Musings on biblical studies, politics, religion, ethics, human nature, tidbits from science
Other Vridar posts discussing the gospels as parables: Making sense of Jesus in the Gospel of Mark Making more sense of Jesus . . . Art and Aramaic in the Gospel of Mark Jesus’ Journey Into Hell and Back — told symbolically in the Gospel of Mark? Was the Empty Tomb Story Originally Meant to … Continue reading “Gospel Parables and the “Birth” of the Messiah as a Personification of Israel”
This post looks at the evidence for Luke having reworked Mark’s ending. (The Gospel of Mark appears to have originally ended with verse 8 with the women fleeing from the tomb in fear.) The next post will identify the evidence for Luke having simultaneously used and changed Matthew’s ending. One step at a time. … Continue reading “How Luke Reworked Mark’s Ending”
We know that the gospels contain many stories that are based on Old Testament narratives. Jesus raising Jairus’s daughter is clearly developed on similar miracles by Elijah and Elisha; Jesus stilling the storm has rewoven core elements of the story of Jonah; the miraculous birth of Jesus finds its mirror opposites in the miraculous births … Continue reading “Meaning of Midrash (Are the Gospels Midrash?)”
The background to the following post is The Gospel of John as a form of Jewish Messianism? (Part 2). It presumes some awareness of how in some Jewish quarters Daniel 7’s Son of Man was being interpreted in a way that led to controversial Jewish texts like the Similitudes of Enoch and the Gospel of … Continue reading “How the Gospel of Mark Retrofitted Jesus into a Pre-Existing Christ Idea”
After Tim’s recent post Unclear Origins and Etymology of Kleopas and noticing readers’ interest related to the subject I thought some of us might be interested in a complete list of Vridar posts on the Emmaus Road narrative. Here they are, all 18 of them, annotated. When did Peter first see the resurrected Jesus? 2007-09-16 The Emmaus … Continue reading “18 Vridar Posts on the Gospel of Luke’s Emmaus Road / Cleopas Narrative”
As we discussed several months ago, Michael Licona wrote a book about the differences in the gospels in which he tries to explain them away by comparing the evangelists to Plutarch. However, his attempt was stillborn, since his methodology contains a deadly flaw. He proposes that by examining how Plutarch changed stories as he recounted … Continue reading “How the Author of Acts Rewrote Stories from Luke”
Back in 2010 the University of Copenhagen published news of a project to “map the development of the four gospels in order to establish that the Gospel of Luke is not, as believed so far, a contemporary of the Gospel of Matthew, and that the shared content of the two is not to be explained … Continue reading “The Gospels as Creative Rewriting (like rewritten biblical books)”
I skip ahead to the fourth paper of the first day of the Memory and the Reception of Jesus in Early Christianity Conference (10th-11th June 2016, St Mary’s University): “The Reception of Jesus in the Gospel of John” by Helen Bond I will return in the next post to the third and the discussion following. … Continue reading “How the Gospel of John Uses and Completes the Gospel of Mark”
In the last installment, we covered oral tradition. As I look over the post now, I see that I missed several opportunities to add the adjective, “rich.” Biblical scholars love to write the words “rich oral tradition.” How, you may ask, do they know such details about something based mostly on conjecture? Watch out! If you keep asking questions like … Continue reading “Bart Ehrman: Jesus Before the Gospels, Basic Element 4: Genre”
It is an abuse of one’s status as a public intellectual to write dogmatic apologetics for lay readers. Professor Brant Pitre cobbles together a grab-bag of rationalisations to promote Catholic dogma and presents it to his lay readers as a work based on superior scholarship. The title of this post might have as well have begun … Continue reading “Why the Anonymous Gospels? Failure of Scholarship in Pitre’s The Case for Jesus“
The genre of the gospels is an important question. Genre is an indication of the author’s intent. Does the author want to make us laugh at human foibles or weep over human tragedy, to escape into an entertaining world of make-believe, to be inspired and instructed by historical or biographical narratives, to mock establishment values, … Continue reading “The Gospels: Written to Look Like (the final) Jewish Scriptures?”
Michael Goulder’s thesis that the Gospel of Matthew was composed specifically to be read out week by week in churches (assemblies) may not have been widely adopted yet I am convinced that the core of his arguments is worth serious consideration. Of course Goulder applies his thesis to the Gospels of Mark and Luke, too, but I … Continue reading “Why Was the Gospel of Matthew Written?”
I had supposed that scholars were dedicated to the pursuit of truth, wherever that might lead, and that new ideas would always be welcome. — Michael Goulder In his memoirs Michael Goulder describes the eureka moments that led him to challenge major planks of the conventional wisdom New Testament scholarship. The first of these challenges was his thesis … Continue reading “Luke’s Unwelcome Creativity”
“The Book of Genesis” Recently, Gary Rendsburg’s audio course on Genesis became available at The Great Courses web site for just $29.95, and I couldn’t resist. In future posts, I would like to review this series of lectures more completely, but for now, let me just say that it’s pretty good — especially with respect to internal … Continue reading “Rendsburg on Genesis and Gilgamesh: How Our Focus on the Bible Can Distort Our View of the Past”