2019-10-30

Reviews — past and next

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

by Neil Godfrey

I have compiled the ten posts reviewing Raphael Lataster’s Questioning the Historicity of Jesus into a single PDF file and made it available to anyone interested through Dropbox.

I am looking forward to reviewing next, engaging in similar depth, M. David Litwa’s How the Gospels Became History: Jesus and Mediterranean Myths.

There are several other works in my “to do” basket. One task at a time.

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6 thoughts on “Reviews — past and next”

Peter Grullemans says:

2019-10-30 12:06:58 GMT+0000 at 12:06

Great work Neil. You may be interested in the discussion on mythicism with both Robert M Price and Joe Atwill. Please take this as a goodwill gesture even though I think we agree to disagree on my view, there was indeed at the turn of BCE/AD a formidable, extensive and enduring threat to Roman hegemony by the Jewish religion from which it is reasonable to allow the hypothesis of Roman provenance of the Gospels.
.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pfXhUJ2fdwE

Reply
1. Neil Godfrey says:
  
  2019-10-30 23:25:17 GMT+0000 at 23:25
  
  Like a believer giving a bible to an atheist as a goodwill gesture!! 😉
  
  Reply
Bwian says:

2019-10-30 21:38:22 GMT+0000 at 21:38

Litwa is interviewed about his book at some length on the New Books Network Biblical studies podcast 19 August.

Reply
1. Neil Godfrey says:
  
  2019-10-30 23:23:41 GMT+0000 at 23:23
  
  Which can be accessed @ https://newbooksnetwork.com/m-david-litwa-how-the-gospels-became-history-jesus-and-mediterranean-myths-yale-up-2019/
  
  Reply
db says:

2019-11-02 04:25:07 GMT+0000 at 04:25

Please consider an article on Adamczewski’s 2014 commentary on Mark:

• Adamczewski, Bartosz (2014). The Gospel of Mark: A Hypertextual Commentary. Peter Lang Edition. ISBN 978-3-631-64715-8.

[ABSTRACT:] This commentary demonstrates that the Gospel of Mark is a result of a consistent, strictly sequential, hypertextual reworking of the contents of three of Paul’s letters: Galatians, First Corinthians and Philippians. Consequently, it shows that the Marcan Jesus narratively embodies the features of God’s Son who was revealed in the person, teaching, and course of life of Paul the Apostle. The analysis of the topographic and historical details of the Marcan Gospel reveals that they were mainly borrowed from the Septuagint and from the writings of Flavius Josephus. Other literary motifs were taken from various Jewish and Greek writings, including the works of Homer, Herodotus, and Plato. The Gospel of Mark should therefore be regarded as a strictly theological-ethopoeic work, rather than a biographic one.

Lataster, Raphael (2019). Questioning the Historicity of Jesus: Why a Philosophical Analysis Elucidates the Historical Discourse. BRILL. p. 257. ISBN 9789004408784.

New Testament scholar Bartosz Adamczewski, who is sceptical over claims made about oral traditions, and sees Mark’s Jesus as deriving from Paul’s writings, Paul’s life, the Septuagint, Josephus’ writings, and various Pagan (and fictional) texts, to the extent that “Mark should therefore be regarded as a strictly theological-ethopoeic work, rather than a biographic one” [Adamczewski 2014].

• Adamczewski, Bartosz (2013). Hypertextuality and Historicity in the Gospels. Peter Lang. ISBN 9783631628980.

In general, it can be argued that the Gospels were not written with the aim of recording the course of life, deeds, and words of the historical, “fleshly” Jesus. The Gospels are results of hypertextual reworking of the letters of Paul the Apostle and of other early Christian writings, which were regarded by the evangelists as the sources for the knowledge of the real, “spiritual” Jesus Christ, who came to be known to the world in the course of [the] life, in the person, and in the writings of his particularly chosen Apostle, and who still lives in his Church. The research on the historical Jesus ought to take this basic feature of the Gospels into serious consideration. —(pp. 11–12)

Cf. Godfrey, Neil (9 February 2019). “The Problem of the Reconstruction of the Life, Deeds, Words of Jesus”. Vridar.

Cf. Paschke, Boris (2017). “Hypertextuality and Historicity in the Gospels, written by Adamczewski, Bartosz”. Journal for the Study of the Historical Jesus. 15 (2–3): 347–349. doi:10.1163/17455197-01502010.

Reply
1. Neil Godfrey says:
  
  2019-11-02 21:59:43 GMT+0000 at 21:59
  
  It will be a while before I do that. I have certain critical difficulties with Adamczewski’s work.
  
  Reply

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