Marilynne Robinson is one of the most influential Christian writers and public intellectuals alive today, and her views on a range of topics should be taken seriously. In her 2015 essay entitled ‘Memory’, she argues that the ‘liberal side’ of American Christianity has retreated from scriptural theology under pressure from academic biblical criticism. Her dismissal of Hebrew Bible scholarship is centred on two primary and interrelated ideas. First is the idea that Israelite religion was embedded in a broader context of Ancient Near East (ANE) religious cultures, such that biblical stories and characters sometimes borrow from other ancient sources. Second is the problem that the scholarly understanding of ancient Israelite polytheism threatens to make God into a ‘pagan amalgam’. The interrelated problem, that is, is the uniqueness and transcendence of the Hebrew Bible, and the God who is its main character. In this article, I review the scholarship on ancient Israelite religion and Robinson’s complaints about it. I argue that Robinson treats the critical scholarship only at a distance, allusively, (mis)representing it and sometimes (mis)understanding it in superficial ways, but that her theological anxiety is warranted.

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如果上帝是“异教混合物”怎么办：玛丽莲·罗宾逊和历史圣经奖学金

玛丽莲·罗宾逊是当今最有影响力的基督教作家和公共知识分子之一，她对一系列话题的观点应该得到认真对待。在她 2015 年题为“记忆”的文章中，她认为美国基督教的“自由派”在学术圣经批评的压力下已经从圣经神学中撤退。她对希伯来圣经奖学金的驳斥主要集中在两个相互关联的主要观点上。首先，以色列宗教植根于古代近东（ANE）宗教文化的更广泛背景中，因此圣经故事和人物有时会借鉴其他古代来源。第二个问题是，对古代以色列多神论的学术理解有可能使上帝成为“异教混合物”。相互关联的问题，即 是希伯来圣经的独特性和超越性，以及作为其主角的上帝。在这篇文章中，我回顾了古代以色列宗教的学术研究以及罗宾逊对此的抱怨。我认为罗宾逊只是以一种距离、暗示、（错误）表述、有时以肤浅的方式（错误）理解它来对待批判性学术，但她的神学焦虑是有道理的。