Musings on biblical studies, politics, religion, ethics, human nature, tidbits from science
This post is nothing more than a bit of idle trivia per se. But maybe Kakadu Dreamtime wisdom somewhere says “Clever bower bird can find something among trivia to relocate so it has power to attract a mate.” The data comes primarily (not exclusively) from two sources: The Gospel of Mark as Midrash on Earlier … Continue reading “The Twelve Disciples: their names, name-meanings, associations, etc”
It’s surely a curious thing why certain issues, and not others, become the main media focus at this or that time. I recently commented on what I saw as the total lack of perspective, and even some fabricated reports, over the attention given to the Tibetan protests in relation to the Olympics. Very few reports … Continue reading “controlled violence good, uncontrolled violence bad”
Continuing notes from Tyson’s Marcion and Luke-Acts . . . . Last post looked at Tyson’s arguments for the Infancy Narratives in the Gospel of Luke, this one at the final chapter with the Resurrection appearances. Notes below that are in italics are my own additions and not, as far as I recalled at the … Continue reading “Luke’s Resurrection chapter: its ties to the Infancy stories, Acts and Marcion”
Continuing the series the evolution of the offering of Isaac into a Jesus story; earlier posts here. Levenson argues that much of the early christology derives from a midrashic combination of verses associated with Isaac, the beloved son of Abraham, the suffering servant in Isaiah who went, like Isaac, willingly to his slaughter, another miraculous … Continue reading “Jesus displaces Isaac: midrashic creation of the biblical Jesus . . . (Offering of Isaac . . . #6)”
First of a couple of backtracks here before completing the Offering of Isaac’s / Sacrifice of Jesus series. Based on Levenson’s The Death and Resurrection of the Beloved Son. According to what Eusebius tells us in his Praeparatio Evangelica, one passage Philo of Byblos wrote of sacrifice among the gods: It was a custom of … Continue reading “Beloved and Only Begotten Sons Sacrificed by Loving Fathers (Offering of Isaac, 5)”
Related post now added at Tibet protests . . . hope for Diego Garcians. . .? Update from my previous post on this topic. See also Human Rights in China. Update 1: The ugly reality (Ahmed Quraishi) Pakistani foreign affairs commentator Ahmed Quraishi has argues that the Tibetan issue has been orchestrated by Washington to … Continue reading “What is happening in Tibet (2)”
Continued from Dating Acts: Marcionite context . . . (see also Tyson and Marcion archives) After attempting a form of controlled analysis for determining the main themes and their supporting literary patterns in Acts, and arguing that the results are best explained as a response to the Marcionite challenge, Tyson examines the characterizations of Peter … Continue reading “Dating the Book of Acts: Marcionite Context 2 — and beyond”
Continuing notes from Richard Pervo’s Profit with Delight. (Previous related posts are archived here.) Skipping ahead here, wisely or otherwise, to chapter 4 and its discussion of “the ancient novel”. This post looks at different ways of seeing how ancient novels are made/how they work, with the hope of offering new ways to see and … Continue reading “The literary genre of Acts. 9: The ancient novel”
This post continues notes from Tyson’s Marcion and Luke-Acts: A Defining Struggle. Previous posts reconsidering the date of the composition of Acts and the Marcionite challenge can be found in my Tyson and Marcion archives. Tyson begins with Haenchen.
Continuing from the previous post on the literary genre of Acts which left dangling some unusual problems with the Ephesian Riot scene in Acts 19, two of which are: Paul is not involved in the riot at all, so what is the significance of this lengthy graphic narrative? A previously unmentioned Jew is put forward … Continue reading “Making sense of the Ephesian Riot in Acts”
Continuing notes from Pervo’s Profit with Delight on the literary genre of Acts . . . . Pervo offers a review of Acts 19 to illustrate the magnitude of the problem of reading Acts as history.
Immediately before the plot in Mark’s gospel reaches the point where Jesus experiences his final dramatic adventure — passing through betrayal, trial and death before entering the heavenly kingdom — Jesus delivers a long prophetic speech to his disciples. This inclusion of a detailed prophecy prior to the the hero launching out into a new … Continue reading ““The little apocalypse” — its literary function and context”
The National Geographic had a best seller on its hands when it published the Gospel of Judas that presented Judas as the hero of the Twelve rather than the villain as he is in the canonical gospels. But the significance is not just that in one version Judas is a hero and in the other … Continue reading “Gospel of Judas — Opposing translations and their significance”
As a past student of American history and society I relished catching up with more recent publications a couple of years ago and one of the more interesting was America Right or Wrong: An Anatomy of American Nationalism (2004) by Anatol Lieven. Sharing some notes from one section of this book — a discussion of … Continue reading “Millenarians and Nationalists”