2018-07-17

Two interesting blogs

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by Neil Godfrey

Both address topics dear to my own heart:

The first, by Omri Van Peer, Cleverly Devised Myth? Omri has put in an enormous amount of work identifying possible links between the Gospel of Mark and the Septuagint (=Greek) version of the Old Testament. One does not have to agree with all of his inferences or connections to appreciate the abundance of though-provoking observations he makes. As Omri himself points out, best to start at the beginning: http://cleverlydevisedmyth.blogspot.com/2018/07/cleverly-devised-myth-is-marks-gospel.html

The second, Jonathan’s Musings, is not so new but it has moved from the Freethoughtblogs base. John’s interests overlap with those I sometimes post about, especially posts on the literary/biographical character of the gospels.

 

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3 thoughts on “Two interesting blogs”

  1. Thank you for noticing Neil!
    Everyone who peruses my Mark commentary, please forgive my eccentric way of expressing myself—I have never written anything before.
    This truly is a new perspective worth presenting on the gospel narrative’s composition and I wanted only to make it available for free online, though it is very unpolished and perhaps prone to laconic tangents.
    I am very ill and will probably not have the time to edit it into a publishable form but
    I hope others can make some use of this work. I have been repeatedly astonished at the cleverness of this author ‘Mark,’ who seems to me greatly misunderstood.
    One doesn’t need to agree that this work is a anti-Judaic Hellenistic novel to appreciate how marvelous Mark’s scribal dexterity can be. In my research I simply kept myself open-minded enough to be able to see through the text and peer into it’s mental inspiration—whether this was via literary polemics or the ‘holy spirit’ as the text would have it.

    1. Any thoughts? Per the following authors:

      Price (2003). “Sources”. The Incredible Shrinking Son of Man: How Reliable Is the Gospel Tradition?. Prometheus Books, Publishers. pp. 31, 41f, n. 14. ISBN 978-1-61592-028-0.

      A new wave of critics suggest that the evangelists’ sources were literary sources. Randel Helms, John Dominic Crossan, Earl Doherty, and others have shown the surprising extent to which gospel narrative is simply rewritten Old Testament material. [Randel Helms, ”Gospel Fictions” (Amherst, N .Y.: Prometheus Books, 1989); John Dominic Crossan, ”The Cross That Spoke: The Origins of the Passion Narrative” (San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1988); Thomas L. Brodie, “Luke the Literary Interpreter: Luke-Acts as a Systematic Rewriting and Updating of the Elijah-Elisha Narrative in 1 and 2 Kings” (Ph.D. diss., Pontifical University of Thomas Aquinas, 1981); Earl Doherty, ”The Jesus Puzzle: Did Christianity Begin with a Mythical Christ”.” (Ottawa: Canadian Humanist Publications, 1999).]

      Price (2010). “Jesus at the Vanishing Point”. In James K. Beilby, Paul Rhodes Eddy. The Historical Jesus: Five Views. InterVarsity Press. p. 68, n.39. ISBN 978-0-8308-7853-6.

      For the scriptural roots of all four Gospels and Acts (and in greater detail), see Robert M. Price, “New Testament Narrative as Old Testament Midrash,” in ”Encyclopedia of Midrash: Biblical Interpretation in Formative Judaism”, ed. Jacob Neusner and Alan J. Avery Peck (Leiden: Brill, 2005), 1:534-73. Besides [John Dominic] Crossan, [Randel] Helms, the Millers [Dale and Patricia] and [Thomas L.] Brodie, I owe a great debt to the work of John Bowman, ”The Gospel of Mark: The New Christian Jewish Passover Haggadah”, Studia Post-Biblica 8 (Leiden: Brill, 1965); J. Duncan M. Derrett, ”The Making of Mark: The Scriptural Bases of the Earliest Gospel”, vols. 1 and 2 (Shipston-on-Stour, U.K.: P. Drinkwater, 1985); Frank Kermode, ”The Genesis of Secrecy: On the Interpretation of Narrative”, The Charles Eliot Norton Lectures 1977-1978 (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1979); Wolfgang Roth, ”Hebrew Gospel: Cracking the Code of Mark” (Oak Park, Ill.: Meyer-Stone Books, 1988); and Rikki E. Watts, ”Isaiah’s New Exodus and Mark”, Wissenschaftliche Untersuchungen zum Neuen Testament 2, Reihe 88 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1997).

      Brodie (2012). “epilogue: Bart D. Ehrman’s ‘Did Jesus Exist?’ “. Beyond the Quest for the Historical Jesus: Memoir of a Discovery. Sheffield Phoenix Press. p. 229. ISBN 978-1-907534-58-4.

      Since around 1970 an alternative explanation of the New Testament and related texts has been emerging. Researchers are recognizing precise ways in which New Testament texts are explained as depending not on oral tradition but on older literature, especially older scripture. […] The dependence of the gospels on the Old Testament and on other extant texts is incomparably clearer and more verifiable than its dependence on any oral tradition — as seen, for instance, in the thorough dependence of Jesus’ call to disciples (Lk. 9:57-62) on Elijah’s call (1 Kgs 19). The sources supply not only a framework but a critical mass which pervades the later text.

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