It’s already got seven billion hits so most of you have probably already seen it, but for other latecomers like me . . .
2010-12-27
Digital Story of the Nativity
Author: Neil Godfrey
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2010-12-26
Do Mark’s Primitive Language, Aramaicisms and Theology Really Argue for Markan Priority?
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by Neil Godfrey
This series of posts (previous one here) on Dungan’s summary of arguments for the Gospel of Mark being the last of the canonical Gospels to have been composed is contrarily working backwards. My first post (the one previous to this) outlined Dungan’s final points in his chapter. I am saving his “first points” for last. They address an interesting phenomenon in biblical studies that mythicists certainly know exists among these scholarly ranks: winning arguments by means of ad hominem attacks and declaring the opposition “long since defeated” when it has merely been ignored. (Well what do you expect from a vestigial religion study from medieval days?) And don’t forget the circular reasoning that becomes so embedded in the conventional wisdom that most who read it tend to be hypnotized by the spiral and come to believe they are travelling through the straightest of tunnels.
But to continue here with one of Dungan’s argument for Markan posteriority from somewhere in the middle of his discussion . . . .
Dungan structures his discussion on Mark being the last written of the canonical Gospels around B. H. Streeter’s formulations. In chapter 7, The Fundamental Solution, of The Four Gospels (1924),
The primitive character of Mark is further shown by
(a) the use of phrases likely to cause offence, which are omitted or toned down in the other Gospels,
(b) roughness of style and grammar, and the preservation of Aramaic words.
Since these are generalized headings Dungan zeroes in on some of Streeter’s specifics that fall under them. One is Streeter’s explanation for Matthew’s and Luke’s “improvements on Mark” is that they “have a reverential motive”. Again from the same link to chapter 7 above, Streeter wrote: Continue reading “Do Mark’s Primitive Language, Aramaicisms and Theology Really Argue for Markan Priority?”
2010-12-25
Jesus Came Again: A Parable — Vardis Fisher
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by Neil Godfrey
Who/What is Jesus?
The Author’s Forward from the novel published 1956:
“It is a serious fact,” wrote Professor Archibald Duff some years ago, “that virtually all men are wondering just what Jesus was.” It is a curious fact that they should wonder, for the truth of it was given by a great Jew nineteen hundred years ago. “Yea,” cried Paul, “though I had known Christ after the flesh, yet now would I know such a Christ no more!” There it is, all of it, and the truth of it still endures.
“It is an unpardonable historical blunder,” said Weiss, “to suppose that the faith of primitive Christendom was based on the impression of the earthly image of Christ.” The same thought, Paul’s thought, has been stated by many other scholars. “We must not confound the Nazarene,” said Professor Guignebert, “with the ideal which he has come to represent since the birth of Christian dogma.” “The religion of Jesus,” said Professor Bacon, “must be accepted, if at all, on authority. The religion about Jesus is eternally self-verifying because it is a religion of the Spirit.” “He is beautiful, strong, and good,” said Couchoud, “because of the multitudes of men who have given him the best of themselves.” Continue reading “Jesus Came Again: A Parable — Vardis Fisher”
Atheist Christmas
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by Neil Godfrey
I was going to keep this a Christmas-free zone but the quiet here today is screaming at me to say something. I can understand atheists in Western countries who feel uncomfortable with Christmas. There it is closely tied up with religious associations.
The strength of these religious trappings varies, I am sure, with each cultural locale. There are many who can and do love Christmas without giving a thought to its religious origins.
While living in Asia I could not resist asking some Chinese whom I knew were either Buddhists or Taoists, if anything, why they were wearing Santa hats and wishing all and sundry Merry Christmas. Their answer: “It’s Christmas. Everyone loves Christmas.”
I even saw a Moslem girl happily wearing a Santa cap over her head-scarf.
But seeing Christmas being celebrated alongside the Chinese New Year alongside Deepavali alongside Hari Raya and a half dozen others it drove home to me that it just one of many social rituals that would have to be invented if it did not exist from time immemorial. Humans are social creatures and rituals are important to us as social creatures and that’s that. There’s always room for the odd individual to bow out for a time, shorter or longer.
The fact that it has religious associations probably has more to do with the centrality of religion in the lives of people than with the festival itself, if that makes sense.
Here are a couple of other views: Continue reading “Atheist Christmas”
Embarrassing failure of the criterion of embarrassment
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by Neil Godfrey
So I hear from commenters that a new foray into demolishing mythicism has been launched by James McGrath with yet one more account of the “criterion of embarrassment”. The curious — yet tedious — thing about this is that while McGrath in particular has faulted mythicists for (supposedly) failing to engage with the scholarship on the historical Jesus, he himself, and some of the other more strident critics of mythicism, have notably failed to engage with the mythicist responses to those scholarly arguments.
James McGrath once wrote:
I have not yet seen . . . . a mythicist who engages a scholar like Sanders point by point and argues the case for drawing a different conclusion.
So when I proceeded to engage E. P. Sanders himself “point by point’ — and one of those points was Sanders’ argument for the historicity of the baptism of Jesus — I was disappointed that there was no response from McGrath. But he can no longer say that he has not yet seen a mythicist who engages a scholar like Sanders point by point and argues the case for drawing a different conclusion. I still await an opponent of mythicism to engage with the argument for the non-historicity of the narrative of the baptism of Jesus that I made in the following posts:
Engaging Sanders Point by Point: John the Baptist
Baptism of Jesus is . . . entirely creative literature
There are many possible reasons why McGrath did not respond to these. But what is not clear is why he would still use the criterion of embarrassment, with the baptism of Jesus as a principle case-study, as if no mythicist argument had ever been mounted against it. Why simply repeat the same argument that mythicists have long since responded to and found wanting? Continue reading “Embarrassing failure of the criterion of embarrassment”
2010-12-24
Why might Mark want to abridge the Gospels of Matthew and Luke?
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by Neil Godfrey
There is nothing . . . improbable that for certain purposes an abbreviated version of the Gospel might be desired; but only a lunatic would leave out Matthew’s account of the Infancy, the Sermon on the Mount, and practically all the parables. (Canon Streeter, The Four Gospels, p. 158, cited in Dungan . . .)
David Laird Dungan cited the above passage from Canon Streeter’s The Four Gospels, p. 158, in his chapter in Jesus and Man’s Hope.
Marcion’s example
Dungan does proceed to offer evidence from the second century Patristic writings that someone really might have written an abbreviated Gospel that removed all the birth narrative and a very large portion of the teachings of Jesus. He quotes Irenaeus:
[Marcion] mutilates the Gospel which is according to Luke, removing all that is written respecting the generation of the Lord, and setting aside a great deal of the teaching of the Lord . . . (Against Heresies, 1:27:2)
And from the fourth century, Epiphanius:
For indeed [Marcion’s] Gospel appears to resemble Luke, but having neither beginning, middle, nor end [!], giving the appearance of a garment gnawed by many moths (Pan. adv. Haer. 42.11 — Dungan’s quotation, with his emphasis)
The mistake of assuming a single Gospel trajectory Continue reading “Why might Mark want to abridge the Gospels of Matthew and Luke?”
2010-12-23
Comments
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
by Neil Godfrey
I like the idea of blog comments being threaded to enable replies to specific comments to be kept together, but a few times (not often) the comments do get quite numerous and it can be easy to miss someone’s latest contribution if it is nested in the middle of a long series of posts. The alternative is get rid of nesting altogether and have all comments listed in chronological sequence. I am in two minds about it, so am soliciting other views.
If interested do register an opinion in the poll I have set at the top of the left margin or here:
[polldaddy poll=4288732]
“Is This Not the Carpenter? The Question of the Historicity of the Figure of Jesus
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by Neil Godfrey
The introduction of Thomas L. Thompson’s and Thomas Verenna’s edited volume, Is This Not the Carpenter?A Question of Historicity has been published on The Bible and Interpretation.
The first essential step in any historical inquiry
This is a heartening introduction to the essential basics of valid historical methodology that has been very fudgy in the field of historical Jesus studies. The first thing any historian needs to grapple with when undertaking any inquiry is the nature of his or her sources. While probably most biblical scholars have acknowledged that the Gospels are theological narratives that depict a “Christ of faith” rather than a “Jesus of history”, there has at the same time been an assumption that that theological layer has been created to portray what the “historical Jesus” meant to the authors and their readers. Given this assumption, it has been believed that it might be possible to uncover some facts about the historical Jesus nonetheless. Historical Jesus studies have in this way been confused with the question of Christian origins.
The contributions in this book are from a diverse range of scholars. The introduction explains the purpose of the volume:
The essays collected in this volume have a modest purpose. Neither establishing the historicity of an historical Jesus nor possessing an adequate warrant for dismissing it, our purpose is to clarify our engagement with critical historical and exegetical methods in the hopes of enabling the central question regarding the function of New Testament literature to resist the endless production of works on the historical Jesus. Our hope is to open a direct discussion of the question of historicity much in the spirit of the more than decade-long discourse and debate by the European Seminar on Methodology in Israel’s History, which has been so profitably engaged in regard to the historicity of figures and narratives of the Hebrew Bible and the related construction of a history of ancient Palestine.
This sounds a little like an approach I have been suggesting on this blog and elsewhere for some time, so I find such a statement personally encouraging.
Historicity is an assumption Continue reading ““Is This Not the Carpenter? The Question of the Historicity of the Figure of Jesus”
2010-12-22
Double implausibility of the historical Jesus narrative
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by Neil Godfrey
A number of biblical scholars have insisted that the historical Jesus narrative makes far more sense as an explanation for the rise of Christianity than the Christ myth alternative.
At the same time one observes that historical Jesus scholars are often preoccupied attempting to explain two central pillars of the historical explanation that they concede sound implausible.
One is: How to explain why a man who did and said nothing but good came to be crucified (while his followers were not) — such an idea does not make sense;
The other is: How to explain why a man crucified as a criminal was subsequently exalted to divine status by Jews and gentiles — this also does not make sense. Continue reading “Double implausibility of the historical Jesus narrative”
2010-12-21
Crossan’s absolute certainty in the historicity of Christ Crucified
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by Neil Godfrey
I take it absolutely for granted Jesus was crucified under Pontius Pilate. Security about the fact of the crucifixion derives not only from the unlikelihood that Christians would have invented it but also from the existence of two early and independent non-Christian witnesses to it, a Jewish one from 93-94 C.E. and a Roman one from the 110s or 120s C.E. (p. 372 of The Historical Jesus)
That last “but also” part of Crossan’s sentence addresses the only way we can have any certainty about the past: independent evidence, external controls.
Here Crossan goes beyond the usual subjective assertion that Christians would not have made up the story. Here he acknowledges the primary importance of independent corroboration.
This is good. It is exactly what nonbiblical historians do. They work with verifiable facts. Their task is to interpret verifiable facts and explain the known “facts” of history. (Historical Jesus scholars usually busy themselves trying to find what some facts are. Was Jesus a revolutionary or a rabbi? Did he or did he not “cleanse” the Temple? If there are no verifiable facts then they don’t do the history.)
Everything we need to know we learned as children
I have discussed this in some depth in my Historical Facts and Contrasting Methods posts. It’s a simple truism that most of us learned from our parents, read in the Bible, and that carries right through to normative history and modern-day journalism — Don’t believe every word you are told. Check the facts. Test what you hear. Continue reading “Crossan’s absolute certainty in the historicity of Christ Crucified”
2010-12-20
Jesus the New Elijah, and the Gospel Being a Symbolic Tale According to a Scholarly View
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by Neil Godfrey
Continuing from my previous post, this time I’m outlining Spong’s overview of the distinctive way the Gospel of Luke portrays Jesus.
Bishop John Shelby Spong himself is renowned for his views on inclusiveness — that the Church should not discriminate against anyone for any role because of their gender or sexuality. In the Gospel of Matthew he sees a narrative expressing God’s will that “the whole world” will eventually be united in a new Israel that will transform both Jews and gentiles. In the Gospel of Luke he sees the same theme expressed differently. Instead of Jesus being a new and greater Moses as the Lawgiver who was building a new Israel on what he saw as the spiritual heart of Jewish Law, Jesus in Luke’s Gospel is:
- a greater Moses as the Deliverer from Bondage
- the suffering servant of Second Isaiah – representing a new Israel called to servanthood, not to power
- a new and greater Elijah to portray Jesus as “the exalted and universal Christ of heaven and earth.”
I focus first on Luke’s construction of Jesus as an emulation of Elijah.
2010-12-19
John Dominic Crossan the Theologian Explaining the Historicity of Jesus
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by Neil Godfrey
Australia’s Radio National program, The Spirit of Things, aired an interview today with John Dominic Crossan.
If there can be any doubt whether Crossan is a historian AND/OR a theologian it must surely be settled with his comments in this interview.
Well into the interview the presenter, Rachael Kohn, dropped in the question about people who think Jesus was a mythical creation and not historical at all. Did I sense a whiff of giggling ‘how silly’ with this question? Curiosly Kohn said that the idea must tickle the fancy of “atheists”. I had to wonder why. Continue reading “John Dominic Crossan the Theologian Explaining the Historicity of Jesus”
2010-12-18
Jesus, constructed from Moses and other OT passages — according to the Gospel of Matthew
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by Neil Godfrey
One of the first books I read when beginning to question my faith was one that struck my eye while scanning the shelves of a local bookshop, John Shelby Spong’s Rescuing the Bible from Fundamentalism.
It introduced me to many issues being addressed by biblical scholars. I have told the story before, but I like it enough to tell it again: I later had the opportunity to thank Spong personally for assisting me on my journey that took me to atheism. (I don’t think I appreciated at the time that he suffered some grief over his own mentor, Michael Goulder, becoming an atheist, too.)
One observation that Spong addressed was the respective thematic treatments of Jesus in each of the Gospels. The Gospel of Matthew, for example, depicted Jesus as grounded in the Jewish heritage of the Old Testament literature, and especially as a new Moses figure. The Gospel of Luke, on the other hand, portrayed Jesus as having stronger associations with a Gentile community. None of this suggested to me that Jesus himself had no historical basis, but it did help reinforce the idea that the Gospels were themselves literary constructs that stood apart from any clear link to a historical person.
Here is what Spong wrote about Matthew’s portrayal of Jesus as a Moses figure (identified with *), mingled with a few other linkages of Jesus with Jewish scriptures. Continue reading “Jesus, constructed from Moses and other OT passages — according to the Gospel of Matthew”
2010-12-16
How the Faithful Destroy Biblical Stories to Stay Faithful (or the Ecumenical Method of Biblical Historiography)
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by Neil Godfrey
Some call it “harmonization of the Gospels”, but it might also be described as a unique brand of theological historical method. That is, something that theological students do and call “history” so they can sound more like historians (a relatively relevant profession) instead of mere students of theology (a decidedly irrelevant one).
Here’s how it works.
One gospel describes a scene in order to illustrate a certain doctrinal teaching.
Another gospel, with a different doctrinal interest, describes a contrary scene to reflect another doctrine.
The historian (sorry, the theology student) enters and says: Ah, here the historical evidence appears to be contradictory. (Only “appears” contradictory, mind you. Aspiring theologians know that whatever can be seen is not of faith, and it is faith that is all important.)
So the (irrelevant) “theologian” who thinks he/she is a (relatively relevant) “historian” draws on their ecumenical leanings and finds a way to unify the two contradictory (oops, “apparently” contradictory) narratives.
This process is not a mere intellectual conceit. It is a necessary activity for those who need something consistent to believe in.
Here’s a case study to illustrate. It is from Tom Powers’ discussion of the ‘Alexander son of Simon’ ossuary. Continue reading “How the Faithful Destroy Biblical Stories to Stay Faithful (or the Ecumenical Method of Biblical Historiography)”