Musings on biblical studies, politics, religion, ethics, human nature, tidbits from science
I’m looking for other blogs that also discuss the Bible and Bible scholarship in depth as I do here. I don’t mean from the same perspective — no matter if they are Catholic, Mormon, atheist, anything — just curious to know what else there is in internet-land that discusses biblical questions as regularly and analytically as I attempt to do here.
Many thanks.
(Email me if reluctant to post here: neilgodfrey1[AT]gmail[DOT]com)
11 am 18th July 2011, Revised the section “What the Chapter is about”
James McGrath begins his review of chapter 8 protesting that Doherty is placing a different interpretation on some known and agreed facts in order to argue a mythicist case.
The chapter gets several things right and mentions important information about the context of earliest Christianity – and yet consistently manages to interpret those details as leading to mythicism.
It sounds as if McGrath simply does not want Doherty reinterpreting anything at all in a way that can present a mythicist argument. But that is hardly a sound objection to what Doherty’s actual interpretations and arguments are.
Unfortunately McGrath does not specify which arguments or interpretations Doherty uses are faulty. In fact, as we have come to expect in these reviews, Doherty’s arguments are sidestepped. In their place McGrath reverts to pulling out arguments he has used against mythicism time and again even before reading Doherty’s book. Sometimes he claims to be informing readers of what Doherty argues, but in the following response I will quote passages from Doherty that belie McGrath’s portrayals of Doherty’s lines of reasoning. Continue reading “Doherty’s Chapter 8 in outline & Review of McGrath’s review”
(Edited with additional headings and discussion of the different kinds of Jesus portrayed - an hour after original posting.)
(Again edited 8 Dec 2011)
As someone rightfully said in relation to my earlier post on this theme, Matthew’s “Misunderstanding” of Mark’s Miracle Stories,
It’s interesting what you can discover when you closely compare the two. Nothing beats a close reading of the texts.
In the discussion following a recent post the question was raised why Matthew lacks Mark’s reference to Jairus being a synagogue ruler. (He also omits the name Jairus).
I don’t know if I have a definitive answer to that particular question, but in searching for possible explanations I did notice a number of other interesting differences between the two miracle narratives that indicate quite different agendas of the two authors. One detects not an interest in recording historical detail but in creating a Jesus who fulfils certain quite different expectations and narrative functions. (This is a tendency well known to historical Jesus scholars. But the implication for historicism or mythicism is a separate question from what I am addressing here. I am interested in understanding the nature of the Gospels more fully, in this instance by comparing the way two of them treat a particular narrative.) Continue reading “Why Matthew changed the way Mark wrote about Jairus’ daughter and the hemorrhaging woman”
After discussing fundamentalist approaches to the Bible — whether fundamentalism on the part of Bible believers or fundamentalism on the part of Bible denigrators — Lester Grabbe concludes:
There is no permanent state of purity nor any established chair of righteousness in scholarship. Even if one suspects that a scholarly position or theory is ideologically motivated — whether from biblical fundamentalism or some other ideology — one should evaluate the position on the basis of stated arguments. Trying to second guess motives has become too much of a pastime in the academy. (p. 23 of Ancient Israel: What Do We Know and How Do We Know It?, my emphasis)
Is there anyone out there who has a history of imputing anti-Christian vendettas to mythicists reading this? Does the shoe fit?
Lester Grabbe continues:
It has become common in recent years to introduce personal motives into arguments: ‘so and so takes this position because he/she is/thinks/believes this or that’. Unfortunately, we can always find reasons to say that someone takes a scholarly position because of personal or ideological motives . . . . Such statements have no place in scholarly argument. In fact, there is probably not a one of us who has not taken a position on some issue for personal reasons, even if totally unconscious of this motive. . . . I am very sensitive to arguments or positions that seem to arise from a fundamentalist stance with regard to the Bible. Yet, as John Emerton once remarked from the floor in a conference, we should reply to the specific arguments rather than what we think might be behind them. . . . (p. 24)
Grabbe discusses an article attacking another that dated the Siloam inscription to the Maccabaean period. The attacking article was headlined “Pseudo-Scholarship”. Grabbe says that this article made some relevant and serious points, but the heading of “Pseudo-Scholarship”
served to prejudice the readership from the start. The redating of the Siloam inscription may be wrong — and most so far think it is — but it is not “pseudo-scholarship”, and such ad hominem comments do not belong in scholarly writing or debate. (pp. 24-5)
If Lester Grabbe has a point, and he probably does, then I have to confess guilt on this count, too. Let’s see what happens from now on.
It might be interesting to see how the criteria used for the quest for the historical Jesus might work with another figure of comparable stature in the ancient world. A comparison like this might help us assess their real value as determinants of historicity.
We have the writings of the philosopher Plato. These dramatize the teaching career, trial and death of Socrates in dialogue form. But was Plato writing about a real person or was Socrates only a literary character he chose through whom to express his own philosophical teachings?
We have the writings of Xenophon. Xenophon was known as a historian but his writings about Socrates are not histories. They portray a very different sort of teacher from the one we read about in Plato.
Both Plato and Xenophon are clearly writing as devoted followers of Socrates, and classicists have often remarked that the teachings they attribute to Socrates are really their own and not those of a real Socrates at all. So we are still have one source type represented by both of these authors, and historicity cannot be settled by appealing to their “multiple attestation” alone.
This reminds us of Schweitzer’s complaint about the nature of the evidence for Jesus:
[A]ll the reports about [Jesus] go back to the one source of tradition, early Christianity itself, and there are no data available in Jewish or Gentile secular history which could be used as controls. Thus the degree of certainty cannot even be raised so high as positive probability. (Schweitzer, Quest, p.402)
But we do have another source that appears to be quite independent of the above pair of Socrates’ disciples. Continue reading “Was Socrates man or myth? Applying historical Jesus criteria to Socrates”
Slightly edited ten minutes after going live. More edits probably to come.I was about to post a scholar’s comment about the minimalist-maximalist debate when my attention was drawn to a classic illustration of the point I was about to make: McGrath had compared minimalists with mythicists. The comparison is instructive for the way the debate has been addressed. But before I discuss the specifics, let’s bring up front the general picture.
Biblical scholars and students who have commented publicly on the mythicist debate have brought shame upon themselves as intellectuals. They no doubt feel they have said all the right things that needed to be said, and that they speak for their colleagues and have the support of their academic peers. But while attempting to defend their profession they have not spoken as professionals. They have rather exposed themselves as intolerant, fearful and very unpleasant persons towards those who question seriously their core assumptions and methods. Their response to outside challenge has been utterly unlike the professionalism demonstrated by academics in some other disciplines (e.g. biological sciences) have responded to outsiders who have challenged them (e.g. creationists).
To see evidence supporting this claim one only has to look at a handful of responses that have been published online in the last week or so. Continue reading ““The Unhelpful Way In Which The . . . Debate Has Moved” (Or, attempting to understand why the misrepresentations from Hoffmann, McGrath, et al)”
For those who have not had the time to read in full Roger Parvus’s posts so far about the identity of the author of the Ignatian letters I’m being kind and offering here a sketch outline of what he has written to date. Obviously this cannot cover the details and we know details are where devils and (surely) angels, too, are to be found.
Roger Parvus seeks to argue
(1) that the seven Ignatian letters that comprise the ‘middle recension’ were originally letters written by Peregrinus c. 145 CE,
(2) that he was an Apellean Christian i.e. a follower of the ex-Marcionite Apelles, and
(3) that later, towards the end of the second century, the letters were modified by a protoCatholic Christian.
Why the argument should not be dismissed out of hand
If “hits” are an indication of what posts others have found of most use or interest, then I can say that the following two tables list the dozen most useful or interesting posts I have done
The lists should help clarify the sort of blog this is and what its primary impact has been. Continue reading “The 12 most read posts on Vridar”
I have posted several times explaining what the purpose of this blog is and what my interests and motivations are. It is all there, including links to those posts, in my “About” page that I have updated today.
2nd post in the series by Roger Parvus. The complete series is archived here.
TDOP = The Death of Peregrinus by Lucian. Harmon’s translation here.
In my previous post I showed that Peregrinus, as described by Lucian, bears some resemblance to the man who wrote the letters commonly ascribed to Ignatius of Antioch, and I proposed that the reason for their similarity is that the real author of the letters was Peregrinus. In his adult life he was first a Christian, but later abandoned Christianity to become a Cynic philosopher. So, some of the similarities noted are those that existed between those two periods of his life. According to Lucian, what characterized Peregrinus was that he “always did and said everything with a view to glory and the praise of the multitude.” (TDOP 42, Harmon). And his glory-seeking was already clearly present in his Christian days when the governor of Syria freed him because he realized that Peregrinus “would gladly die in order that he might leave behind him a reputation for it.” (TDOP 14, Harmon). So I see it as quite plausible that many of the ways he pursued glory as a Cynic would be similar to the ways he pursued it earlier as a Christian.
When, as a Cynic, he sought to die a fiery death, he sent out letters to publicize the event. Earlier, I maintain, when he sought to die a martyr’s death as a Christian, he sent out letters too, among which are the seven so-called Ignatians. As a Cynic enamored of death, he gave titles to the messengers who spread the news of his upcoming leap to glory. I submit that the similar titles present in the letter collection are an indication that earlier, as a Christian enamored of martyrdom, he had already engaged in that practice. The specific titles were different, of course, because of the difference in his affiliation. But the very idea of giving titles to the messengers is the same. And as a Cynic he proclaimed his desire to dissolve into thin air via fire so as to imitate Heracles. To this would correspond his earlier proclamation, as a Christian, that he desired to be visible no more, and to be — courtesy of a painful execution by the Romans — an imitator of the passion of his God. And, as I see it, his adoption of new names to mark important moments in his life was not something he only began once he became a Cynic. No, the greeting at the head of each of the seven letters from “Ignatius who is also Theophorus” shows that it was already there during his Christian period. His becoming a prisoner in chains for Christ was one of those moments that called for a new name. (In a later post I will come back to this and look more closely at the name he took to mark the occasion).
An interesting thing happened to me while I was on my way to write this post this evening. (I was intending to expand on the discussion relating to another post but now have something much more interesting to write about.) I saw a reference online to a scholarly article that was suggesting that Mark’s account of Jesus’ healing the blind man by spitting on him may have been written in response to the rumour circulating that Vespasian had not long before performed the same miracle by spitting. Was Mark drawing the readers’ attention to a contrast between Vespasian using the miracle to declare his universal authority and Jesus using it to lead into his message about humble service?
Eric Eve of Oxford had the article published in New Testament Studies in 2008, titled “Spit in your eye: the blind man of Bethsaida and the blind man of Alexandria“.
Eric Eve knows scholars have offered multiple reasons to consider the story a fiction: Continue reading “Jesus out-spitting the emperor”
Is this story a unique historical event that was related by eyewitnesses or do we have evidence that the author was basing this narrative on a similar story or stories well known to him? What is the more rational belief: that the dead rise or that authors imitate and adapt stories well known to them?
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2 Kings 4:8-37 |
Mark 5:21-43 |
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The woman grasps Elisha by the feet |
Jairus falls at the feet of Jesus |
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Her son has just died |
His daughter is at the point of death |
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The mother has faith all will be well |
The father has faith all will be well |
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While Elisha and the mother are travelling to the child Elisha’s servant brings news that the child is dead. |
While Jesus and the father are walking to the child Jairus’ servants bring news that the child is dead. |
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Elisha makes himself alone in the room with the child. |
Jesus puts all the others out of the room so only he and his closest associates are with the child. |
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Elisha makes physical contacts with the child and he is restored to life |
Jesus takes the child by the hand and she is restored to life |
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The woman responds with worship |
The parents are amazed. |
There’s more
John Shelby Spong observes even additional points of contact between the stories than I have listed there, such as the fact that in both cases the one requesting the healing had to travel some distance to find Elisha/Jesus who was walking that way, and that there were delays in each case before their arrival.
See also another set of details set out in a table on Michael Turton’s commentary.
Uncharacteristic control over crowds
While imitating the Elisha story the author of Mark’s gospel has found it necessary to break his habit of showing Jesus at the mercy of crowds. Until now Jesus has been forced out into the wilderness or into a boat because of crowds flocking to see him (1:45; 3:9). But with the Elisha story as his template he now has Jesus quite capably commanding the crowds not to follow him on his way to Jairus’ house (5:37) and once there he even “puts” others out of a room (5:40) so he and his closest can be alone with the child.
Some people experienced with crowd management issues might consider Jesus’ crowd control demonstrations a greater miracle than raising the dead. Continue reading “Reasons to entertain a smidgen of doubt about Jesus raising the daughter of Jairus”
In Chapter 7, I give reasons why there should be no doubt that the whole of this healing narrative [the raising of the daughter of Jairus in Mark 5] is literally true, and that it is dependent ultimately on an eyewitness account by one of the inner circle of the three of the Twelve, who were present throughout, and who accordingly heard and transmitted exactly what Jesus said. (p. 109 of Jesus of Nazareth by Maurice Casey; a footnote here directs the reader to pages 268-69 in that chapter 7.)
Things about Jesus in the Gospels that are “literally true” — that is what this historical Jesus scholar believes he can establish. Not only that, Casey will give reasons why there should be no doubt that we find this healing recorded in the Gospels because of the direct eyewitness testimony of one of Jesus’ own disciples. Continue reading “Reasons not to doubt the historicity of Jesus raising the daughter of Jairus”
This post outlines the arguments of George Athas on the famous “House of David” lexeme that appears in the published version of his 1999 doctoral dissertation, The Tel Dan Inscription: A Reappraisal and a New Interpretation (2003).
Athas believes that the critical word often translated as House of David is in fact a geographical place-name and probably a reference to Jerusalem. I will cover Athas’s historical commentary in which he discusses the relevance of the expression as evidence for a historical Davidic dynasty in a future post. I have not covered every detail of Athas’ comments, omitting some subordinate arguments such as a proposed translation that introduces a cookhouse into the inscription, or where an argument against a particular amended text in Amos 8:14 is rejected because it breaks the parallelism in the verse. On the other hand, I have expanded some details, such as journal names and biblical quotations. Do let me know if you notice any errors in the Hebrew/Aramaic letters. The Tel Dan is an Aramaic inscription.
To begin with, here is a translation by George Athas of fragment A in which the apparent “House of David” appears, along with line numbering:
| A1 | [. . . .]you will rule ov[er | ] |
| A2 | [and because of the p]iou[s acts] of my father, may [?] go up [ | ] |
| A3 | and my father will repose. May he go to [ | at every] |
| A4 | ancient [h]earth on the ground of El-Bay[tel | am] |
| A5 | I, so Hadad would go before me [ | the day-] |
| A6 | -s of my reign, and I would slay a kin[g] and [ | thousands of cha-] |
| A7 | -riots and thousands of horsemen [ | ] |
| A8 | the king of Israel, and [I] killed [him | kin-] |
| A9 | -g of Bayt-Dawid. And [the] name [of | ] |
| A10 | their land to [ | ] |
| A11 | another and to [ | Jehoash r-] |
| A12 | -eigned over Is[rael | I laid] |
| A13 | siege to [Samaria | ] |
There are two fragments, A and B. Athas discusses the evidence for placing the B fragment below fragment A (e.g. the evidence that the scribe did not have to stretch when engraving B as he did with the letters in A, and the breakdown of the text’s alignment if B is placed alongside A). This changes how scholars interpret the possible overall message on the monument, but does not affect the meaning of the apparent “House of David” reference.
Biran and Naveh first proposed the theory that this should be interpreted as “House of David” – that is, referring to the “dynastic name of the kingdom of Judah”. (‘An Aramaic Stele Fragment from Tel Dan’, Israel Exploration Journal 43 (1993), pp. 81-98. Continue reading “The Tel Dan inscription: the meaning of ביתדוד, “House of David””