Musings on biblical studies, politics, religion, ethics, human nature, tidbits from science
I disengaged from the question that was being asked, falling on the last resort of the scholarly scoundrel: “I’m just trying to figure out what really happened!” (Daniel Boyarin) Thanks to Jim Davila‘s PaleoJudaica.com blog I see the JWeekly has published a lengthy article on one of my go-to scholars, Daniel Boyarin. Daniel Boyarin — the Talmudist, … Continue reading “Daniel Boyarin”
What is midrash? I use here the explanation of the Jewish scholar Daniel Boyarin: Although a whole library could (and has been) written on midrash, for the present purposes it will be sufficient to define it as a mode of biblical reading that brings disparate passages and verses together in the elaboration of new narratives. … Continue reading “Reading the Gospel of Mark as Midrash”
By the time I finished reading Nanine Charbonnel’s penultimate chapter of Jésus-Christ, sublime figure de papier a queasy sense of déjà vu dragged my mind back decades to a time when I believed that the Bible was a coded book that needed “keys” to open up its true meaning to modern readers. Before Michael Drosnin‘s … Continue reading “Are There Really “Keys” to Understanding the New Testament? (Charbonnel continued)”
3. The Incarnation of the two forms of the Torah, the Written Torah and the Oral Torah Nanine Charbonnel stresses the Jewishness — the “Jewish rootedness” — of the interpretations that have been discussed in this series of posts. In the words (translated) of Jacqueline Genot-Bismuth, The principle of the dissociation of the Message and … Continue reading “Jesus: Incarnation of Written and Oral Torah. part 3 of 3 (Charbonnel contd)”
Nanine Charbonnel’s thesis: Jesus of the gospels originated as a natural product of Jewish interpretation of their Scriptures and belief that the Divine Presence was to be found in the words of the Torah. The Oral Torah was understood to teach how to apply the Written Torah and Jesus was created as the personification of … Continue reading “Jesus: Incarnation of Written and Oral Torah. part 2 of 3 (Charbonnel contd)”
Back to blogging. I have been working for some time on tracking down sources behind several publications, one of them Nanine Charbonnel’s Jésus-Christ, Sublime Figure de Papier. This post is the first of three that wrap up the third chapter of part 2; it is in this chapter that NC brings out the full meaning … Continue reading “Jesus: Incarnation of Written and Oral Torah. part 1 of 3 (Charbonnel contd)”
This post continues an exploration into the origin of the gospel figure of Jesus, in particular the case made by Nanine Charbonnel [NC] in Jésus-Christ, Sublime Figure de Papier. [To readers not so interested in the depth of these posts I have added an apology at the end.] Though Jesus and Christianity appear to most … Continue reading “Jewish Origin of the “Word Became Flesh” / 2 … (Charbonnel: Jésus-Christ, Sublime Figure de Papier)”
This post presents key ideas in the first part of chapter 3 of part 2 of Jésus-Christ, Sublime Figure de Papier by Nanine Charbonnel. All posts are archived here. So to say that Jesus became flesh the evangelist John can say Jesus “tabernacled” or “tented” among his people just as God once occupied the tabernacle … Continue reading “The Jewish Origins of the Word Becoming Flesh / 1 (Charbonnel: Jésus-Christ, Sublime Figure de Papier)”
Continuing the series Charbonnel: Jesus Christ sublime figure de papier . . . A Messiah to combine the different messianic visions Nanine Charbonnel [NC] has been exploring various ways the Jesus figure of the gospels was drawn to embody certain groups of people and now proceeds to discuss the way our evangelists (gospel authors) also found … Continue reading “Jesus embodies all the Jewish Messiahs — continuing Jésus-Christ, Sublime Figure de Papier”
Nanine Charbonnel casts a net back to catch an interesting observation by the nineteenth-century French Jewish scholar Joseph Salvador who wrote that since early Christian writings were in the tradition of Jewish writings they had to be interpreted in the same way as Jewish writings. That sounds mundane enough, but he went on to point … Continue reading “How Collective Messianic Figures Mutated into Jesus — continuing Jésus-Christ, Sublime Figure de Papier”
(updated 2 hours after first posting) This post is a distillation of the chapter “Why Ignatius Invented Judaism” by Daniel Boyarin in The Ways That Often Parted: Essays in Honor of Joel Marcus. It covers the same questions addressed by Roger Parvus (see sidebox) but with a different hypothesis. Roger Parvus posted a series on … Continue reading “How Ignatius Cut Christianity Off From its Jewish Roots”
This post follows on from A Midrashic Hypothesis for the Gospels . We are going through Jésus-Christ, Sublime Figure de Papier by Nanine Charbonnel. All posts so far are archived at Charbonnel: Jesus Christ sublime figure de papier. Nanine Charbonnel [NC] at this point begins to study how the fictive figure of Jesus in the … Continue reading “How Jewish Gospels Became Christian Gospels”
Free for all who are interested: Sage publishers have made one of their recently published articles open access: Méndez, H. (2020). “Did the Johannine Community Exist?” Journal for the Study of the New Testament, 42(3), 350–374. https://doi.org/10.1177/0142064X19890490 Speaking of devils, the same themes of false (literary) communities and false witnesses (Beloved Disciple) have been addressed … Continue reading “Once More: The Fictions of the Beloved Disciple and Johannine Community”
Continuing my reading of part 2 of Nanine Charbonnel’s Jésus-Christ, Sublime Figure de Papier . . . . . . . o . . . At the heart of Nanine Charbonnel’s thesis lies the question of how much we read in the gospels was written in a figurative sense and how much literal. Arthur Schopenhauer … Continue reading “A Midrashic Hypothesis for the Gospels”