Musings on biblical studies, politics, religion, ethics, human nature, tidbits from science
(the full series is archived in the “RELIGION:Book reviews:Winell” category in the right column)
A dedicated religious life can be so busy (part of the problem but that’s another topic) that I used to draw up a priority list to help me keep my energies “correctly focussed” at all times. At the top of the list was always “God” or words similar to what that idea meant.
Continue reading “Dysfunctional fundamentalist families (6): ever-present higher purpose”
Though I refer to “lazy historians” here, this piece is really written for “lazy readers” of “biblical history” — not that many are really lazy. But not all are aware that modern critical techniques applied to the Bible are not a reflection of anti-religious bias but are rather an application of modern critical historical tools to biblical texts. It is the biblical apologist who is often the one wanting specialist treatment of his texts, not the secular critic.
“Laziness is common among historians. When they find a continuous account of events for a certain period in an ‘ancient’ source, one that is not necessarily contemporaneous with the events, they readily adopt it. They limit their work to paraphrasing the source, or, if needed, to rationalisation.” — Liverani, Myth and politics in ancient Near Eastern historiography, p.28.
Continue reading “Lazy historians and their ancient sources”