Musings on biblical studies, politics, religion, ethics, human nature, tidbits from science
In the preceding post I copied extracts from Demetrios Kritsotakis’s thesis Hadrian and the Greek East that illustrated the unprecedented level to which the Roman emperor Hadrian was exalted as a divinity — all in the context of Thomas Witulski’s thesis that the Book of Revelation is best dated to the time of Hadrian (117-138 … Continue reading “Hadrian — Man, Program and Impact in the Context of Revelation”
Revelation 13:11 And I beheld another beast coming up out of the earth; and he had two horns like a lamb, and he spake as a dragon. Thomas Witulski identifies this other beast that arises from the earth with the sophist Antonius Polemon. We introduced him in the post on emperor worship and Revelation. We … Continue reading “Revelation’s Second Beast, the False Prophet”
So you think you can figure out the “seven kings” and work out the time-frame of Rome in the Book of Revelation. Here’s something to push you off-balance with all your ingenuity. It’s from one of those “Dutch Radicals” of a hundred years ago. It’s a slightly edited machine translation. All bolded highlighting is my … Continue reading “On Revelation’s Beast and 666 symbolizing Gnostic Wisdom”
Professor Bruce J. Malina has had a special interest in understanding what was in the minds of the those who wrote, read (and heard being read) the New Testament literature, and in recent posts I have glimpsed a couple of sections of his On the Genre and Message of Revelation where he guides readers to … Continue reading “The Book of Revelation, its original meaning and modern misunderstandings”
Theological Explanation of the Gospels Die theologische Erklärung der Evangelien by Bruno Bauer 1852 I. The theological explanation of the fourth Gospel. 45 For the German Protestant Church, the Johannine age of disintegration and instability began, if we leave Fichte’s declamations to the past as a prophecy of this completion of the indeterminacy that … Continue reading “BRUNO BAUER: Theological Explanation of the Gospels – I. The theological explanation of the fourth Gospel”
Even though I went through a “Hadrian focus” in my reading some years back, I remained unaware of the potential relevance of several details of that emperor’s reign to the Book of Revelation as highlighted by Thomas Witulski’s several works. So when my good friend Serendipity showed me another work independently addressing some of the … Continue reading “Hadrian the God”
314 4. Die Vorgeschichte des Matthäus. 4. The prehistory of Matthew. 314/316 Jn zwei Formen konnte sich die Anschauung von dem Wunder der Empfängniß Jesu darstellen. Das Wunderbare wurde entweder durch die Engelsbotschaft an die Jungfrau einfach angekündigt, das Auffallende, daß eine Jungfrau, die noch von keinem Manne wußte, schwanger wurde, im Voraus gedeutet und … Continue reading “Ch 4 – The Prehistory of Matthew”
Continuing to share my reading of Seth Sanders’ From Adapa to Enoch, Scribal Culture and Religious Vision in Judea and Babylon, last discussed at Ascent of the Sage: “From Adapa to Enoch”, part 2 . . . . We come now to chapter 2, “I Am Adapa!” The Divine Personae of Mesopotamian Scribes. If we … Continue reading “Scholars, Divinities and How the Cosmos was Understood “Scientifically” B.C.E.”
Continuing our discussion of From Adapa to Enoch (Seth Sanders), begun at Heavenly Journeys, from Babylon to Judea . . . . In the previous post we saw the earliest account of a return journey to heaven was that of Etana. Etana ascended to heaven with the aid of an eagle he mercifully restored after … Continue reading “Ascent of the Sage: “From Adapa to Enoch”, part 2″
The Gospel of Matthew opens with the story of the Magi following a star to find the baby Jesus,the gifts of gold, frankincense and myrrh, the flight into Egypt and Herod ordering the massacre of all infants near Bethlehem to be sure of getting rid of the unidentified newborn king. The Gospel of Luke could not be any more different, or … Continue reading “How and Why Luke Changed Matthew’s Nativity of Jesus Story”
The ancient Greek world appears to have been ignorant of the Jews (or even Israel) in Palestine until around the end of the fourth century. I still recall my high school disappointment when I read the famous work of the Greek “father of history”, Herodotus, only to find not a single mention of biblical Judea even though … Continue reading “Judea, an Ideal State of the Greek Philosophers?”
In my previous post I spoke of a leading Context Group scholar, Bruce Malina, who has a particular interest in understanding the New Testament through the minds of first or second century readers. The first chapter of On the Genre and Message of Revelation addresses at length the problem of reading the book of Revelation … Continue reading “The Cosmic Lamb and the Light of the World”
I regularly argue on this blog for an appreciation of the literary nature of the leading characters, episodes and narrative structures in the canonical gospels. So I am looking forward to reading and reviewing Derek Murphy’s Jesus Potter, Harry Christ. My initial response to reading the title was that this was a joke of some … Continue reading “Jesus Potter, Harry Christ”
Some churches read the zillions of verses in the Bible the way psychics read tea leaves. If those church goers compared how astrologers read horoscopes or the way ancient priests compared the entrails of a sheep with the political issues of the state, they would have to admit that despite the difference in their tools, … Continue reading ““scripture interpreting scripture”, a branch of the mantic and the occult”