2012-06-06

Where to restart blogging?

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by Neil Godfrey

It’s great to have Tim as a co-blogger — as well as recent posts from Earl and Roger — so my occasional absences should scarcely be noticed.

Since my last blogpost more books have come my way, and contrary to aspersions from Jesus Process ©™® intellects I really do read books, even whole ones, before bringing them here for discussion. One of them (Why Did They Write This Way?) discusses the literature of the Hebrew Bible and expresses some curious ideas such as the fundamental necessity for independent testimony to serve as controls to enable us to decide if our biblical accounts are historically reliable or not. I guess many historical Jesus scholars will be able to dismiss this logic and methodology because it is only relevant to the historical analysis of documents that have nothing to do with Christian origins.

Another newly published work (Christ Among the Messiahs) argues that Paul’s concept of “Messiah” or “Christ” needs to be understood as part of the broad mosaic of Jewish understandings of the term and not as something oddly mutated into an idiosyncratic cultic idea. I’m wondering what implications such an argument might have for our understanding of the emergence of Christianity. A third (The Quest for the Origin of John’s Gospel) explores the relationship of the Gospel of John with the Synoptic Gospels. And I want to catch up, also with the latest by Steven Pinker and David Brooks. And there are still scores of older ones I want to blog more about. But if I start with any of these I will miss the tedium of bothering with the three processed cheeses fun of huffing and casing and fishing with the flavour of last month. Continue reading “Where to restart blogging?”