Musings on biblical studies, politics, religion, ethics, human nature, tidbits from science
Damn. I fell for it (again). A professor promoted a new book as “making the most sense of the crucifixion” and “making a fresh contribution to studies of the ‘historical Jesus’” so I made a rush purchase and read it the same day it arrived. Silly me, I should first have checked the University of … Continue reading “Testing the Claim that Jesus Scholars Use the Methods of Other Historians (Part 1)”
Passages that for modern fundamentalist readers refer doctrinally to Jesus’ death and some imaginary “end time” in some indefinite future: Luke 12:49-53 49 I came to cast fire upon the earth; and what do I desire, if it is already kindled? 50 But I have a baptism to be baptized with; and how am I … Continue reading “Constructing Jesus and the Gospels: Apocalyptic Prophecy”
In the previous post we saw how Clarke W. Owens (Son of Yahweh: The Gospels as Novels) drew the inference that the evangelists created the type of Jesus they did because of the impact of the Jewish War. Just as the Jewish people and their centre of worship had been destroyed through fire and mass … Continue reading “Constructing Jesus and the Gospels: Messianism and Survival post 70 CE”
Once Clarke W. Owens extracts the Gospels from the Bible and studies them as literary creations on their historical context something most interesting happens. (Owens, I should point out, is not a mythicist. I believe on the basis of his entry in the Christian Alternative website that he is a Christian though one with a … Continue reading “Constructing Jesus and the Gospels: How and Why”
Continuing the series on Thomas Brodie’s Beyond the Quest for the Historical Jesus: Memoir of a Discovery, archived here. In chapter 17 Brodie is analysing John Meier’s work, A Marginal Jew, as representative of the best that has been produced by notable scholars on the historical Jesus. We saw from the opening post on Brodie’s … Continue reading “Making of a Mythicist — ch 17 . . . The Evidence of Josephus”
Craig S. Keener has written a book 869 pages long entitled The Historical Jesus of the Gospels. The primary aim of this book is to investigate how much we can know from the best sources available, and to offer examples of how these sources provide us more adequate information about Jesus than many scholars think … Continue reading “Scholars Rationalizing and Paraphrasing the Christian Myth”
It’s about time I tied up one loose end from my earlier remarks on Professor Maurice Casey’s “frightful”™ and “hopelessly unlearned”™ diatribe against “mythicism” generally and Earl Doherty in particular. In his inaugural essay for The Jesus Process© he wrote: . . . [H]opelssly unlearned . . . Doherty’s ‘original’ work on Paul is . … Continue reading “High-Low context cultures — catching up with the fundamentals”
* Mythicist Claim Three: The Gospels Are Interpretive Paraphrases of the OT . COVERED IN THIS POST: The Gospels constructed out of scriptural midrash Jesus’ passion modelled on a traditional Jewish story The Gospel of the Old Testament according to Robert Price The Gospel Jesus as a new Moses A Jesus miracle modelled on Elijah … Continue reading “24. Earl Doherty’s Response to Bart Ehrman’s Case Against Mythicism – Part 24”
Let’s sit down and look at the score sheet. Richard Carrier kicked 11 “errors of fact” at the net of Bart Ehrman’s book Did Jesus Exist? Carrier says he could have kicked many more but that it was getting dark and the referee told him he had limited time. Since beginning to write this post … Continue reading “The Facts of the Matter: Carrier 9, Ehrman 1 (my review, part 2)”
One of my first posts on this blog asked why the Gospel of Mark was not more often interpreted in a way we would normally interpret any other form of literature. I was referring to Frank Kermode’s discussion of the Gospel of Mark in The Genesis of Secrecy: On the Interpretation of Narrative. This post … Continue reading “Why are the Gospels so believable?”
Earl Doherty has responded in detail to criticisms by James McGrath and others over chapter 6 of Jesus Neither God Nor Man. I have collated them in this post, and may add any future ones here, too. (Compare comments on my outline of chapter 6) Updated 31st May 2011 Brother of the Lord By now … Continue reading “Doherty answers McGrath and others (continuation of ch. 6 criticisms)”
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”
Or more specifically, what was the state of play around five years ago when Research Distinguished Professor and Chair of the Department of Philosophy and Theology at Liberty University, Gary R. Habermas, had a chapter published in The Resurrection of Jesus: John Dominic Crossan and N. T. Wright in Dialogue? Habermas outlines four broad positions … Continue reading “What do biblical scholars make of the resurrection?”
Following on here from my earlier post. As noted in my previous post, Matthew and Luke inform us directly that the miracles of Jesus were for the purpose of identifying Jesus as the Messiah in accordance with the prophecies in Isaiah. We may, if we wish, speculate that there really were a set of healings … Continue reading “Jesus was not a healer (2)”