Musings on biblical studies, politics, religion, ethics, human nature, tidbits from science
I have copied here the entire next chapter (by machine, not hand-typed!) by P.L. Couchoud in The Creation of Christ. My previous post in this series introduced the book section in which he will present his argument for the emergence of the Gospels and the New Testament collection as we know it. (Click Couchoud: Creation … Continue reading “Why early churches chose a Book over living prophets (Couchoud continued)”
David Fitzgerald‘s essay, Ten Beautiful Lies About Jesus, that received an Honorable Mention in the 2010 Mythicist Prize contest has been expanded into a book, Nailed: Ten Christian Myths That Showed Jesus Never Existed At All. The book is clearly a hit: Nailed continues to garner more fans and accolades, and generate cranky hate mail. … Continue reading “David Fitzgerald responds to Tim O’Neill’s review of Nailed”
John Van Seters is of the view that the Biblical narrative of David is a composite of two narrative strands: one by a “Deuteronomistic Historian” (Dtr) who in essence has little but good to say about David — he is God’s faithful servant, etc. — and a later thread by one writing in the period … Continue reading “The Bathsheba Affair — Was It Only Persian Era Gossip?”
Why, when different religions meet, does syncretism sometimes follow? What need does it fulfil? This was the question in the minds of Claude Orrieux and Édouard Will in Ioudaïsmos — Hellenismos; essai sur le judaïsme judéen a l’époque hellénistique, 1986, when they sought to understand the religious reactions of Judeans living in Judea when faced … Continue reading “Bible: composed as a reaction against Greek domination?”
On my way to post something on the Old Testament again I met a strange idea in a very old book, one published in 1924 and with an introduction by the renowned if obsolete Sir James Frazer. Now I happen to think the best explanation for the source of those miracles by Peter in the … Continue reading “Historical memory in the Gospel of Mark: a radical twist”
Now this time I might add more detail than usual since I find Couchoud’s views on the Gospel according to Saint Luke (at least as covered across several posts here and not necessarily confined to any one in particular) not very distant in many respects from the notions I have been thinking about, though not … Continue reading “The earliest gospels 6(a) – on the cusp of Luke (à la Couchoud)”
Dr McGrath in a recycled youtube presentation Did Jesus Exist? argues that Jesus was a historical figure in these words: The reason that the crucifixion persuades most historians that Jesus was a historical figure is that a crucified messiah was in essence a contradiction in terms. . . . It needs to be emphasized that … Continue reading “A fallacious argument for Jesus’ historicity”
The Gospel of Marcion, continues Paul Louis Couchoud, was fascinating reading but received outside Marcionite churches only after appropriate corrections. The first of these was in Alexandria by the gnostic philosopher Basilides. The works of Basilides have been lost. We know they consisted of 24 books making up his Gospel and Commentaries. From Hegemonius we … Continue reading “The earliest gospels 2 — the Gospel of Basilides (according to P.L. Couchoud)”
This post follows on from the previous one outlining Couchoud’s thoughts on Gospel origins. It starts with highlights from what he believes (generally following Harnack) Marcion‘s Gospel contained; looks at the next Gospel written apparently by Basilides; then at the way our canonical Gospel of Mark took shape and why, followed by the Gospels of … Continue reading “The earliest gospels 1 — Marcion’s gospel (according to P.L. Couchoud)”
This post follows on from my earlier post on The Secret Book of John, possibly a Jewish pre-Christian work, as translated and annotated by Stevan Davies. Stevan Davies’ translation of the Secret Book/Apocryphon of John is available online at The Gnostic Society Library. The Prologue is said to be a Christian addition to an earlier … Continue reading “The Gnostic Gospel (Apocryphon) of John – 2”
Last week my copy of Gnosticism in Corinth by Walter Schmithals arrived in the mail and the first thing that hit my attention about it was a discussion in the “Introduction A” chapter of pre-Christian Christ Gnosticism. This looks interesting for the obvious reason that it just might throw some light on one particular interpretation … Continue reading “Pre-Christian Christ Gnosticism: 1”
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 … Continue reading “Why and how I came to question the historicity of Jesus”
The Gospel of John is notorious for its several awkward transitions and these have led a number of scholars to argue that the present Gospel we know is quite different from what must have been its first edition. A recent discussion led to the question of what scholarly publications there are on the original version … Continue reading “The First Edition of the Gospel of John (1)”
8th post in the series by Roger Parvus. The complete series is archived here. When I presented my first contention—that the real author of the Ignatians was Peregrinus—I argued that a proto-Catholic editor/interpolator later, probably around 200 CE, made changes to the letters to disguise Peregrinus’ authorship. To make the letters acceptable for use by … Continue reading “[8] THE LETTERS SUPPOSEDLY WRITTEN BY IGNATIUS OF ANTIOCH: 8th post in the series”