Musings on biblical studies, politics, religion, ethics, human nature, tidbits from science
I asked Earl Doherty a few questions about his background and what led him to his Christ myth views; his understanding of the relationship between atheism and mythicism, and atheism in genera; influences leading to his own distinctive views and public/scholarly reactions to the mythicism, and towards him personally; his place in the history of … Continue reading “Interview with Earl Doherty”
I often find myself wishing some knowledgable scholars who write about “the historical Jesus” would take their Gospel sources more seriously. To take just one illustration, I don’t know if I have read any scholarly work addressing the baptism of Jesus that fails to make some reference to the “influence of John the Baptist on … Continue reading “Taking the Gospels seriously, part 2 (What John Baptist supposedly meant to Jesus)”
There is a passage in the Gospel of Thomas that would seem to encapsulate the historical methodology some scholars use to reconstruct the historical Jesus: 77 Jesus said, “I am the light that is over all things. I am all: from me all came forth, and to me all attained. Split a piece of wood; … Continue reading “Finding Jesus Under the Stone: The Gospel of Thomas Guide to the Scholarly Search for the Historical Jesus”
While one sometimes hears it said that the gospel message when first heard in the early Roman empire was “shocking” and “turned the world upside down”, it is in fact more correct to say that the gospel message was a product of its age. In the century or so leading up to the common era … Continue reading “Christianity and the “let’s turn the world upside down” bandwagon”
Let’s keep it simple and consider the Gospel of Mark only. No heavy analysis this post; only a moment to look out the window and think over how the arguments of recent posts would affect our reading of Mark. Firstly, we open with the prophetic announcement. What we are about to read is a fulfilment of prophecy as … Continue reading “Lighter Literary Intellections on the Gospels”
Today while catching up with what materials qualify as research for funding purposes in Australian universities (my new job requires me to refresh my memory on all this stuff) I came across an exclusion clause that should mean that no Historical Jesus book like Crossan’s or Casey’s should qualify as a research output of a … Continue reading “Grounds for excluding historical Jesus studies from university research”
To the outsiders “everything (ta panta) happens (ginetai) in parables”. -cf Mark 4:11 The Gospel of Mark makes little sense if read as literal history or biography. For example, Jesus is said to have explained to his disciples that he talks in incomprehensible mysteries to the general public in order to deliver divine punishment upon … Continue reading “The acts and words (and person?) of Jesus as Parables in the Gospel of Mark”
Edited 13th November Maurice Casey argues that the author of the Gospel of Mark translated written Aramaic sources about Jesus as early as within ten years of the crucifixion. He expresses impatience with scholars such as those like John Dominic Crossan who “spend their whole lives in detailed examination of these primary texts” (p. 21) … Continue reading ““Make a Path”: Maurice Casey’s evidence of an Aramaic source for Mark’s Gospel, or Creative Fiction?”
Continuing here my commentary on the points of literary, thematic, religious and cultural contacts between ancient popular literature and the Bible, with the Argonautica as a case study. [See the other posts in this series.] From my initial post: Anyone who treats the Bible too seriously as history needs to take time out to read … Continue reading “Bible and the Argonauts: Chapter 3 (Book 2)”
Although a certain professor of religion regularly insists that his historical methods are the same as those of other historians who deal in nonbiblical subjects, he has failed to demonstrate the similarity. Rather, his attempt to establish this particular point is a classic in obfuscation, misrepresentation of the issues and avoidance of the challenges of … Continue reading “Historical methods: how historical Jesus studies fall over before they start”
The various historical Jesus explanations for Christian origins are without analogy, are highly improbable, and rely on filling in gaps with “something unknown” or “something we don’t understand”. How plausible is it, after all, that all of the following somehow come together in a coherent “explanation”: Jews scarcely believing Jesus was nothing more than a … Continue reading “Some reasons to favour a “mythical Jesus” over a “historical Jesus””
Philo does not mention the term “christos” (“messiah”). But he does use a lot of messianic terminology to describe how the Logos converts people, through an inner personal war against the flesh, into the divine image. The message reminds me of Troels Engberg-Pedersen’s more detailed discussion of Paul’s concept of the Stoic-Logos-like function of the … Continue reading “Philo’s Spiritual Messiah: allegorical and personal?”
This post continues my earlier notes from David Clines’ discussion of traps biblical historians have often fallen into when reading a biblical text that sounds like an eyewitness, biographical record of historical events — with Nehemiah selected as the case study. Literary criticism must precede historical presumptions The lesson for historians to learn, argues Clines, … Continue reading “When Bible authors can read their characters’ minds (Nehemiah case study 2)”
There’s a comment by humanist Dwight Jones in response to Hoffmann’s post titled Did Jesus Exist? Yes and No that begins As a Humanist I view Christ as one too, a philosopher who was instructing our species Jones’ and Hoffmann’s concept of humanism is too effete, elitist, esoteric and impractical for my taste, but that … Continue reading “How Jesus has been re-imaged through the ages to fit different historical needs”