2018-06-27

Monty Python’s Analysis of Historical Jesus Scholarship

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

by Neil Godfrey

A funny thing happened this morning on my way through conservative media sites. I had stopped to read something about Monty Python and political correctness when a remark about a “riotous diversity” of schools of thoughts in psychology reminded me of chaotic diversity in historical Jesus and Christian origins studies:

Piccionelli doesn’t in any way dispute that psychology is based on medical and biological truths. But he is saying that the field has been overrun by sectarians, charlatans, and, well, crackpots: “There are something like 300 schools of thought in psychology, from Freudianism to Jungianism to Structuralism to yadda yadda. And now, of course, PC has created a kind of politicized psychology.”

Such a vast variety of thinking isn’t the stuff of science because science is, by definition, rigorous: “By contrast, too much of psychology falls within the realm of personal belief—more like, say, religion.”

If the shoe fits, etc.

Oh the irony, the irony. What other field could produce a volume like . . .

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3 thoughts on “Monty Python’s Analysis of Historical Jesus Scholarship”

Arkenaten says:

2018-06-27 10:37:23 GMT+0000 at 10:37

”Have I got a big nose mum?”

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Bob Jase says:

2018-06-27 16:29:39 GMT+0000 at 16:29

“He’s not the Messiah. He’s a very naughty boy! Now, piss off!”

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db says:

2018-06-27 16:31:20 GMT+0000 at 16:31

Price, Robert M. (4 February 2010). “Response to James D. G. Dunn”. in James K. Beilby, Paul Rhodes Eddy. The Historical Jesus: Five Views. InterVarsity Press. p. 227:

Various hearers of Jesus may well be imagined as unwittingly embellishing their Lord’s teachings as they meant to do nothing but pass them along. I cannot be too severe with the man in Monty Python’s Life of Brian (of Nazareth) who thought he had heard Jesus say, “Blessed are the cheese makers,” nor of his neighbor who glossed the saying to include “any manufacturers of dairy products.”

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