Musings on biblical studies, politics, religion, ethics, human nature, tidbits from science
The biggie. Much work needs to be done on the children of this category. These need to be greatly reduced in number.
Should this category include the ancient history of Palestine-Judea, including second temple era and Bar Kochba rebellion and rise of rabbinic culture? If so, should Biblical Studies itself be renamed in some way?
Judas was not much worse than the other disciples in the earliest gospel but by the time we read about him in Matthew, Luke and John he has become the arch villain. In the first gospel a case could be made that Judas was not singularly worse than the rest of the Twelve. Continue reading “Why Judas was singled out after Mark’s gospel”
“Epilepsy is regarded as demon possession in the same book people use to condemn homosexuality.
“We have not brought biblical scholarship to people in the pews. I guess the clergy are scared to let the genie out of the bottle.”
That’s from a recent newspaper article.
This is what I liked about Spong when I first discovered his books and then had a chance to meet him soon afterwards. (It’s also one of the reasons for this blog.)
Biblical scholarship has too few of the sorts of books that science has, books that popularize without cheapening the findings of modern research for lay readers. Continue reading “keeping biblical scholarship from the people”
It can be said that the author of Acts knew the story of Ananias and Sapphira as “a piece of floating tradition” and so added it to his novelistic history of the church. But we have no evidence for any such “floating tradition” — this is an assumption based on particular model or hypothesis about the origins of the canonical texts.
It can also be said that the author of Acts got the idea for the story from 1 Corinthians and shaped it to be like a similar story in Joshua. If there is textual evidence for a such a relationship between these accounts, then we have a more economical and preferable explanation for the origin of this story in Acts than the one that assumes a “floating tradition”.
The following is (again) from Pervo: Continue reading “Ananias and Sapphira: tradition or borrowing?”
Richard Pervo offers much to think about in his work Dating Acts: between the evangelists and the apologists. Justice is not done to Pervo’s arguments by summarizing any small section of them in dot-point form. The dot-point notes that I’ve already presented from this book —
— are intended to pique interest and thought only, not to present “the whole argument” by any means.
Summarizing here one more nugget in that book with occasional other comments. This one is headed Matters About Which Luke Is Silent but Not Ignorant (pp.133-135). . . .
Continue reading “4 things Luke knew — but did not say (or hardly said)”
Historians — at least the historians I am most used to reading — attempt to explain facts by demonstrating their relationships with other facts. Continue reading “Doing history, not theology”
A late date and anti-Marcionite context for Luke-Acts not only has the power to explain why Luke may have rejected Matthew’s story of the birth of Jesus, but even more directly why Luke’s genealogy of Jesus is so different from Matthew’s. (The common belief that Luke records Mary’s family line and Matthew Joseph’s is a simplistic rationalization that defies the textual evidence.)
Matthew’s genealogy of Jesus goes back to Abraham and is traced through Solomon. Luke’s bypasses Solomon and traces back to Adam and God himself. Continue reading “The Jesus Genealogies: their different theological significances”
There are arguments for and against Luke having known and used the gospel of Matthew, but one of the stronger arguments against him having done so is that his nativity story appears to owe nothing to Matthew’s – indeed appears to have been composed in complete ignorance of it. Matthew tells the story of the star, the visiting Magi, the infant Jesus being whisked off to Egypt to escape the Herod’s massacre of the infants, and eventual settlement in Nazareth. Luke’s story is as much about the miraculous birth of John the Baptist as it is about Jesus, involves shepherds instead of Magi, no Herodian massacre, and a presentation at the Jerusalem Temple rather than a flight to Egypt.
If Luke as we have it was, with the book of Acts, a response to Marcionism (or even an attempt to baptize Paul into orthodoxy quite apart from Marcionism), then it would seem he would have every reason to dismiss the Matthean nativity totally. Continue reading “A reason Luke might have rejected Matthew’s nativity story”
Luke 1:1-4
Many have undertaken to draw up an account of the things that have been fulfilled among us, just as they were handed down to us by those who from the first were eyewitnesses and servants of the word. Therefore, since I myself have carefully investigated everything from the beginning, it seemed good also to me to write an orderly account for you, most excellent Theophilus, so that you may know the certainty of the things you have been taught.
I am not an expert in biblical Greek. I rely on tools such as lexicons and grammars and dictionaries. But till then my use of those tools has led me to ask the following:
Is there anything in the prologue of Luke that discounts the possibility that he is speaking of written transmission exclusively?
The author begins by reminding readers that many before him have written a gospel-like narrative.
He then says that those who were there from the beginning, the eyewitnesses, “delivered the data” to us. That “delivered” work in Greek is the same as used elsewhere for Christ being delivered up for us, sinners being handed over to Satan, and Paul delivering the decrees from the Jerusalem council to his churches. It doesn’t seem to me to be related in any way at all to a method of delivery, but rather to a fact of delivery, method immaterial.
Is there anything in this prologue that denies the possibility, even plausibility, that the original eyewitnesses were believed to have passed on their understanding through a written narrative?
The Greek-English Lexicon of the NT ….. 4th ed of Bauers’s …. includes a meaning for the word for “delivered” the following:
3. of oral or written tradition hand down, pass on, transmit, . . . . (p.615)
That sounds to me like a prima facie argument for the eyewitnesses handing on the tradition whether orally or in written form….
Then the author of Luke’s Prologue says it seemed a good idea for him to do the same thing as had been done up to the point of his own experience. To add another link to the chain to give some confidence to his own readers that the past was still present.
The strongest argument against this question that comes to mind is later belief that the original eyewitnesses did not write their of their own experiences. (Except maybe for Matthew for some, and John for others. — but these are not majority views.)
But we cannot without good reason judge the intended meaning of the author of Luke’s prologue by how later generations interpreted it. What does the Prologue itself actually say and what are the plausible interpretations of what it says in its own right quite apart from later interpretations?
Is it reasonable to think that the author of the Prologue was speaking of a chain of written documents — which of course stretches even further the possible time gap between the original events and his own time?
The Jesus in Gethsemane story has always been one of the most moving episodes in religious movies. It is also a literary motif that has a long pedigree and would have been well known to any author who had learned to read and write Greek and who knew Jewish writings.
The basic structure and thematic units of the story are prominent in both “classical” Greek and Hebrew literature. It is quite likely one of those stories that may have fallen easily into place in an author’s mind without necessarily consciously imitating another — like a modern superhero drama can be unconsciously built on the motif of a Jesus-like saviour figure.
There are approx ten or more significant sequential parts that make up this motif: Continue reading “Odysseus, Moses and Jesus in Gethsemane”
Following are the different criteria lists used by three authors who have studied literary borrowings within the gospels and Acts: Allison, Clark and MacDonald.
Included are two extracts that discuss the ancient literary expectations and customs of authors borrowing from past masters.
Names and titles are hyperlinked: Continue reading “3 criteria lists for literary borrowing”
A Defense of Richard Bauckham’s Philosophy of Testimony, Part 2
In this series of posts I am addressing the criticisms levelled by Neil Godfrey at Richard Bauckham’s philosophy of testimony, as outlined in ch.18 of Jesus and the Eyewitnesses. Here I am responding to the observations found in this post: Continue reading “Bauckham: reply 2 to JD Walters”
JD Walters in his Cadre website has begun a lengthy series of responses to my responses to Bauckham’s Jesus and the Eyewitnesses.
JD’s words are in black and indented.
Mine are in blue. (I hope there are not too many people who feel they have nothing better to do than to read this exchange, by the way. And why do so many Christians like martial images, like ‘cadre‘?) Continue reading “Bauckham: reply to JD Walters”
Weeden has presented reasons for thinking the story of Jesus, the son of Ananus, that has come to us through Josephus, played a significant part in customizing details of Mark’s gospel of Jesus. Indeed, this entire section of Josephus‘s Wars that cites 8 warning signs of the imminent fall of Jerusalem has several intriguing overlaps with not only Mark’s gospel, but also with distinctive passages in Matthew, Luke and Acts also.
What follows is only for those already willing to be persuaded that Luke-Acts is in part dependent upon the writings of Josephus. I’m not arguing the case in this post, but jotting down first-thoughts on the signs, two in particular, in Josephus and what seems like it might be their resonance in Acts. Notes for casual discussion or later consideration, nothing more yet. The Josephan passages are copied from Chapter 6 of Wars on the ccel site. Continue reading “Signs in Josephus, Signs in Gospels and Acts”
Following is an attempt to explain the mixed messages given the role of Peter in the post-resurrection narratives of the canonical gospels. It argues that Peter first met the resurrected Jesus, as per 1 Corinthians 15:5, some time after the writing of the gospels of Mark and Matthew but just prior to Luke’s gospel — or more likely as late as that redaction of Luke by the author of Acts (Tyson) and around the time of the Pastorals. Continue reading “When did Peter first see the resurrected Jesus?”