Musings on biblical studies, politics, religion, ethics, human nature, tidbits from science
I have posted a few times with reference to Dominican priest Thomas L. Brodie’s latest book, Beyond the Quest for the Historical Jesus, which is something of an intellectual biography of how he arrived at his conclusion that Jesus did not exist. These posts are archived here — scroll to the bottom of the page … Continue reading “The Inevitable Catches Up With Thomas L. Brodie”
Richard Carrier has posted a review of Thomas L. Brodie’s Beyond the Quest for the Historical Jesus: Memoir of a Discovery. It is here on the freethought blog. I will be posting more of my own thoughts on the book in future posts here. While I agree with much of Carrier’s assessment I do hold … Continue reading “Carrier on Brodie and Rene Salm, at SBL, on Nazareth, Pious Fraud, James McGrath and others”
After this Jesus and his disciples went into the Judean countryside, and he remained there with them and was baptizing. — John 3:22 And they came to John and said to him, “Rabbi, he who was with you across the Jordan, to whom you bore witness—look, he is baptizing, and all are going to him.” … Continue reading “Did Jesus Baptize? – A Test Case for Brodie’s ‘Unity of John’ Thesis”
Thomas L. Brodie has an epilogue in his latest book, Beyond the Quest for the Historical Jesus, in which he responds to Bart Ehrman’s purported attempt to address the arguments of mythicists, Did Jesus Exist? (I say “purported” because although Ehrman has vehemently denied the charge, he has never, to my knowledge, addressed the actual … Continue reading “Thomas Brodie’s Review of Bart Ehrman’s Did Jesus Exist?”
The new addition to my bookshelf and I are going to get along just fine. I feel like I’ve found a long-lost friend, someone who has published exactly the point I have been making on this blog for so long now, only this new friend was saying it long before it ever crossed my mind. … Continue reading “Quest for History: Rule One — from Brodie’s Beyond the Quest for the Historical Jesus”
Thomas L. Brodie has a chapter (“Towards Tracing the Gospels’ Literary Indebtedness to the Epistles” in Mimesis and Intertextuality) discussing the possibility of the Gospel authors using the NT epistles among their sources, but what I found of most interest was his discussion on methodology and criteria. The difference between Brodie’s discussion of historical methodology … Continue reading “Brodie (almost) versus McGrath on historical methodology in NT studies”
Most of us have been conditioned by the conventional wisdom that the Old Testament books were written between the eighth and fifth centuries. But there is no independent evidence for the existence of any of the Bible’s books or any knowledge of biblical traditions (Davies, 1992 and Vridar.info notes), nor any evidence for the practice … Continue reading “Where Did the God of the Bible Come From? – [Biblical Creation Accounts/Plato’s Timaeus-Critias – 8]”
When I offered to post a comprehensive review of Writing With Scripture by Nathanael Vette the publisher sent me a copy and now I hope this first in a series of reviews will begin to do justice to all concerned and interested. I write primarily as a layman for interested lay readers. Who is Nathanael … Continue reading “How and Why the Gospel of Mark Used Scripture — a review of Writing with Scripture, part 1”
Here is a list of reviews and discussions of Bart Ehrman’s Did Jesus Exist? on Vridar. By Others Earl Doherty’s Responses to Bart Ehrman’s Did Jesus Exist? Now an eBook: Doherty’s Rebuttal of Ehrman’s Case for the Existence of Jesus Hermann Detering’s Review of Bart Ehrman’s Did Jesus Exist? Pdf file — or in three … Continue reading “Did Jesus Exist? (Ehrman) – Reviews“
One more instance of Jesus being a re-construction of the great heroes of the Old Testament that Nanine Charbonnel offers us an antitype of Joshua. There’s a catch this time, though. I think the attempt unnecessarily goes too far. At least there is no explanation to justify the claim that the narrative structure of the … Continue reading “Jesus Christ Created as an Epitome of Old Testament Figures (2) — Charbonnel and Jésus-Christ, Sublime Figure de Papier”
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”
The previous posts in this series: 25th August 2020 (introduction and Part 1 and half of Part 2) 27th August 2020 (completion of Part 2) 28th August 2020 (first half of Part 3) This post concludes my overview of the festschrift to Thomas L. Thompson on his 80th birthday. I hope to post soon a … Continue reading “conclusion … Biblical Narratives, Archaeology, Historicity – Essays in Honour of Thomas L. Thompson”
The first part of this review is at https://vridar.org/2020/08/25/biblical-narratives-archaeology-historicity-essays-in-honour-of-thomas-l-thompson/ . . . Continuing the section Part 2. History, Historiography and Archaeology . . . Jesper Høgenhaven’s chapter explores evidence in the Qumran texts for how Second Temple Judeans thought about the Biblical writings. We can be puzzled by the way biblical passages were joined to … Continue reading “continuing … Biblical Narratives, Archaeology, Historicity – Essays in Honour of Thomas L. Thompson”
Most Vridar posts on Nazareth focus on the archaeological evidence for its existence in the first-century, but also address the historical likelihood of Jesus being identified as from that town and the place of Nazareth in the nativity accounts of the gospels. –o0o– A more complete response to the previous post on the relevance of … Continue reading “Nazareth“