Musings on biblical studies, politics, religion, ethics, human nature, tidbits from science
Underestimating serious problems While researching background information on a post I’ve been picking away at for several weeks, I came across a problem that bothered me to the point where I had to pull some books out of storage. As you no doubt recall, the consensus explanation for the Synoptic Problem posits a “Q” source … Continue reading “What’s the Matter with Biblical Scholarship? Part 2”
Continuing from the previous post on Stanley K. Stowers’ chapter, “Does Pauline Christianity Resemble a Hellenistic Philosophy?” . . . To pre-empt predictable objections Stowers begins with three riders: His comparison study does not make claims about origins; he is not arguing that Christianity began as a Hellenistic philosophy. Comparison or similarity does not mean … Continue reading “Early Christianity Looked Like a Philosophical School”
I have long been intrigued by the second century “church father” Justin Martyr identifying himself as a philosopher, not a “priest” or elder or bishop or other ecclesiastical type of title. He left it on record that he came to Christianity after surveying a range of other philosophies, not religions. Other posts addressing publications by Stanley … Continue reading “Earliest Christianity Did Not Look Like a Religion”
Biblical scholars are reacting uncomfortably to signs of public interest in the view that Jesus did not exist. Not all biblical scholars, though. A tiny few do publicly welcome and accommodate this mythicist view of Jesus with their Christian faith and others who have confessed to being open-minded on the question. (For details see Who’s Who: Mythicists and … Continue reading “Biblical Scholars Reacting to Public Interest in Mythicism: Part 1”
Daniel Gullotta followed up his Miami Valley Skeptics podcast discussion with another podcast interview, this time on Logicast. The Logicast page and Daniel himself speak of the discussion as a “debate” with David Fitzgerald. This week I was invited to join the Logicast podcast to share my thoughts on New Testament scholarship, Biblical history, and talk about my recent debate … Continue reading “Daniel Gullotta’s Followup Podcast on the David Fitzgerald Discussion”
We have covered the subject of the apostle Paul’s silence on Jesus’ life many times on Vridar. But for quite a while now, I’ve been thinking we keep asking the same, misdirected questions. NT scholars have kept us focused on the narrow confines of the debate they want to have. But there are other questions that … Continue reading “The Memory Mavens, Part 6: How Did Paul Remember Jesus?”
Chapter 14 THE SHIPPING FORECAST: DEEPS BELOW AND A STORM AHEAD . Chapter 14 of Thomas Brodie’s Memoir of a Discovery is probably one of the volume’s most significant and it is to be regretted that some of Brodie’s critics have so totally avoided its message. This chapter strikes at the heart of what most … Continue reading “Making of a Mythicist, Act 4, Scene 3 (Deeps Below, Storms Ahead)”
I have finally caught up with the comments by Dr Mark Goodacre [MG] and Dr Richard Carrier [RC] since their radio discussion on the view that Jesus did not exist. While RC, without the burden of having to mark student papers, is able to add around 7,000 words of recap and elaboration to the case … Continue reading “Goodacre-Carrier Debate: What if . . . . ?”
The eight chapter of ‘Is This Not the Carpenter?’ is “Born under the Law: Intertextuality and the Question of the Historicity of the Figure of Jesus in Paul’s Epistles” by Thomas S. Verenna. He takes those passages commonly used to support the claim that Paul’s Jesus was indeed an historical person — his crucifixion, being … Continue reading “Was Paul’s Jesus an Historical Figure? — ‘Is This Not the Carpenter?’ ch. 8”
* Scholarly Reconstructions of the Historical Jesus . COVERED IN THIS POST: Consensus scholarly views of the historical Jesus The tyranny of the Gospels What Q does not tell us about an historical Jesus How New Testament scholarship operates Conflicting scholarly views about who and what Jesus was Finding Jesus in the Q prophets An … Continue reading “31. Earl Doherty’s Response to Bart Ehrman’s Case Against Mythicism – Part 31 (Scholarly Reconstructions of HJ)”
My recent encounter with Matthew Novenson’s Christ among the Messiahs has led me to a few other publications of his and one of them I found particularly surprising and interesting: Why Does R. Akiba Acclaim Bar Kokhba as Messiah? that appeared in a 2009 Journal for the Study of Judaism (40). (Bar Kokhba was the … Continue reading “A model history lesson (or, Why Does Rabbi Akiba Proclaim Bar Kokhba the Messiah?)”
In a recent blogpost, “Born of a Woman”: Paul’s Perfect Victim and the Historical Jesus, Joseph Hoffmann argued that as early as the 50s C.E. the apostle Paul was so disturbed by gossip about Jesus being born of an adulterous relationship that he had a “need to deal with it” in his letter to the … Continue reading “Hoffmann’s Mamzer-Jesus Solution to Paul’s “Born of a Woman””
* Earl Doherty’s Response to Bart Ehrman’s Case Against Mythicism – Pt.5 A Roman Trio COVERED IN THIS POST: Pliny the Younger – Letter to Trajan Information taken from Christians Is “Christ” a man or only a god? “Christo quasi deo” – “as” or “as if”? Ancient quotes have no “quasi” Suetonius – Life of … Continue reading “5. Earl Doherty’s Response to Bart Ehrman’s Case Against Mythicism: A Roman Trio”
* Earl Doherty’s Response to Bart Ehrman’s Case Against Mythicism – Part 3 . In this post Doherty covers Ehrman’s arguments dealing with: the argument from silence and the positive case for mythicism why is Paul so silent on the historical Jesus? Paul’s “words of the Lord” Problematic Gospels and their basis in scripture Dependence … Continue reading “3. Earl Doherty’s Response to Bart Ehrman’s Case Against Mythicism: Chapters 1-2”