Most biblical scholars work within the modern academy, whose canons of respectability include a methodology that assumes the truthfulness of the modern worldview. Typically spending eight or more years in college and graduate school and often remaining as teachers, we often measure our time in the academy in decades rather than years. Texts that report “paranormal” happenings, whether they are visions of another realm or miracles, are either largely ignored or else interpreted in such a way that they do not violate our sense of what is possible or real.25 Thus, because we do not know what to
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