I... am surprised that so much of the mainstream continued on just on repetition.
MS,
From my own experience and what I have read in Bible scholarship, I think this has really been the general pattern for hundreds of years. Most scholars do not question the general, "mainstream" frame of thought, just because they can't (or don't want to) handle too many "unknowns" at the same time. Most commentators of the Pauline letters, for instance, simply repeat the traditional options on datation and authorship and reserve their really original work for the detailed commentary. Unfortunately their position on such introductory matters (which is actually second-hand information and opinion) is then numbered as an additional vote comforting the traditional position. Thirty years ago all critical commentaries of the Pentateuch included a formal repetition of the JEDP Documentary Theory. They could mention that it was criticised by marginal scholars and bring in a few minute corrections, but as a whole they kept it, out of mere repetition. Then a critical stage was reached and the general theory collapsed, so that nobody can take it for granted anymore. So now every commentator has to really build his/her own theory from zero, as it were.
As one who came all the way from the JWs to Bible studies, I have become used to this pattern. You repeat something hundreds of times, just because you have read it hundreds of times, then somebody gets you to wonder about the real evidence for it. That's the way I eventually questioned the JW doctrine, years ago, after repeating it so many times. When I came to this board about one year ago I faced some live radical criticism of the NT for the very first time (thanks Peacefulpete in particular), and I first reacted by repeating what was the "mainstream" view, especially on the Pauline epistles. This gradually led me to wonder again, "what do I really know?", and dig a little more into it. Now my impression on the "mainstream" consensus as regards the Pauline corpus is that it is really weak, and subject to change dramatically anytime.
The way Bible scholarship in general progresses is not so different, I guess, from my xJW story. It is slowly emerging from an apologetic catechism, gradually in general and sometimes through dramatic crises.
