before and that is hardly predictive of the end of it. In fact, even if you find a correlation it is still not indicative of cause and effect unless you regress the variables. Did you do this bit? Can you statistically predict the end of biblical studies on the variables you note? My contention is that you cannot because you cannot account for the variation inclusive of the other datasets I have mentioned.

Otherwise, I think it is naive to read any sorts of sales figures based on the numbers given to you by those who are out to sell you Bibles. Of course, they are going to try to tell you their product is hot and best selling. That's the oldest marketing trick in the world.

But let's suppose all those Bible sales are true. The fact is Bible sales tell you very little
about how much of the Bible people are reading or using. Bible sales are still high
in America, but the rate of Bible literacy is quite astoundingly low.

Every year, I get lots of students in my Bible classes who grew up with a Bible in their home.
They don't know very much about the Bible, however, when they first take the class. Having
a Bible around did not increase their Bible knowledge very much.

And, you are missing the point about biblical studies in academia (which is what I am
specifically discussing) because you seem to equate the strength of biblical studies in academia with the strength of Christianity itself. Yes, there is a relationship but it is not as direct as one might suppose because of the secularization of academia. And the truth is that
for much of Christian history, most people did not read the Bible at all (populations were largely illiterate in the Middle Ages, for example).

But look at Drew's own data set, which shows the following job openings in Hebrew Bible in these years:

1996: 27
1997: 20
1998:14
1999:15
2000:18
2001:21
2002:15

If the numbers of open positions are clearly trending downward from 1996 to 2002, then how is that healthy? There are FEWER jobs in 2002 compared to 1996? Is that good? Statisticians
would call that a DECLINE.

The fact that we have so many candidates is not a good thing for candidates. That means more people who worked many years and paid for a PhD will not get a job in the preferred field. Could Drew explain how that is good for those going into this field?

What that shows is that we are still producing too many PhDs for very few jobs.

And the picture is worse because Drew is not really showing the quality of the jobs. Very few of those jobs are at higher paying public institutions. Some jobs are part-time or adjunct positions, etc.

You can see this by looking at the job listings one-by-one in any particular year. If you go to the AAR website, go and look at what specific institutions are hiring.

And who in computer science or biomedical fields would think it HEALTHY that there are 27 jobs (the highest number for Hebrew Bible) in Drew's data set?

You don't judge the health of a field by the number of candidates it is pumping out,
but by the numbers of jobs that there are for those candidates.

Otherwise, all you are producing are jobless people with a PhD, or people who end up
working in fields for which they were not trained. That in itself will cause fewer people
to go into those fields eventually.