He cites with appreciation the work of Jacques Berlinerblau, who also argues for a secular hermeneutic. In a response to Fox's essay, Berlinerblau stated that he read Fox's essay "with appreciation and glee." Berlinerblau, who teaches at Georgetown University and Hofstra University, is the author of The Secular Bible: Why Nonbelievers Must Take Religion Seriously, published by Cambridge University Press. Berlinerblau congratulated Fox for calling "attention to a topic that is virtually taboo in biblical scholarship."

Berlinerblau criticizes the world of biblical scholarship for its "demographic peculiarities," most specifically the fact that the vast majority of Bible scholars are members of some church or synagogue. He sees this as historically understandable but academically unsustainable. "They continue to ignore the fact that the relation between their own religious commitments and their scholarly subject matter is wont to generate every imaginable conflict of intellectual interest," Berlinerblau asserts. "Too, they still seem oblivious to how strange this state of affairs strikes their colleagues in the humanities and social sciences." Significantly, Berlinerblau seems to understand that this imbalance is overwhelmingly in favor of the secularist. "Before this response begins to sound like the prelude to a class-action suit, permit me to observe that the type of discrimination encountered by secularists in biblical studies is precisely what believers working in the humanities and social sciences have endured for decades. The secular bent and bias of the American research university is well known. It is undeniable that many of its workers are prejudiced against sociologists, English professors, and art historians who are 'too' religious."

But, back to believers engaged in biblical scholarship, Berlinerblau is concerned "by the degree to which explicitly confessional researchers sit on editorial boards of major journals, steering committees, search committees, and the hierarchy of the Society of Biblical Literature."

In contrast to Michael V. Fox, Berlinerblau does not appreciate believers who attempt to compartmentalize their faith and their scholarship into separate worlds. "It is another category of Biblicists that, to my mind, is far more problematic" Berlinerblau explains. "It is comprised of researchers who in every facet of their private lives are practicing Jews or Christians but who--somehow--deny that this may influence their professional scholarly work (which just happens to concern those documents that are the fount of Judaism and Christianity!)"

Sounding slightly less alarmist than Fox, Berlinerblau warns of "a collective ideational drift in the field" of biblical studies--"one that makes it difficult to think or speak about the Scripture in certain ways."

Berlinerblau must be given credit for a finely-tuned sense of humor. Consider this paragraph: "Assume for a moment that you are an atheist exegete. Now please follow my instructions. Peruse the listings in Openings [a listing of academic posts looking to be filled]. Understand that your unique skills and talents are of no interest to those institutions listed there with the words 'Saint' and 'Holy' and 'Theological' and 'Seminary' in their names. This leaves, per year, about two or three advertised posts in biblical studies at religiously un-chartered institutions of higher learning. Apply for those jobs. Get rejected. A few months later learn--preferably while consuming donuts with a colleague--that the position was filled by a graduate of a theological seminary. Realize that those on the search committee who made this choice all graduated from seminaries themselves. Curse the gods."