Musings on biblical studies, politics, religion, ethics, human nature, tidbits from science
Continuing from the Jesus and Dionysus (2): Comparison of John’s Gospel and Euripides’ Play . . . . It would be a mistake to confine our comparison of the Gospel of John’s Jesus with Euripides’ play. Bacchae has no reference to the Dionysian miracle of turning water into wine (see the first post in this … Continue reading “Jesus and Dionysus (3)”
This post concludes the series of notes from Adam Winn’s Mark and the Elijah-Elisha narrative : considering the practice of Greco-Roman imitation in the search for Markan source material. Winn concludes his first chapter with six criteria he hopes will help us determine literary dependence between two texts. He has derived these criteria from his … Continue reading “Discovering the Sources for the First Gospel, 3 — Criteria”
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)”
Theologians draw out spiritual lessons from the tale of God sending his Son in the flesh, performing miracles and teaching truths incomprehensible to most, and then dying and returning once again to heaven so he can be with many more followers here and now who do understand and appreciate his fleshly advent. The same theologians … Continue reading “The mythical meaning of gods (Dionysus, Jesus) being given historical settings”
The earliest ancient novel we have is a tale of two lovers, Chaereas and Callirhoe, by Chariton. A summary of its plot can be found here. It is dated to the early second century. I have discussed or alluded to this novel in the various posts found on this page as a comparison to the … Continue reading “Ancient Novels Like the Gospels: Mixing History and Myth”
This post relates to an earlier one on Keller here. The crucifixion counterproductive? Why would the leaders of the early Christian movement have made up the story of the crucifixion if it didn’t happen? Any listener of the gospel in either Greek or Jewish culture would have automatically suspected that anyone who had been crucified … Continue reading “Timothy Keller, ‘Reason for God’ — “The content is far too counterproductive for the gospels to be legends.””
126 III. Nero’s and Seneca’s downfall. 1. The Cosmopolitan on the Throne. Nero was no longer a Roman national patriot in that exclusive sense in which the ancient Roman, in pride of his blood, claimed the privilege of superiority over the peoples of the earth. Virgil had expressed this sense of nationalism once more in … Continue reading “BRUNO BAUER: Christ and the Caesars – III. Nero’s and Seneca’s Downfall”
We now arrive at Nanine Charbonnel’s discussion of the source of the Passion narrative in the gospels. Her approach is in three parts: the failure of traditional approaches to bring us to a satisfactory answer and a recognition that the expectation of a suffering messiah who liberates his people was very much a part of … Continue reading “Understanding the Sacrifice of Jesus (Charbonnel contd)”
We have been looking at some accounts among ancient historians of gods and heroes appearing among eyewitnesses and acting in history. Did the ancient historians and biographers who wrote of those events believe they were true? What of other people who heard of those stories? Did they believe them? In my review posts of How … Continue reading “Ancient Belief that Divinities Appeared on Earth in the Present and Historical Past — (with half a glance at Christian origins)”
Someone asked for examples of the ancient literature that contain motifs echoed in the biblical narratives. I’ll post a few, beginning Chariton’s novella Chaereas and Callirhoe. I do not believe that we have any reason to think that there is any genetic relationship between the following extract and the gospels. The similarities arise entirely from … Continue reading “Another Empty Tomb Story”
Earl Doherty, author the The Jesus Puzzle website, The Jesus Puzzle and Jesus Neither God Nor Man and other books, and contributor to The Journal of Higher Criticism, made his “public appearance” on a biblical scholars forum on Tuesday, the 9th of February, 1999: Crosstalk. In the light of some unfortunate mischaracterizations of the tone … Continue reading “The Day Earl Doherty (author of ‘The Jesus Puzzle’) Personally Entered the Global Forum”
For an annotated list of previous posts in this series see the archived page: Daniel Gullotta’s Review of Richard Carrier’s On the Historicity of Jesus Criticized for being Euro-centric and male-centric, these holistic-comparative theories have been almost universally rejected by scholars of folklore and mythology, who instead opt for theories of myth that center on … Continue reading “Continuing Gullotta’s Criticism of Carrier’s Use of the Rank-Raglan Archetypes”
A new book arguing a mythicist case has been published. If you like your serious intellectual pursuits spiced with vicarious adventure then Vincent Czyz (a winner of the Faulkner Prize for Short Fiction) has written for you a novel that weaves its plot around protagonists gradually discovering Jesus was less a historical figure than a … Continue reading “The Christos Mosaic – A Novel About the Christ Myth Hypothesis”
Scholar of religion Jonathan Bernier drops an interesting aside in his blog post, The Quest for the Historical Hiawatha: From what I understand, virtually all archaeologists and historians who study the matter agree that the Iroquois confederacy–the bringing together into political and religious union the Mohawk, Oneida, Onondaga, Cayuga, and Seneca peoples–was carried out as … Continue reading “The Quest for the Historical Hiawatha — & the historical-mythical Jesus debate”