From Prof. Daniel N. Robinson’s “Great Ideas of Philosophy, 2nd Edition” (The Great Courses Series)

Something momentous takes places when a culture takes the position that the problem of knowledge is essentially a religious problem and invests its credulity in a denominated group of official interpreters whose judgments on matters of this kind are taken to be incorrigible.

…

Once one confers on a select and denominated group ultimate epistemological authority on core questions arising from the problem of knowledge, the near inevitable result is philosophical paralysis.

What is more likely to happen is that positions will become quite hardened and the only thing left for scholarship is to interpret the words of the wise. So the entire debate now is not about the nature of truth, but about how a text or holy maxim is to be understood.

What the leaders of thought in the ancient Greek world might be inclined to say is, “This may be the best way to get to heaven – but surely not to the moon.”