Which gets us to Millard, he stands tight with Kitchen, and though he may claim the books have some errors, his arrow is still firmly apologetically aimed.
You've said as much:
Alan is a known admitted bible literalist, he doesn't hold any credibility among modern scholars.
Now, in addition to academic works published in reputable journals or by academic/specialty publishing companies (dozens of papers and studies since the 60s, including books translated into multiple languages), he's cited by "modern scholars".
If that weren't enough to show that "modern scholars" find him credible, we have the 2005 volume
Writing and ancient Near Eastern society: papers in honour of Alan R. Millard.
If you go to google books, and put in the search term (quotes included) "studies in honor" or "papers in honor" or "
Festschrift" (that's a link to the definition) or "Festschrift für", you'll find a numerous academic volumes filled with studies by scholars.
The studies in these volumes are not about the person the volumes are in honor of. Rather, they are written by people working in the field (or related fields) that the honoree specializes in and contain original research. It is a gesture of recognition, one which recognizes a scholar who has produced an extensive amount of valuable scholarship and other academic achievements. As Millard's was published in 2005, I'd say that means "modern scholars" would disagree with you.
I do get and study material from a wide range of scholars.
You don't, but this is not your fault nor is there much you can do about it. The way academia works involves a lot of societies, associations, etc. Some, like SBL, have almost 9,000 members (scholars). Some are limited to one university. But these are the groups that publish almost all the journals and other specialty literature. The rest are published by smallish specialty publishers (Mouton de Gruyter, John Benjamins, etc.) which produce only one kind of scholarly material (for the two examples I gave, it would be linguistics). Others, like Springer, are much larger and produce enormous amounts of academic literature, from journals to monographs to conference proceedings.
What they all have in common is first that they are hard to get access to. Through my university access, I can get papers from databases like JSTOR, Wiley or Sage online, Academic Search Premier, Project Muse, AAAS (they publish, among other things, the journal
Science), etc, all for free because the university pays thousands of dollars each year for these subscriptions. Now, it is possible to get hard copies to, but unless you have easy access to a big university library, you are unlikely to find many very easily.
Then there's the books, volumes, monographs, etc. Not only can you only find them in either university libraries or from online bookstores like Amazon, they can be extremely expensive. I have two hobbies, studying and training (tactical/combatives training), and two type of luxury items I tend to spend money on: books and knives (I collect). Were I into gaming, or if I went out clubbing a lot, or any number of things people spend money apart from things like food, I wouldn't be able to study like I do because I couldn't afford it. And as journal articles can be upwards of $50, and I have thousands, were it not for the fact that the university is footing the bill I couldn't afford my studying hobby.
Now, how many of the thousands and thousands of scholars who are writing papers in various journals and volumes and so forth publish anything which is for the general public? A tiny amount.
Also, a lot of the research is written in German, French, and Italian, and expects readers to be familiar not only with at least the amount of research a grad student would have, but also frequently assumes knowledge of various ancient languages.
So although thankfully more and more studies from journals and conferences are available for free online, the fact that one can access them doesn't necessarily mean one can understand them.
Its sad too, because he has a wealth of knowledge but his mistakes are so serious, it effects his whole credibility in many fields.
And you say this based on your access to journals and series (monographs or volumes which are like journals in that they have volumes, but they either have many more papers than a journal or are monographs) like
Zeitschrift fiir die alttestamentliche Wissenschaft, Journal of Semitic Studies, Ugarit-Forschungen, Revue de l"Histoire des Religions, etc.?
The two biggest mistakes are the literacy rates, and then the worst, is claiming Mesopotamian's did not influence the OT. He is strict on this with Kitchen.
About the second: have you read his studies on this? Granted, "Another Babylonian Chronicle Text." (
Iraq 26) is a bit dated, "The etymology of Eden" (
Vetus Testamentum 34) isn't, and as Eisenbrauns (an academic publishing company) decided that Lambert & Millard's
Atra-ḫasīs: The Babylonian Story of the Flood, published by Oxford University Press in 1969, was worth reprinting in 1999, then that's important for evaluating his argument too.
As for the first, that's not a big mistake. It's a pretty common view today. In Theißen & Merz's
Der historische Jesus: Ein Lehrbuch the authors write "Ob Jesus zum Lesen- und Schreibenlernen eine
Elementarschule besucht hat, muß offenbleiben. Zwar entstand unter hellenistischem Einfluß in Palästina ein leistungsfähiges Schulwesen, dessen Aufbau die Rabbinen zum Abschluß brachten."
("Whether Jesus went to an elementary school to learn read and write must remain open. Certainly, under the Hellenistic influence in Palistine, an efficient school system originated, a development which the Rabbis finalized."). Likewise, we find in Reisner's
Jesus as Preacher and Teacher (in
Jesus and the Oral Gospel Tradition) that "synagogues provided even in small Galilaean villages such as Nazareth a kind of popular education system". In fact, it was Reisner who was most influential here in his monograph
Jesus als Lehrer: eine Untersuchung zum Ursprung der Evangelien-Überlieferung.
Freyne (
Jesus: A Jewish Galilean) is a problem for you here in two ways, as he says "we have no way of knowing the social status of Jesus' family", because (as far as Freyne is concerned), the fact that his father was called a
tekton doesn't indicate the kind of poverty and low-class you have argued. Secondly, he writes this to contradict the argument made by Hezser, whose book on the subject concluded that (among other things) a "Galilean craftsman would not have the necessary levels of education in order to read". Freyne argues that equating "craftsman" with "peasant" not consistent with the evidence. And, even if it were, Freyne argues that the affinity between John the Baptist and Jesus and between both of them and the Essenes indicates that they
studied.
Levine, in
The Ancient Synagogue: The First Thousand Years (2nd ed.) argues that the lack of actual structures for pre-70 CE synagogue schools, "there is reason to believe that synagogue premises served in such a capacity in many, if not most, places in this era." As far as Jesus' activities in the synagogue in Luke, "a number of details are noteworthy", such as the "stages of the synagogue liturgy" Luke notes: "Jesus stood up to read from the Prophets, was handed the book of Isaiah, read several verses, returned the book to the synagogue official, sat down, and proceeded to address the congregation".
Finally, Levine not only cites Josephus' claims of "widespread literacy" (no doubt exaggerated), but also that the well attested, systematic, educational system we find in the later post-70 Jewish synagogue setting "was probably not created overnight", and thus it is by no means impossible for a limited schooling in reading (and perhaps writing) to have existed before the later rabbinic school system was completed.
FInally, the more "hellenized" places like Sepphoris were, the more llkely it is that the spread of educational centers into the household synagogues of small villages happened.
By the way, his errors he is talking about is not within what he claims is the original author. He only claims when they made copies there were scribal errors. He still falsely maintains that the bible is a history book.
What have you read by him? What convinced you that he is the only YEC advocate & bible inerrantist to argue that the bible we have has at least a fair amount of errors. It makes no difference if it was accurate history from a religious standpoint if that history is clouded by scribal errors, nor have I ever encountered anyone who believed that the bible was the inerrant, literal world of god and that the world was created a few thousand years ago and yet recognized how scribal errors have distorted the bible.
