There is nothing wrong with any person being erudite in any chosen field. Let's get that straight, at the outset, for to be erudite is to be able to teach or to write as a learned person who is fit to instruct and to train others. This means that you need to spell out what you mean by "***overly*** erudite". Saying "***overly academic***" does not explain anything because what might be overly academic to you might be needfully instructive to another person. The impression given is that you consider certain Christian teachers to be "towering intellectuals" who you then compare with pastors in Charismatic/Pentecostal circles. That's a tad insulting to the latter. Some of them may be highly qualified, academically, but they don't make that known, simply dropping any academic presentation when preaching.

What does the word of God say? We are told that men like Peter and John were "unschooled, ordinary men" who had been with Jesus (Acts 4:13). Yet then we get Paul who was peerless in his education, a linguist, excelling in Judaic law, taught at the feet of Gamaliel, and God also used him to preach and teach (Acts 22:3). Some of Paul's writings are intensely deep. Some people took his hard sayings to twist them (2 Peter 3:15-16) - "to their own destruction". But verse 15 also tells us that God gave Paul the wisdom he had! If some people found him too difficult to understand, that reflects badly on their ignorance, and not on Paul's erudition! ***Did Paul's intellectualism stop him being an outstanding preacher and teacher of the gospel? No, it did not.***

So there we have a good example to follow when it comes to teaching the Bible, which is equally as good as the example of the unschooled first century teachers. Both 'types' are needed. But there is a key factor over-riding all of this.

It is only those who have sat at the feet of Jesus, to be taught of him, who are then qualified by the indwelling Holy Spirit. Where are the believers who search and study the word of God, day after day - not to gain academic qualifications, or to promote a theological stance, but to be able to live Christ and to point to him, by word and deed? Yet if they gain academic qualifications along the way, there's nothing wrong with that. However, when a truly godly person teaches or preaches, the difference between that and merely head-trip teaching and preaching is like the difference between night and day. 

So, whether erudite or stumbling in speech or writing, the key is that the Holy Spirit works through any clean vessel to point others to Christ, and the way of salvation.  Those who don't rely on that are a stumbling-block, not only to themselves but to all who are impressed by them.  Christians who fear the Lord and who tremble at his word do not gather teachers around themselves to have their ears tickled:

> "For the time will come when men will not put up with sound doctrine.
> Instead, to suit their own desires, they will gather around them a
> great number of teachers to say what their itching ears want to hear.
> They will turn their ears away from the truth and turn aside to
> myths." - 2 Timothy 4:3 NIV 1987 ed.

***Two particular drawbacks*** with placing great emphasis on academic study in order to preach and teach the Bible is the likelihood of lack of personal spiritual experience of salvation, and lack of God's actual calling to embark upon the venture.

**The real drawback is not in the level of study**, but in not being humble before God, dependent on the Holy Spirit to teach, and in people being eager to sit back and let others teach them rather than going daily to "the scriptures to examine whether those things are really so" - Acts 17:11.