Musings on biblical studies, politics, religion, ethics, human nature, tidbits from science
I listened in on a Good Friday service in St Joseph’s church in Singapore last night, while standing amidst hundreds of others holding magic or holy candles, and during the reading of the Gospel of John’s passion narrative I was struck to suddenly hear echoes of thematic details also found in the apocryphal Gospel of … Continue reading “Rival gospel traditions: Herod or Pilate the executioner of Christ?”
In response to those who dismiss a priori the likelihood of interpolations in the letters of Paul, Walker lists the following:
Critique of the Gospel History of the Synoptics by Bruno Bauer Volume 3 —o0o— 326 § 93. Luke’s account C. 24. Acts. 1, 3 -11. Already before, when Jesus left the last supper with the disciples to the Mount of Olives, He told them that He (Mark 14, 28) would precede them to Galilee after … Continue reading “§ 93. Luke’s account”
227 6. Das Verhör vor dem Hohenpriester. 6. The interrogation before the high priest. 227 Trotzdem, daß der andere Jünger, der wider das Verbot des Urberichts dem Petrus des vierten Evangelium sich anschließt, als dieser seinem Herrn von weitem nachfolgte, dem Hohenpriester Annas, zu dem man Jesum führte, bekannt war und durch seine Vermittlung dem … Continue reading “Ch 6 – The Interrogation before the High Priest”
Previous posts reviewing NV’s Writing With Scripture: How and Why the Gospel of Mark Used Scripture — a review of Writing with Scripture, part 1 Creating New Stories from Scripture — a review of Writing with Scripture, part 2 To What Shall We Compare the Gospels? — a review of Writing with Scripture, part 3 … Continue reading “Creating the Gospel of Mark — a review of Writing with Scripture, part 5”
We now continue our exploration of Nanine Charbonnel’s case for Jesus Christ being a literary-theological creation using the techniques of a “midrashic” re-reading and interpretation of Jewish Scriptures. The full series is archived at https://vridar.org/tag/charbonnel-jesus-christ-sublime-figure-de-papier/ Double Personification The gospel figure of Jesus Christ was created as a “double personification”: he was created as a personification … Continue reading “Jesus Christ Created as an Epitome of Old Testament Figures (1) — Charbonnel and Jésus-Christ, Sublime Figure de Papier”
sk With this post I conclude setting out Nanine Charbonnel’s tables associating the gospels with Jewish Scriptures and other Jewish writings. With this section completed I am free to move on to discuss the remainder of her book, Jésus-Christ, Sublime Figure de Papier. The value of tables like these comes more from preparing them — … Continue reading “Gospels Cut from Jewish Scriptures, #7 (conclusion)”
The previous post concluded thus: As I mentioned at the beginning of this post, my revised hypothesis basically adds only two things to Loisy’s scenario: (1) I would identify the above “Christian groups which believed themselves heirs of the Pauline tradition” as Saturnilians. (2) I would identify the above “mystery of salvation by mystic union … Continue reading “Revising the Series “A Simonian Origin for Christianity”, Part 4 / Conclusion – Historical Jesus?”
Continuing from part 1….. Expanding the Foundation Story Notice how the author of Luke-Acts prepares for his second volume (Acts) from the outset of his new gospel: Luke extends the genealogy of Jesus back to Adam and God themselves. Jesus no longer (as in Matthew) is contextualized within the Abrahamic family but comes with more … Continue reading “Acts as a Rewriting of Gospels and Paul’s Letters, part 2”
In the last installment, we covered oral tradition. As I look over the post now, I see that I missed several opportunities to add the adjective, “rich.” Biblical scholars love to write the words “rich oral tradition.” How, you may ask, do they know such details about something based mostly on conjecture? Watch out! If you keep asking questions like … Continue reading “Bart Ehrman: Jesus Before the Gospels, Basic Element 4: Genre”
In the previous post, we looked at the basic element of form criticism. Bart Ehrman in Jesus Before the Gospels uses the findings of the form critics to explain a commonly held assumption in NT scholarship. Many, if not most, of today’s critical scholars believe the stories found in our canonical gospels survived orally over a … Continue reading “Bart Ehrman: Jesus Before the Gospels, Basic Element 3: Oral Tradition”
From Richard Carrier’s blog post, McGrath on OHJ: A Failure of Logic and Accuracy: In preparation for my upcoming defense of On the Historicity of Jesus at the SBL regional meeting, I’ve set aside time to publicly summarize my take on James McGrath’s critique of (parts of) the book for Bible & Interpretation: “Did Jesus Die in Outer Space? … Continue reading “McGrath on Richard Carrier’s OHJ: A Failure of Logic and Accuracy”
William Wrede’s The Messianic Secret Part 10: How Matthew and Luke changed Mark Five months have passed since my previous post on The Messianic Secret. In the interim, I have focused on material related to the genre of the gospels, which has consumed most of my attention. Recently, however, I’ve been simultaneously reading or re-reading several … Continue reading “Reading Wrede Again for the First Time (10)”
Recently I was playing with the time capsule button of WordPress and managed to accidentally relocate an old July 2010 post to today. Since trying to undo and relocate events in time is forbidden by the Time Lords of the universe I quickly deleted it. But a few quick ones did see it and commented … Continue reading “Tom Verenna Debates James McGrath”