Musings on biblical studies, politics, religion, ethics, human nature, tidbits from science
That the stories and sayings of Jesus were circulating by word of mouth before the Gospels were written is generally a “fact” taken for granted today among New Testament scholars. That the first Gospel was “made up” the way other fanciful tales of miracle-working heroes were fabricated seems to be a contraband thought in mainstream … Continue reading “Taking Oral Tradition For Granted: Bultmann (1)”
Barry W. Henaut argues that the scholarly belief that “an extensive oral tradition existed behind the Gospels” has been essentially taken for granted rather than argued. In Oral Tradition and the Gospels: The Problem of Mark 4 Henaut introduces his study with reference to what even secular historians claim they can “know” about Jesus. Historian … Continue reading “The Problem of Oral Tradition and the Gospels: Barry Henaut’s introduction”
This post concludes Thomas Brodie’s critique of the role oral tradition has played in Biblical studies, especially with respect to accounting for the Gospel narratives about Jesus. It is taken from chapter 6 of The Birthing the New Testament: The Intertextual Development of the New Testament Writings. Even if a hypothesis is unclear in its … Continue reading “Oral Tradition Is Unnecessary to Explain the Gospels”
Thomas Brodie has shown that the theory that the Gospel narratives began as oral traditions is not founded on valid logical argument. Nonetheless, he recognizes that an idea that rests on little more than mere presumption “may still be useful as a working hypothesis.” So he proceeds to explore whether the theory of oral tradition … Continue reading “Oral Tradition in NT Studies is Unworkable”
My last post in this series ended with Thomas Brodie’s question: On what basis, then, is it possible to go on claiming oral tradition? Brodie asked this after surveying how Hermann Gunkel’s paradigm of oral tradition came to dominate biblical, and especially New Testament, studies, while at the same time pointing out the logical fallacies … Continue reading “Oral Tradition is Unfounded: from Kelber to Koester”
As signalled in a comment on my recent post on the single authorship of Genesis to 2 Kings, I have decided it best to back-track a little before continuing that series and posting a little on how oral tradition came to be a ruling paradigm among Biblical scholars and why an increasing number of scholars, … Continue reading “Oral Tradition Behind Gospels and OT: Unfounded, Unworkable and Unnecessary”
Thomas L. Thompson has hit the nail on the head when he explains why “historians” of the Bible place so much emphasis on oral tradition. Oral tradition, of course, is not a fact. That it existed cannot be verified. It is nothing more than a hypothesis, or really more an assumption of necessity than a … Continue reading “The origin of the ‘Oral Tradition’ hypothesis”
Bart Ehrman (BE) in Jesus, Interrupted, summarizes the standard view of how a long period of “oral tradition” preceded the writing of the first gospels. The Gospels of the New Testament, he writes, were written thirty-five to sixty-five years after Jesus’ death by people who did not know him, did not see anything he did … Continue reading “The “oral tradition” myth of gospel origins”
The Cyrus Cylinder is not evidence that the Persian king Cyrus commissioned a return of Judeans to restore their temple (as explained in the previous post) but it does show us why the biblical authors proclaimed Cyrus to be the “anointed one” as their central character in their mythical narrative of that return. In the … Continue reading “Origin of the Cyrus-Messiah Myth”
This post continues a series I began with The Hebrew Bible – Composed only 300 years before Christ In my opening post setting out the initial grounds for thinking that the biblical literature was no older than 300 BCE I noted with only minimal explanation that the current mainstream view of the far greater antiquity … Continue reading “Most Ways of Dating the Old Testament Older than 300 BCE are Flawed”
While recently attempting to relate the views of the anthropologist Harvey Whitehouse to what we know of Christian origins, I decided to turn to an obliging dialog partner for assistance — ChatGPT. For background you might want to skim through what I wrote about Whitehouse’s models at https://vridar.org/2020/06/20/modes-of-religiosity/ Me: Given Harvey Whitehouse’s description of the … Continue reading “A Dialog with ChatGPT on Christian Origins”
Two weeks ago I posted my notice of a translation of Gustav Volkmar’s 1857 study of the Gospel of Mark that had been written for a general audience. This post is to notify interested readers of the availability of a translation of his far more academic 1876 work, Mark and the Synopsis of the Gospels … Continue reading “Gustav Volkmar — a second translated work”
Here is a copy of what I have posted as a standalone page — see the right side margin under Pages and scroll down to Gustav Volkmar. . . . . Gustav Volkmar (1809-1893) has been referenced a few times in this blog but the most detailed synopsis of his views on the Gospel of … Continue reading “Finding Paul in the Gospel of Mark — Volkmar translation”
Update 25th September 2023 — I have now translated two of Gustav Volkmar’s works: The Religion of Jesus (1857); Mark and the Synopsis of the Gospels (1876). — note that this file is being updated regularly with corrections and improvements. Most recent update is 28th September 2023. You may need to clear your cache to … Continue reading “Gustav VOLKMAR — 2 Translations“