Musings on biblical studies, politics, religion, ethics, human nature, tidbits from science
This post derives from my reading of Some Hellenistic Elements in Primitive Christianity by Wilfred L. Knox (1942). For other posts on various aspects of a relationship between Heracles and Jesus see Heracles, A Fitting Substitute for Jesus Christ. Let’s once again imagine the canonical gospels in the thought-world of the ancient Greco-Roman world. … Continue reading “Jesus the Logos in Roman Stoic Philosophers’ Eyes”
Continuing my reading of part 2 of Nanine Charbonnel’s Jésus-Christ, Sublime Figure de Papier . . . . . . . o . . . At the heart of Nanine Charbonnel’s thesis lies the question of how much we read in the gospels was written in a figurative sense and how much literal. Arthur Schopenhauer … Continue reading “A Midrashic Hypothesis for the Gospels”
I’m making some sort of progress towards some consistency in the blog’s categories and tags (well into the categories right now having reduced them from around 50 million to a tenth of a million; but have yet to start seriously on eliminating overlaps in the tags). Here are some questions that are bugging me at … Continue reading “Vridar Housekeeping”
For most scholars, Boyarin’s thinking is a complete paradigm shift and in many ways something that “just isn’t done.”74 74 Horbury, Jewish Messianism, argued similarly to Boyarín yet not as forcefully. Those quotes are from Benjamin Reynolds, page 29 of his essay “The Gospel of John’s Christology as Evidence for Early Jewish Messianic Expectations: Challenges … Continue reading “Horbury Argued Similarly: Jewish Messianic Ideas Explain Christianity”
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”
Philo’s Logos is neither just the Wisdom (Gk sophia; Heb okhmah) of the Bible, nor is it quite the Platonic logos, nor the divine Word (Heb davar), but a new synthesis of all of these. A response to the post Gospel of John as a Source for Jewish Messianism: This seems interesting. Though the opening … Continue reading ““Logos, a Jewish Word””
Eight years ago I posted Starting a New Religion with The Gospel of John. In that post the punch line was: Where the Gospel of John is different: Where the fourth evangelist differs from all of these [books written in the names of other prophets], as well as from those who exploited the Moses tradition, is … Continue reading “Gospel of John as the turning point in a New Religion and a New God”
On History for Atheists Tim O’Neill has set out the standard reasons for the view that Jesus was an apocalyptic prophet. He concludes that this particular portrayal of Jesus stands against what conservative and liberal Christians, and even “fringe Jesus Mythicists”, and “many people” generally “would like Jesus to be.” Put that way, one wonders why anyone … Continue reading “Examining the Evidence for Jesus as an Apocalyptic Prophet”
The witnesses to a Jewish, pre-Christian, belief in a Suffering Messiah that we have heard from so far: Ecclesiasticus, Interpreted the Servant Songs in Isaiah as references to a new coming of Elijah as the messiah. the Testament of Benjamin, Attributed to a messiah from the tribe of Joseph the atoning death found in Isaiah’s … Continue reading “Jewish Understandings of a Suffering Messiah before the Christian Era (4)”
It is commonly recognized that the Gospels depict Jesus’ crucifixion as an ironic royal enthronement. We know the evidence for this statement: the triumphal entry of Jesus into Jerusalem; the riddle of Psalm 110 over the messiah being David’s Lord; the parable of the pounds; the dressing up of Jesus in royal garb; the … Continue reading “Further Evidence of a Pre-Christian Concept of a Suffering Davidic Messiah”
Some readers will be interested in what Martin Goodman had to say about Jewish concepts of the Messiah in the Second Temple era. As much as I’m tempted to add my own comments I will restrain myself. I have written enough of my own perspective on this question other times I have addressed “messianic expecations” … Continue reading “Messiahs and Eschatology in Second Temple Judaism”
The title question sounds quite unlikely to most historically informed readers but it is answered in the affirmative by those mythicists I have classified as “type twos“. A Vridar reader asked for my views of the arguments presented on a youtube video featuring Joseph Atwill and D.M. Murdock. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zBZH0uoUZH4 1. About 4 minutes … Continue reading “Did Roman Emperors Vespasian and Titus Create Christianity to Fool the Judeans?”
Joseph Atwill, author of Caesar’s Messiah: The Roman Conspiracy to Invent Jesus, from time to time challenges some of my points on this blog and I have tended to respond only in generalities. A week ago I posted what I see is the difference between two types of mythicist arguments: There are two types of … Continue reading “Why Joseph Atwill’s Caesar’s Messiah is “Type 2” mythicism”
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 For other Archives by Topic, Annotated see the right margin. In the previous post we began to look at Daniel Gullotta’s treatment of Richard Carrier’s argument that the gospels are … Continue reading “Gullotta’s Misleading Portrayal of Carrier’s claims…. Part 2”