Musings on biblical studies, politics, religion, ethics, human nature, tidbits from science
Category: Vridar
So far this category is a catch-all for all posts relating to Vridar greetings to readers, to Vridar notices of rules, technical issues, and so forth. Is this category — or the current range of posts it includes — justified? Should Guest Posts be a child of this category?
In a few of my recent comments I have made reference to my being away from serious internet land at the moment. I am on holidays in Bali but had been a busy boy before leaving and prepared and scheduled a few posts in advance. So if someone was wondering about that apparent contradiction — that I am not on top of comments etc but am still “posting at regularly at 3:00 am each morning — that is the explanation. I’m sure lots of people were really worried and curious about that but now all those folks can sleep soundly at night knowing everything has a rhyme and reason.
On the other hand, think of a higher species evolving — does that mean God will have to send his son as a higher than human life form to die for their sins?
This is a continuation from my previous “little bio” post.
An earlier version was accidentally published about half an hour before I had completed it. This is the completed version.
It never occurred to me that the historical existence of Jesus could be questioned until I came across Earl Doherty’s website. Till then I had been a happy atheist for quite some years, still fascinated by the Bible and its place in our society, so much so that I continued to study it from a range of perspective — literary and historical — in order to understand and share what I learned about its original nature and origins. I was particularly interested in sharing information about cults, the damage they can do and the tricks tactics they use to win members. Personal experience was a cruel but effective teacher. The thought of questioning the historical existence of Jesus never crossed my mind — until I stumbled across Earl Doherty’s Jesus Puzzle site. (It had a different domain name then. Oblio something.) Continue reading “Why and how I came to question the historicity of Jesus”
It is good to question any scholar, biblical or otherwise, but my focus here is on those who specialize in biblical studies.
Every authority, political, professional, intellectual, should be held to account and made to justify itself. Most recognized intellectual authorities have little trouble doing this but there have been instances of fraud nonetheless.
But I am addressing biblical scholars in particular because they can be seen as important contributors to our knowledge and understanding of the Bible and Christianity, and it is the Bible and Christianity that enjoy central places in Western culture. And the Bible and Christianity have most definitely played vital roles in my own life, both for good and ill, which is probably true for most of us. Continue reading “It is good to question biblical scholars: a little bio, 1”
Vridar is my escape for some light entertainment past-time blog. But this week my after-hours are going to be mostly consumed by work since I am attending a week long conference in Melbourne and sharing tidbits of the day with my work colleagues, starting from today: http://metalogger.wordpress.com/2011/11/07/eresearch-australasia-2011-conference/
So, till I return to normal routines again I will be posting short snippets on and off here on Vridar.
But after recent experiences here in biblical studies I am not at all missing efforts to address what ultimately I realized was the anti-intellectualism of several anti-mythicists. It is incredibly refreshing — rejuvenating and even a little exciting — to be joining in discussions where some of the brightest minds in their fields can say something and be completely open to another person standing up and offering a diametrically opposed — but equally supported — argument.
I guess if the likes of Butler theological associate professors (who resort to trolling even on their own site!) and the arrogant and very often outright offensively rude wits they attract on their blog were ever as open to discussion of genuine methodology and evidence — and not for ego sakes resorting to subjective and vacuous “not persuasive” or “overly sceptical” retorts — this world would be too perfect and we’d never appreciate the difference between good and evil. (Okay, I’m typing this after the end of a long and intellectually stimulating day with an also quite stimulating — and proprietary sponsored — alcoholic beverage. )
Real life has kept me busy enough — and exhausted enough in between periods of busy enough — to have a break from this scene for most of last month. Now I’m wondering where I left off. I know I was trying to keep spinning a few plates at once, but it all seems like ancient history to me now.
Some of the issues I was addressing really need lots of time to treat as well as I think they deserve. I don’t think the blog is really the best medium for most of the stuff I’m interested in any more. But change means effort and that sounds like hard work. I keep thinking I should organize some of my posts in more easy to find web articles. I’d like to collate various series like that of Roger Parvus as a single pdf document some time (if I have his permission of course). I’d also like to revise and collate some of my discussions on historical methodology into one single document. One day. (But it would help if an intellectually competent anti-mythicist could be found and engaged to help sharpen the arguments.)
I was enjoying the way a number of readers expressed some interest in some of my posts from time to time, and I would welcome any feedback either here or in email (neilgodfrey1 [ @ ] gmail.com) if there is any lingering interest in my following up some of those posts.
So, what to write about next? I have a few ideas, but which one will involve the least effort?
I’ve been having a break from real blogging since the past week. Need a breather and time for real life responsibilities. But when I return to the serious stuff that interests me most I want to address
Roger Parvus’s latest three posts on the “Ignatian” letters,
complete what I started with the study of George Athas’s arguments re Tel Dan,
have a closer look at that Nazarene word, especially in light of Rene Salm’s recent articles and translations,
finish notes from Horsley’s history of messianic movements up to the outbreak of the Jewish war,
return to studying Herodotus and the Primary History of Israel and the relationship between the two,
outline the evidence for the Persian and Hellenistic era provenance of the OT writings,
catch up on some publications about Marcion and Paul’s letters,
do more on the Lévi-Strauss model of myths and its application to Old and New Testament narratives,
continue doing chapters of Earl Doherty’s book,
try to finish my posts on midrash (if I can — I contacted one of the authors of one of the books I have been using to ask for clarification on a particular point I was about to address and have come away with more than I expected to think about),
and a whole lot more in the back of my head that escape me at the moment.
Hence my lazy off-the-top-of-my-head reflections on things I’ve covered a million times before and that still seem to bug the arrogant and ignorant.
I was reading Richard Carrier’s comments that Dr McGrath pointed to recently and note him saying that a PhD is the equivalent of 10,000 hours of training. I wish I had the time and opportunity for that (my circumstances did not permit me to take up an invitation for higher studies at the end of my post grad educational studies degree) since I painfully aware of my limitations as an amateur hobbyist in the area of biblical studies. I know I often present a slapdash argument or statement assuming that what I have said somewhere else a week or more ago is on any other reader’s minds, too. And I look back and am embarrassed at how often I have presented a point very badly.
I get a lot out of reading many formal scholarly works from a range of disciplines, and Doherty’s works, and it’s not always the raw content — often I’m studying the argumentation, the logic, the presentation and structure of the argument, etc. (And yes, this is where I find a lot of historical Jesus works a very mixed bag of flashes of brilliant insights and absurdly baseless circular and incredibly blinkered arguments.)
Anyway, before I get back to what I love to blog about the most, I have at hand some notes I hope to do up soon – one on the way a historian of relatively modern history uses myths and legends as sources in his historical inquiries, and another on how a historian uses certain kinds of analysis of ancient inscriptions in order to reconstruct historical events. I believe both illustrations demonstrate the point I have made for some time now about the different approaches of New Testament historians (I hope that’s a valid term — I copy it from Dr McGrath after he chastised me for using the term “biblical historians”) to the Gospels for their inquiries into the historical Jesus and the way other historians handle material that is mythical or in need of close literary analysis to decipher its meaning.
I’m looking for other blogs that also discuss the Bible and Bible scholarship in depth as I do here. I don’t mean from the same perspective — no matter if they are Catholic, Mormon, atheist, anything — just curious to know what else there is in internet-land that discusses biblical questions as regularly and analytically as I attempt to do here.
Many thanks.
(Email me if reluctant to post here: neilgodfrey1[AT]gmail[DOT]com)
For those who have not had the time to read in full Roger Parvus’s posts so far about the identity of the author of the Ignatian letters I’m being kind and offering here a sketch outline of what he has written to date. Obviously this cannot cover the details and we know details are where devils and (surely) angels, too, are to be found.
Roger Parvus seeks to argue
(1) that the seven Ignatian letters that comprise the ‘middle recension’ were originally letters written by Peregrinus c. 145 CE,
(2) that he was an Apellean Christian i.e. a follower of the ex-Marcionite Apelles, and
(3) that later, towards the end of the second century, the letters were modified by a protoCatholic Christian.
Post One
Why the argument should not be dismissed out of hand
Others who have questioned the authenticity of the letters of Ignatius, and reasons
Others who have argued for a later than usual date for the letters, and reasons
If “hits” are an indication of what posts others have found of most use or interest, then I can say that the following two tables list the dozen most useful or interesting posts I have done
since late November 2006 when I started the Vridar blog;
I have posted several times explaining what the purpose of this blog is and what my interests and motivations are. It is all there, including links to those posts, in my “About” page that I have updated today.
In my previous post I showed that Peregrinus, as described by Lucian, bears some resemblance to the man who wrote the letters commonly ascribed to Ignatius of Antioch, and I proposed that the reason for their similarity is that the real author of the letters was Peregrinus. In his adult life he was first a Christian, but later abandoned Christianity to become a Cynic philosopher. So, some of the similarities noted are those that existed between those two periods of his life. According to Lucian, what characterized Peregrinus was that he “always did and said everything with a view to glory and the praise of the multitude.” (TDOP 42, Harmon). And his glory-seeking was already clearly present in his Christian days when the governor of Syria freed him because he realized that Peregrinus “would gladly die in order that he might leave behind him a reputation for it.” (TDOP 14, Harmon). So I see it as quite plausible that many of the ways he pursued glory as a Cynic would be similar to the ways he pursued it earlier as a Christian.
When, as a Cynic, he sought to die a fiery death, he sent out letters to publicize the event. Earlier, I maintain, when he sought to die a martyr’s death as a Christian, he sent out letters too, among which are the seven so-called Ignatians. As a Cynic enamored of death, he gave titles to the messengers who spread the news of his upcoming leap to glory. I submit that the similar titles present in the letter collection are an indication that earlier, as a Christian enamored of martyrdom, he had already engaged in that practice. The specific titles were different, of course, because of the difference in his affiliation. But the very idea of giving titles to the messengers is the same. And as a Cynic he proclaimed his desire to dissolve into thin air via fire so as to imitate Heracles. To this would correspond his earlier proclamation, as a Christian, that he desired to be visible no more, and to be — courtesy of a painful execution by the Romans — an imitator of the passion of his God. And, as I see it, his adoption of new names to mark important moments in his life was not something he only began once he became a Cynic. No, the greeting at the head of each of the seven letters from “Ignatius who is also Theophorus” shows that it was already there during his Christian period. His becoming a prisoner in chains for Christ was one of those moments that called for a new name. (In a later post I will come back to this and look more closely at the name he took to mark the occasion).
