Search Results for: louden

Table of Nations and other Post Flood events — [Biblical Creation Accounts/Plato’s Timaeus-Critias – 7d]

The survival of humans and animals in an ark owes more to Mesopotamian than Greek antecedents, but the division of the known world into 70 nations in Genesis 10 follows Greek patterns of the genealogical organization of nations descending from eponymous founders . . . (Gmirkin, 230) The Table of Nations Once again Gmirkin detects … Continue reading “Table of Nations and other Post Flood events — [Biblical Creation Accounts/Plato’s Timaeus-Critias – 7d]”

Biblical Creation Accounts and Plato – 1

Similarities between the Pentateuch and Greek literature have long been noted and discussed in scholarly literature, but most of those discussions have assumed that the Greeks and the authors of the biblical books were independently drawing on Asiatic stories or even that some Greeks were exposed to translations of parts of the Pentateuch. (Evangelia Dafni … Continue reading “Biblical Creation Accounts and Plato – 1”

conclusion … Biblical Narratives, Archaeology, Historicity – Essays in Honour of Thomas L. Thompson

The previous posts in this series: 25th August 2020 (introduction and Part 1 and half of Part 2) 27th August 2020 (completion of Part 2) 28th August 2020 (first half of Part 3) This post concludes my overview of the festschrift to Thomas L. Thompson on his 80th birthday. I hope to post soon a … Continue reading “conclusion … Biblical Narratives, Archaeology, Historicity – Essays in Honour of Thomas L. Thompson”

When is a parallel a real parallel and not parallelomania?

The question of parallels has been raised in different posts and comments lately on Vridar. Firstly, I questioned Joseph Atwill’s claim that there was a parallel between Jesus calling disciples to become “fishers of men” beside the “sea of Galilee” and a scene in Josephus’ War where Romans kill drowning Judeans in a battle that … Continue reading “When is a parallel a real parallel and not parallelomania?”

Two Mini-Apocalypses, Greek and Biblical & A Common Mythic Grammar

Stop me if you’ve heard this one before…. There was once a very pious man who lived in a city that had been taken over by very wicked people. Messengers from the deity came to visit that pious man and were very impressed with his hospitality toward them even though he did not know they … Continue reading “Two Mini-Apocalypses, Greek and Biblical & A Common Mythic Grammar”

Genesis to Kings, the work of a single authorship?

I am copying here a comment that Philippe Wajdenbaum made in relation to another post. (I have reformatted the original.) Many thanks for this post, and for the quality of your blog. Russell Gmirkin’s “Plato and the Creation of the Hebrew Bible” is a most important book that will elicit a paradigm shift in biblical … Continue reading “Genesis to Kings, the work of a single authorship?”

John the Baptist Foreshadowed in Homer’s Odyssey?

Another interesting observation in Bruce Louden‘s Homer’s Odyssey and the Near East is his drawing a possible link between John the Baptist and Halitherses in the Odyssey. Louden explains that Halitherses is an aged prophet, close to the hero Odysseus, who warns the nobles in Odysseus’ absence to stop their evil plans or they will … Continue reading “John the Baptist Foreshadowed in Homer’s Odyssey?”

Jesus: a synthesis of five traditional mythical figures in ancient myths

Bruce Louden is Professor in the Languages and Linguistics Department at the University of Texas at El Paso. He has written several works on Homeric literature and I am sharing here a small extract from his latest, Homer’s Odyssey and the Near East. Louden is a classicist, and what he writes here is similar to … Continue reading “Jesus: a synthesis of five traditional mythical figures in ancient myths”