Musings on biblical studies, politics, religion, ethics, human nature, tidbits from science
This post is a first draft of an argument I am formulating as I continue to read Majella Franzmann’s “Jesus in the Nag Hammadi Writings“, and is partly posted in iidb. We have NO primary or secondary historical evidence for Jesus comparable for our historical evidence for Julius Caesar (his own writing and references by … Continue reading “The nonsense of believing in a historical Jesus.”
Features shared by all we-passages The “we” are never identified by name or specific role. At best they are left as ambiguously identified with a group associated with the author. (One of the reasons, but not a necessary one, for associating the narrative’s “we” with the author is because the author appears to introduce himself … Continue reading “The We-Passages in Acts: a Roman Audience Interpretation. Pt 4”
For those like me who end up going in circles trying to follow the studies of the Gospel of Mark by authors with theological interests, reading a literary criticism of GMark by a trained and renowned literary critic, Frank Kermode, will be a refreshingly stabilizing experience. Kermode himself writes of this failure of biblical (implying … Continue reading “Interpreting Mark like any other work of literature”
I’ve written this “review” essentially as a commentary on what we can know about the genuineness of the New Testament epistles. The commentary bits are in eyesore bold italics. I read Rosenmeyer’s Ancient Epistolary Fictions (Cambridge University Press, 2001) to inform myself of the literary culture behind the New Testament epistles as part of my … Continue reading “Ancient Epistolary Fictions / Patricia A. Rosenmeyer (2001). Review”
Initially read Virgil’s Aeneid for my interest in the classics and culture of the Roman world and the literature that inspired many throughout the ages. Re-read it recently to compare with the New Testament literature. In particular, note the sudden ending that is not a satisyfing ending at all for our tastes, and compare sudden … Continue reading “Re-reading Virgil’s Aeneid”
The “we-passages” in Acts have been understood either as being taken from an eye-witness record or as a non-historical literary device. The former view is generally embraced by default on the grounds that the literary device arguments appear to be burdened with too many qualifications and exceptions to make them compelling. Yet the arguments for … Continue reading “The We-Passages in Acts: a Roman Audience Interpretation. Pt 1”
As far as I am aware the observations linked here between the Jesus in Mark’s gospel and the Jesus in Josephus were first made by Theodore Weeden (author of ‘Mark: traditions in conflict’) in informal email discussio. I was excited to read a comment from someone somewhere recently (Michael Turton?) that Weeden is soon to … Continue reading “Jesus (in Mark), Jesus (in Josephus) and Cassandra”
In 1992 Philip Davies published a monograph that began a heated controversy over the origins of the Bible and what light archaeology shed on this question. Davies criticized conventional biblical scholarship for lacking the rigour found in archaeological studies of sites without theological significance. He argued that the archaeological evidence suggested that the Bible was … Continue reading “In Search of Ancient Israel”
14th March 2019: New post covering the professional side of my life as a librarian: On Being a Librarian … Since I wrote the following spiel — in late February 2012 to be more precise — Tim Widowfield has joined me as a regular co-contributor to this blog. The closest piece to a little “bio” … Continue reading “ABOUT VRIDAR: Authors’ profiles (updated 14th March 2019)”