JAMES MCGRATH: A Blog-Based Consensus? With reference to the question of the authenticity of the Gospel of Jesus Wife. It's true that most of the discussion has been in the blogosphere and many of the important advances have first been made public there. But it is also important that those advances have now been published in peer-review publications, which require more rigor than a blog post. Specialist blogs have the advantage of being able to advance the discussion much more rapidly in a preliminary way, and I think this is a significant contribution. But I would not want to see them replace peer-review publication.
Specialist blogs also make a significant contribution when they evaluate stories about unpublished ideas that receive a lot of media attention without the benefit of any formal scholarly publications. The fake metal codices are a good example. The story was announced and the media became very excited, but specialist blogs evaluated the case and found it severely wanting. There are still no peer-review publications on the Jordan codices after four and a half years — I think because there is no case for their authenticity that could pass peer review. But be that as it may, in the absence of peer-review analysis, the blog discussions raised many important points that the media probably would have missed and are the closest we have to a preliminary scholarly consensus. Any advance in the discussion would require some real arguments to be made against this consensus, preferably arguments published in peer-review venues.
Past PaleoJudaica posts on the idea of scholarly consensus are here and links.
UPDATE: Background on the GJW is here and links. And in that post I respond to the latest essay by Baden and Moss, mentioned in McGrath's post cited above.
