@ checkmate
No theologian who wants to keep his job, yes even at Harvard, would dream of questioning the divine inspiration of the texts, even when writing on the radical post-redaction of Kings, Judges, and the major prophets
Who on earth do you think has cast doubt on so much of the historical accuracy of the Bible, to the extent of arguing that many major characters and events never happened? It is precisely theologians who have done this, not least because people who don't have the skills they have acquired are far less equipped to do so. We don't live in the nineteenth century any more and there are a great many atheist theologians out there; you say it's impossible for atheists like Francesca Stavrakopoulou or Bart Ehrman to say what they want and keep their job at a major university. Only trouble is, academic freedom exists in theology like any other discipline, Stavrakopoulou and Ehrman write and say exactly what they want and they are professors of Biblical studies. According to you, all of this is impossible, yet it is part of life at a respectable university theology department. Bible colleges and seminaries are not university departments - their purpose is to train people for ministry and you're not going to get anything that doesn't help train pastors to do their job there. But a respectable university department upholds the standards and the freedom associated with any university department, whatever its subject. To suggest otherwise is not only to trash modern scholarship per se, but, ironically, puts you in the same camp as Rick Santorum in claiming that universities are "factories of indoctrination."
Please show me the theologian who will say that, if the Bible is true, God is at times a complete asshole who loves to kill people, keeps changing his mind, is powerless against "fate", etc.
That's a question of religious ethics, not a Biblical question as such, though it relies on the Bible for evidence. As it is, there is a great deal written by theologians against traditional theodicy. You could start with the best known figure in this field, Emmanuel Levinas, and then move on to Nick Trakakis and Wendy Farley. There's a whole branch of Jewish theology that deals with the question of God in relation to suffering in the Bible but especially to the suffering of the Holocaust. Richard Rubenstein's book After Auschwitz would give you a start here.
Once again, only a very small part of theology is about the Bible. It also covers every other holy scripture from the Mahabharata to Dianetics and beyond. What does a professor of new religious movements do? Work through the relevant texts to defend Scientology, Hare Krishna, Uranianism, Soka Gakkai and Rastafarianism all at once? Theology is about treating the thoughts, experiences and actions of people who have religious beliefs seriously as a subject for study, no more and no less. That's a very broad subject and incorporates much of human experience to date, whether we like it or not. If that is beyond what you think legitimate material for academic study, then we're back in Santorum territory.
