Good Bereans?

Evangelicals love to quote the passage in Acts 17:11 about the faithful Bereans searching the Scriptures to make sure Paul's interpretations are correct. They're great examples of the low-church, Individualist's paradigm that gives responsibility to the laity to judge the teachings of the church given to them.

However, is this what the text is actually teaching? Here are some key points that indicate that this is an abuse of this text.

1. They're in a synagogue with rabbis, not in their homes with their individual Bibles. They are being led by teachers to evaluate Paul's statements.

2. Paul's interpretations are given to him by Christ supernaturally in visions, etc. How exactly are they judging his interpretations in Scripture? They could just give those verses a Jewish spin, or apply anachronistically apply the historic-grammitcal approach and refute what Paul is saying. This gives us an indication that what they are searching is whether or not the Scriptures actually contain the things that Paul is quoting, i.e., that it actually says something Paul says that it says. They're not evaluating his interpretations. How exactly does one evaluate an interpretation that had to be revealed to him? In fact, in the Greek it literally just says that they daily examined the Scriptures, not to check his interpretations, but to see τὰς γραφὰς εἰ ἔχοι ταῦτα οὕτως "whether they held these things likewise," i.e., as Paul had said the Sciptures held these things.

3. How was it Luke's point in including this verse to argue that every laymen should check his Bible teachers if, in fact, the average laymen did not own his own Bible and study it personally, nor would he until the advent of the Gutenberg Press 1500 years later?

4. Ephesians 4 lays out that God gives teachers in various forms to the church in order to equip and grow it. Paul instructs Timothy to preach and teach the Word. Elders are also to teach and are qualified by their teaching ability in contrast to even deacons much less laymen. Laymen are never told to study their own Bibles in order to become equipped and discern for themselves what is true and false in a person's teaching. Again, they don't even have them. This means that God would actually require laymen to be faithful in an area they cannot be for another 1500 years. That narrative fits the common Evangelical/Baptist idea that the church essentially fell off the planet until they came along, but it doesn't fit Jesus words very well that the gates of Hades would never prevail against the church.

5. Evangelicalism's individualism is very much a rejection of the biblical and historical means by which believers are equipped and given discernment. As such, it is both unbiblical and historically anachronistic.

I realize that children of the post-enlightenment world have a radical mistrust of authority. They don't want to be dependent upon others. Such ideas scare them. "Sounds like a cult!" they proclaim with zeal as they comfort themselves in their radical departure from the biblical means of discipleship. But everyone is already dependent upon other people who have taught them, books, music, etc. The issue is what source the Bible wants people to be dependent upon. Ultimately, it is a trust in God, upon Whom we are all dependent, that He will lead His people to the right place and into the truth, but that trust must be coupled with an attitude of teachableness toward His Word and faithfulness in one's life.