Musings on biblical studies, politics, religion, ethics, human nature, tidbits from science
It seems obvious to most scholars that our estimate of the age of a certain book . . . must be founded on information contained in the book itself and not on other information, and the estimate should certainly not be based on the existence of a historical background that may never have existed. The … Continue reading “Scientific and Unscientific Dating of the Gospels”
Most of us have been conditioned by the conventional wisdom that the Old Testament books were written between the eighth and fifth centuries. But there is no independent evidence for the existence of any of the Bible’s books or any knowledge of biblical traditions (Davies, 1992 and Vridar.info notes), nor any evidence for the practice … Continue reading “Where Did the God of the Bible Come From? – [Biblical Creation Accounts/Plato’s Timaeus-Critias – 8]”
Dr Sarah of FreethoughtBlogs.com Geeky Humanist has posted two interesting posts in favour of the historicity of Jesus. It makes a wonderful change to read arguments on this topic that are expressed in a civil and calmly reasoned tone. Her first post is Jesus mythicism vs. Jesus historicity: an argument in favour of the latter; her … Continue reading “A Response to Dr Sarah, Geeky Humanist, on the Jesus Question”
… Continuing from PZ Myers interviews a historian about Jesus mythicism and How do historians decide who was historical, who fictional? –o– PZ Myers asks: How do we approach this kind of topic? Eddie Marcus, introduced as a professional historian, responds: Eddie Marcus informs listeners that his expertise is in Australian culture and history, not … Continue reading “How do we approach the question of Jesus being historical or mythical?”
Is it possible that our canonical gospels, even the apparently pioneering Gospel of Mark, were really composed well into the second century? The possibility has been argued by a few and I don’t discount it. I often find myself suspecting it is true although very often for the sake of argument I will assume that at … Continue reading “Aesop, Guide to a Very Late Date for the Gospels?”
I have been posting insights from Russell Gmirkin’s Plato and the Creation of the Hebrew Bible (archived here) in which he argues that both many core and peripheral features of the text of the Hebrew Bible bear closer similarities to Classical Greek writings and practices than to what we find in ancient Mesopotamian and Levantine culture. … Continue reading “How Does One Date the Old Testament Writings?”
A new post has appeared on the Weststar Institute’s blog, 8 tips for dating early Christian texts. It covers considerable detail for both relative and absolute dating. My earlier post, Scientific and Unscientific Dating of the Gospels, was a summary of Niels Peter Lemche’s explanation of valid methods to arrive at an absolute date range … Continue reading “How To Date Early Christian Texts”
. This post concludes my series on Crossley’s Why Christianity Happened: A Sociohistorical Account of Christian Origins (26-50 CE). The previous post is here. All posts on this book, both the recent ones from 2014 and those from 2010-11, are archived here. . Misguided equivalence How is one meant to respond to the words of … Continue reading “A Secular Approach to Christian Origins Compromised by Faith and Theology”
It seems the topic of the day is Amanda Witmer’s article in The Bible and Interpretation, Jesus, the Gospels and History. It covers many points I have addressed often enough here, and that others have addressed at length, so I will refer only in brief to some of these arguments in my little contribution to … Continue reading “Amanda Witmer on “Jesus, the Gospels and Historicity””
This post recapitulates earlier posts on the Documentary Hypothesis and introduces Philippe Wajdenbaum’s case for comparing the Bible with Classical Greek literature and finding the biblical author’s (sic) sources of inspiration there. Late last year I wrote Who Wrote the Bible? Rise of the Documentary Hypothesis. That post outlined the milestones towards the DH as … Continue reading “Collapse of the Documentary Hypothesis (1) & Comparing the Bible with Classical Greek Literature”
This post continues from my post some weeks ago in which I covered primarily Philippe Wajdenbaum’s account of the rise of the Documentary Hypothesis. At that time in one of the comments I explained I had paused to take stock of how best to address the challenge that has arisen against the Documentary Hypothesis. This … Continue reading “Who wrote the Bible? (2) Challenging the Documentary Hypothesis”
In my previous post presenting a few comments by social anthropologist Philippe Wajdenbaum from his thesis Argonauts of the Desert I quoted his summary conclusion of a Claude Lévi-Straussian structural analysis of the Bible: The Bible is a Hebrew narrative tainted with theological and political philosophy and inspired by the writings of Plato, one that is embellished with … Continue reading “Anthropologist’s analysis of the Bible and of Biblical Studies as a variant of the Bible’s myth”
Niels Peter Lemche has a chapter in Lester Grabbe’s Did Moses Speak Attic titled, “The Old Testament – A Hellenistic Book?” Here are a few highlights from it. The first point here should stand out as equally relevant for New Testament studies. NT studies digression Historical Jesus/Christian origin scholars should have this framed and displayed … Continue reading “The Old Testament – A Hellenistic Book? (and other digressions)”