2010-05-23

Hoo boy, I have a headache

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by Neil Godfrey

Filed under: Biblical Scholars, Biblical Studies, Vridar
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(Thinks) No, I don’t have a headache, but I feel like I should have one.

I wake up this morning as usual first check my iphone to see how the various media are spinning the Thailand events, check to see if there is any other news worth knowing about, then see if anyone has had a peek at my blog posts overnight. And what is waiting for me there but a very severe public chastising from a woman on the other side of the world — and a fellow Aussie, no less, a potential drinking partner!

I skimmed it and decided I needed a long walk. Haven’t had nearly enough exercise lately and I need time to myself to think through some major work projects too, and to appreciate the goodness of sunshine and smiling early morning faces.

Now I’m back reinvigorated and ready to go.

Well, where to start?

Thinking.

Okay — Why do I sometimes pick on certain scholarly works to criticize or share?

Answer: The ones I like to share are those that offer insights from a different perspective that I think is worth sharing. The ones I criticize are those that I have come to understand are looked up to as major contributions to the faith of believers, or are held up as benchmark works that establish and even extend the foundations of the core findings of historical Jesus and early Christianity scholarship.

An example of one widely esteemed as a major “wow” book for believers was Richard Bauckham’s “Jesus and the Eyewitnesses”. Now I know what it’s like to be excited by new findings in research. And I especially can appreciate the thrill of new sensational ideas charging in honour and celebration of one’s own personal beliefs. But I also know that false beliefs, shoddy reasoning, has a lot to answer for. And that public intellectuals have a greater responsibility in this area.

So in the case of Bauckham’s book I felt some obligation to make available to anyone interested what I saw as the flaws in his arguments and methods. It’s good for choices to be made available.

In the case of Crossley, I did not think it worth saying much in any detail until a number of people began to give me the impression that his work was also taken much more seriously than I had expected after reading it for myself some time ago. I thought it was mostly smoke-and-mirror type scholarship with nothing substantial to say at all. Yet I was regularly seeing references to the strength of his case. But I never saw any detailed defence of his arguments.

It was as if people were so impressed by the complexity and depth of his arguments that they could not summarize them themselves, but they could always refer to his books and challenge anyone to deny their import.

One associate professor challenged me in a similar way to take on the way E. P. Sanders had so soundly proven the historicity of Jesus. I began to show in detail how Sanders did no such thing and he went quiet and changed the subject.

So I have shown what I see as the fallacies and shallowness of Crossley’s arguments, and I would expect that if they were really so sound I would have fact after fact fired back at me to show how and where I had misrepresented them, or failed to honestly rebut them.

But no, all I get is how it is impossible to point out where I am wrong in anything less than a full size book, and therefore I have to be content with accepting personal abuse instead. I find this surprising. I have catalogued over the years probably thousands of scholarly works, and I think just about every one of them, certainly most of them, has somewhere what is called an abstract — a summary of the arguments contained in a scholarly thesis, book, article or paper. The only bad and incompetent abstracts I have read are by those who are undergraduates. But everyone has to learn.

Yet no, not even an abstract (of what a book pointing out the wrongs of my critiques would contain) can be mustered against my arguments. Only demands that I explain what my religious background is that has made me supposedly so embittered and hateful of Christianity that I would dare argue against the basic model accepted by mainstream scholars.

Well, it sounds to me as if I have no need to spell out the details of my religious background since I am already being accused of such malicious motives stemming from some warped soul-bending past experiences.

So what is the point of bothering to remind such accusers that my complete religious history has been linked from my blog ever since I started it a few years ago. One only has to click the About Vridar button to access it. But it seems that this is not enough, and I am to be condemned for attempting to hide my past experiences in some nefarious attempt to conceal the root of my evil motives.

Oh, I almost forgot. I have also posted some of my experiences with fundamentalism here — including quite a few positive experiences. But I hide these in a secret place that can only be accessed by scrolling through Categories headings on the right margin on my blog.

I used to think that scholars were paragons of reason and enlightenment. That if I asked them a question they would enlighten me. That if I made an error they would instruct me. That if I disagreed with their conclusions they would point out my mistakes.

Instead, I find myself being painted as someone with an irrational vendetta against Christianity? Woops! Where on earth did that come from? Maybe someone can explain to me that it is impossible to pinpoint any specific evidence on my blog that demonstrates this vendetta, but if pushed they could write a book to explain it, but don’t ask for an abstract summary of that book.

Interesting how scholars who cannot defend their arguments resort to ad hominem. I discussed Craig Evan’s tendency to do this in his book Fabricating Jesus, too. It is truly an amazing way to respond to critiques and exposures of the shoddy reasoning underlying so much that passes for biblical scholarship. I feel these painful responses are really testimony to the truth of the critiques. There is nothing to defend that is based on sound reasoning and evidence.

Sometimes these scholars go on the attack and issue critiques of their own — usually of Earl Doherty’s books. But I do wish those scholars who do this actually demonstrate that they have read either some, or more than a few lines on a website, of what he actually argues.

But now I’m starting to go into a rant of my own. Okay, I’ve been ranting too long.

Will finish this, have breakfast, and maybe when I feel more comfortable see if it is worth responding in the comments section to my chastisement.

2010-05-22

Jesus: a Saviour Just Like the Kings and Gods of Egypt and Babylon

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by Neil Godfrey

Filed under: Ancient Literature, Ancient Religious Cultures, Biblical Studies, New Testament, Old Testament
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The Good Shepherd, mosaic in Mausoleum of Gall...
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Thomas L. Thompson wrote The Messiah Myth to demonstrate that the sayings and deeds of Jesus in the Gospels (and David in the OT) are the product of a literary tradition about Saviour figures — both kings and deities — throughout the Middle East. The subtitle of the book is “the Near Eastern roots of Jesus and David”.

A number of New Testament scholars have expressed concern that contemporary classical literature is not widely read and studied by their peers. One’s understanding of the Gospels and Acts — and even the New Testament letters — is enriched when one can recognize links between them and other literature of their day. Thompson goes a bit further than this, and appeals for a greater awareness of the longstanding tradition of literary themes and images that were the matrix of both Old and New Testament narratives.

Some scholars see in Jesus’ sayings certain gems that are unique or holy or brilliantly enlightened and worthy of the deepest respect. They see in his deeds of healing and concern for the poor and weak a noble character worthy of devotion.

Some see the themes of concern for the poor and condemnation of the rich and powerful as evidence that Jesus was tapping into popular revolutionary or resistance sentiments among peasants and displaced persons in early first-century Galilee.

Other scholars see in the saying evidence of economic exploitation such that a sense of resentment could easily morph into a Jesus movement.

All of the above interpretations are thrown into question when one notices their echoes in the OT – and especially throughout the wider world of the OT. The wordings vary, but they are all clear reiterations of the same motifs.

But after one becomes more familiar with the literary heritage of the ancient “Near East”, one must legitimately ask if all those sayings and deeds of Jesus are nothing more than stereotypical tropes that authors wanting to describe any God in the flesh or Saviour King would inevitably use. What is said of Jesus was said countless times of your average typical Saviour Pharaoh or Mesopotamian monarch or deity.

Naturally we expect the Gospel authors to be more influenced by the Jewish texts than Egyptian or Mesopotamian ones, but Thompson shows that this is all part of the same package. What we read in the Old Testament is much the same as we read among Egyptian, Syrian and Babylonian literature. It’s all part and parcel of the same thought world.

Thompson asks readers to re-read the Gospel narratives about Jesus in the context of the literary heritage of the Jewish scriptures — and to understand that heritage as itself part of a wider literary and ethical outlook throughout the Middle East. Don’t forget that Jews were not confined to Palestine but were well established in communities from Babylonia to Egypt, too.

The following extracts are from Thompson’s discussion of The Song for a Poor Man. It is only one of the several facets of this heritage that Thompson addresses. One sees that the ancient world was full of Saviours like Jesus. It must have been a happy time and place (tongue in cheek). Continue reading “Jesus: a Saviour Just Like the Kings and Gods of Egypt and Babylon”

Why Christianity Happened: Origins of the Pauline Mission” (reviewing ch. 5 of James Crossley’s book)

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by Neil Godfrey

Filed under: Biblical Studies, New Testament
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Arkansas Mass Baptism 2nd effortEarlier I reviewed chapter 2 of Why Christianity Happened by James Crossley, and here I look at his final chapter (5), “Recruitment, Conversion, and Key Shifts in Law Observance: The Origins of the Pauline Mission“.

I was curious to understand what Crossley had to say in favour of a social history approach to explaining how antinomian Pauline Christianity can be explained if the earliest Christian movement began among circumcising, sabbath-keeping, synagogue-worshiping, food-law observant Jews. Crossley seeks to explain Christianity’s origins through socioeconomic paradigms. Social history, he argues, is where the truly historical explanations lie.

Paul’s views on the law and justification by faith can thus be seen as an intellectual reaction to and justification of a very down-to-earth and messy social problem. (p.172)

I fully agree with attempting to explain Christian origins in secular terms and according to the models of the social sciences and socioeconomic models where possible. Unfortunately, his attempt to explain the origins of the Jesus movement through the Lenski-Kautsky and Hobsbawm observations of how certain social movements arise flounders on the absence of evidence, or misapplication of Gospel evidence, as discussed in my earlier review of chapter 2.

The problems facing Crossley’s explanation in that chapter, and in chapter 5 which I will address here, arise from the default assumption that the narrative outline of the Gospels and Acts is grounded in genuine history. Although he treats these texts as if their narratives contain allusions to the real historical origins of early Christianity, he at no time justifies this assumption. (See “footnote in the box at end of this post for further discussion of this point.)

The trap laid by the assumption of the historicity of Gospels-Acts

When Crossley (or any) historian locks himself into the Gospel-Acts’ narrative paradigm of Christian origins he is stuck with just a single form of Christianity and must find a way of explaining how so many extremely variant forms of Christianity Continue reading “Why Christianity Happened: Origins of the Pauline Mission” (reviewing ch. 5 of James Crossley’s book)”

2010-05-20

Okay, just one more early-dating of Mark critique, but quickly

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by Neil Godfrey

Filed under: Biblical Studies, New Testament
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Image by Toban Black via Flickr

(response to recent comments on the earlier post “Dating Mark Early”)

Crossley presents three specific arguments to date Mark before 40 ce:

  1. the way he wrote about the disciples plucking corn on the sabbath could be interpreted by the unwary to mean that Jesus was abolishing the sabbath; but since other arguments “establish” this was not the case, the ambiguity in Mark’s narrative “demonstrates” that he wrote at a time when all Christians would have understood that Jesus plainly did not abolish the sabbath — and therefore at a time when all Christians were taking sabbath keeping for granted — i.e. before 40 ce.
  2. the way he worded Jesus’ saying in the divorce controversy appears on the face of it to mean that divorce is not allowed under any circumstances; but since it can be argued that Mark’s Jesus was always a stickler for the biblical law, and the biblical law did allow for divorce, it is “clear” that Mark did not mean his audience to read his words literally, but to assume that Jesus “meant” to allow for divorce for “the obvious reasons” anyway — and this also “proves” that Mark wrote very early before any divorce discussions arose in the church — i.e. before 40 ce.
  3. the way Mark chose his words in describing the handwashing controversy left it open for later readers to think that Jesus was declaring all foods clean, thus abolishing the biblical food laws; but since on other grounds it can be argued that Mark’s Jesus always observed biblical laws on principle, we can infer that Mark was writing at a time when his audience took this for granted and understood Jesus was not abolishing the food laws at all. — i.e. even earlier before 40 ce.

Any one of these arguments, Crossley admits, may not be persuasive for all readers, but together they become an argument of “cumulative weight” and therefore much stronger. The maths proves it: 0+0+0=3.

In one place in his book, The Date of Mark’s Gospel, he says that the first two arguments are the strongest case; but elsewhere he says the third is the strongest. I’ve dealt with one part of #1 here, and will deal with #3 in this post. Continue reading “Okay, just one more early-dating of Mark critique, but quickly”

2010-05-19

The relevance of “minimalists'” arguments to historical Jesus studies

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by Neil Godfrey

Filed under: Biblical Scholars, Biblical Studies, Historical Methods and Historiography, New Testament
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The arguments of the “minimalists” questioning the historical core of many of the narratives of the “Old Testament” — and ultimately the historical existence of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, David and Solomon, and the biblical Kingdom of Israel — apply with as much logical force to questions of the existence of Jesus. The minimalists showed that scholarly beliefs in a historical Biblical Kingdom of Israel were based on circular reasoning. The same circular reasoning and assumptions underlie belief in the historicity of Jesus.

“Minimalist” arguments are not just about the archaeological evidence.

They are more fundamental and generic than that. They have, I believe, direct relevance to historical Jesus and early Christian studies — any studies, in fact, that rely on reading the narratives in the Gospels and Acts as if they have some historical basis.

Time gaps and archaeological evidence are irrelevant to the fundamental logic underlying the arguments.

Below are statements by “minimalists” themselves that were originally directed at the way scholars once read the Jewish Bible as a historical source for “biblical Israel”. They are relevant for anyone who approaches the Gospels as historical sources. The Gospels are certainly historical sources, but the narratives they tell are not necessarily historical at all, nor even based on any core historical events.

Philip R. Davies on Tail Chasing

Philip Davies discusses only the study of ancient Israel. He does not address Jesus or early Christianity. It is my argument that his discussion applies equally well to these.

Philip Davies’ In Search of Ancient Israel (1992) is reputed to have been the publication that triggered the “minimalist”-“maximalist” debate over the historicity of biblical Israel. In the 1994 preface, Davies wrote of this book:

I feel that this book still makes a good case for an approach to the investigation of the Bible, its authors and creators, which is becoming more widely adopted.

The approach has not impacted New Testament studies, however. I think this is a pity and unjustifiable. But then, Jesus has a more solid iconic status in our culture than David or Abraham.

Read the following critique directed at “Old Testament” scholars back in 1992 and see if it is relevant to scholars of the Gospels and Acts: Continue reading “The relevance of “minimalists’” arguments to historical Jesus studies”

2010-05-17

An overlooked source for Mark’s gospel?

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by Neil Godfrey

Filed under: Ancient Literature, Biblical Studies, New Testament
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I don’t recall hearing many references to the works of Philo as a source for the Gospel of Mark. Maybe there are good reasons for this that I have yet to learn.

Philo was a Jewish philosopher who lived in Alexandria, Egypt, in the early part of the first century. He would have been in his late 40’s when Jesus was supposedly 30 years old.

Last month I posted what looks to me like an instance where the author of the Gospel of Mark drew on a particular image and thought that we also find in Philo. Who said this? was about a parable or riddle of Jesus in Mark:

Nothing outside a man can make him ‘unclean’ by going into him. Rather, it is what comes out of a man that makes him ‘unclean.‘ (Mark 7:15)

In that post — and it was further elaborated with contributions from others in the comments, if I recall — I noted the same idea expressed as its converse in similar imagery:

as Plato says, mortal things find their entrance, and immortal things their exit. For into the mouth do enter meat and drink, perishable food of a perishable body; but from out of it proceed words — the immortal laws of an immortal soul, by means of which a rational life is regulated. (Philo, On the Creation, 119)

There is another saying of Jesus in the Gospel of Mark that also comes to mind when reading the same work of Philo, On the Creation (or Opus Mundi).

The Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath. (Mark 2:27)

The Jesus Seminar voted that this is something very like what Jesus probably said. Maurice Casey (Aramaic Sources of Mark’s Gospel) discussed it at length to argue that “the cultural context” should inform readers that Jesus implied that his use of “man” or “mankind” here was nonetheless applicable to Jews only. He quotes the 1947 CNT (presumably the Commentaire du Nouveau Testament?) to confirm that Jesus would not have meant to include non-Jews in this sabbath saying:

As a matter of historical fact the Sabbath was not made for man in general. At the time when the saying was uttered the sabbath was a distinctive peculiarity of the Jews: and our evidence goes to show that they regarded it as such and resented any non-Jewish observance of it. (T. W. Manson, `Mark II. 27f’, CNT 11, 1947, 138-46, at 145, followed by Beare, `Sabbath’, 132.)

He also cites the Mekhilta Shabbath I, Exod. 31:12-17:

R. Simeon ben Menasya says: Look! It says, `And you shall keep the sabbath, for it is holy to you’ (Exod. 31.14). The sabbath is delivered to you and you are not delivered to the sabbath.

That last sentence is famous for its similarity to the passage in the Gospel of Mark.

Some scholars (e.g. Casey, Crossley and no doubt others) use this late rabbinic passage as part of their efforts to set the scene for Jesus’ day. But this does not work. The Jewish Encyclopedia says R. Simeon ben Menasya was a contemporary of R. Judah ha-Nasi I, and Wikipedia informs me that he lived and died around the late second century or early third century — assuming that this Wikipedia article is about the same rabbi. So the Mekhilta does not appear to trace the saying any earlier than a rabbi who lived in the late second or early third century. To use this passage to help reconstruct the ideas floating around in the time of Jesus is a bit like taking a text from a Chinese author in today’s Singapore and attempting to use it to reconstruct a thought extant in imperial Shanghai in 1800. It may be an accurate match, but we can’t bet on it without additional evidence. It is just as likely that the late rabbinic saying found its way into Jewish thought via Christian contacts.

But Philo wrote something in the first half of the first century, in Egypt, that also suggests the same idea Mark’s gospel attributes to Jesus:

XXX. (89) But after the whole world had been completed according to the perfect nature of the number six, the Father hallowed the day following, the seventh, praising it, and calling it holy. For that day is the festival, not of one city or one country, but of all the earth; a day which alone it is right to call the day of festival for all people, and the birthday of the world. (On the Creation)

Now that to me is clear evidence that the 1947 CNT article quoted above is not the whole story when it says there is clear evidence “that they (the Jews) . . .  resented any non-Jewish observance of it (the sabbath).” Philo here could hardly have resented it if gentiles celebrated the sabbath day. He suggests here that he would find gentile observance extremely praiseworthy.

And here we have a Jewish intellectual writing that the sabbath is a day that is given to all mankind. So one must ask how original is the verse in Mark?

But how likely is it that the author of Mark might have known Philo’s writings?

If we knew who wrote the gospel we could answer that without much difficulty.

Irenaeus associates the Gospel of Mark with the gnostic teacher Basilides — who happened to live in the same Alexandria as Philo a generation or two earlier. Clement of Alexandria wrote that Basilides was a disciple of Glaucias, “the interpreter of Peter”, and that he wrote a gospel himself. It’s a long shot, but one is reminded of other early “traditions” that Mark was composed from the memories of Peter. All of this is speculative, and there are other speculations from equally thin slivers of evidence that Mark was composed in Rome. There are reasons also to locate its author in Syria.

In the meantime, I think we now have two passages — closely positioned — in one work of Philo’s, On the Creation, that strike me as having resonance in the Gospel of Mark.

2010-05-15

Genesis myths inspired by Plato?

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by Neil Godfrey

Filed under: Ancient Literature, Biblical Studies, Old Testament
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There was an interesting article in the Scandinavian Journal of the Old Testament in 2007 by Lukas Niesiolowski-Spano (LN-S) of Warsaw University titled “Primeval History in the Persian Period?” (SJOT, Vol.21, no. 12, 106-126, 2007). The paper was first presented at the Seminar of Historical Methodology in Groningen, The Netherlands, 2004.

The Genesis creation stories are unlike other ancient Middle Eastern myths. LN-S refers to the “unparalleled character of the Primeval History in its Near Eastern environment”, and attributes this to the influence of Platonic philosophy in their making.

The assumption throughout the discussion is that no text can be dated earlier than external testimony permits. Genesis, in particular, its first two chapters, cannot be dated any earlier than when we find other texts making reference to them. In other words, normal practical historical methodology that applies to any nonbiblical study is followed. Dr LN-S is a lecturer in the Department of Ancient History at the University of Warsaw.

I begin here with some evidence for the earliest knowledge of Genesis, though LN-S really adds this at the end of his article. (I have colour coded some of the following sections to make for easier browsing of the main thought sections I have taken from LN-S’s article.)

What is the earliest evidence for Genesis? Continue reading “Genesis myths inspired by Plato?”

2010-05-12

Why even nonbeliever historians may still need a historical Jesus

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by Neil Godfrey

Filed under: Biblical Scholars, Biblical Studies, Historical Methods and Historiography, New Testament
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iconoclasm
Iconoclasm: Image by ambery via Flickr

I have not been able to fully grasp why some nonbeliever historians are so strident in their insistence that there is strong evidence for a historical Jesus and refuse to even contemplate for a moment, along with their believing peers, that they might be violating the simple foundational basics of practical historical enquiry. These basics, and the failure of historical Jesus historians to use them or even be aware of them are discussed in my earlier post:

  1. the nature of historical facts and the contrast between nonbiblical and historical Jesus historical methods
  2. and in a follow-up post discussing Scot McKnight’s discussion of biblical historiography.

But the reason has hit me. It came from reading follow-up works cited by Warsaw University lecturer, Dr Lukasz Niesiolowski-Spano (Primeval History in the Persian Period? 2007). These were Intellectuals and Tradition by S. N. Eisenstadt (Daedalus, vol. 101, no. 2, Spring 1972, pp.1-19) and Intellectuals, Tradition, and the Traditions of Intellectuals: Some Preliminary Considerations by Edward Shils (Daedalus, vol. 101, no. 2, Spring 1972, pp.21-34).

And the reason is now so obvious I am kicking myself for not seeing it earlier. If I did see it earlier it was only murkily.

History is always necessarily created by a society’s intellectuals. They shape the images that a society sees about itself and its past — its identity.

The sociological study of tradition has argued . . . that the formation of traditions is the activity of an intellectual elite, not the work of the community as a whole. This runs counter to a position often expressed or presumed in biblical studies. Yet S. N. Eisenstadt specifically identifies society’s intellectuals as the “creators and carriers of traditions.” This is true for many different kinds of tradition, including that of the historical traditions. The historian, as an intellectual, is the creator and maintainer of historical tradition. E. Shils makes the statement:

Images about the past of one’s own society, of other societies, and of mankind as a whole are also traditions. At this point, tradition and historiography come very close to each other. The establishment and improvement of images of the past are the tasks of historiography. Thus historiography creates images for transmission as tradition.

Of course, there may be a great many inherited images of the past — traditions of almost infinite variety. But their selective collection and organization according to chronological and thematic or “causal” relationships is the intellectual activity of historiography. (pp. 34-35 of Primeval History)

What has modern historical Jesus research been about if not an attempt by different scholars to establish and improve our culture’s most central iconic image? Continue reading “Why even nonbeliever historians may still need a historical Jesus”

My favourite James blog

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by Neil Godfrey

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Two of the things I do not like about my blog are that it is not funny and it always seems to be picking on anyone named James. So to make up a little for both faults I am compelled to give prominent linkage to Dr. Jim’s Thinking Shop & Tea Room. The theology of this particular James is impeccable and his humour divine.

2010-05-11

A common meaning behind Gospel of Mark’s cornplucking and divorce controversies

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by Neil Godfrey

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Though Crossley and Casey have written many thousands of words to show how these two episodes (sabbath cornfield dispute and divorce controversy) can be used to date Mark before 40 c.e., I find their arguments circular, convoluted and ultimately speculative. If I thought they had a widespread impact I would take the time to address them in more detail than I did in my earlier post on their early dating of Mark.

Meanwhile, I find if I read these passages as they are worded now, and within the broader context of the gospel’s message itself, and try very hard to avoid reading them through third century rabbinic writings or speculative Aramaic sources or other gospels written later than Mark, I can see something in them that I think is very interesting.

They both share the theme of a call for disciples to return to how things were at the very beginning of creation. In this they share a message found in certain gnostic type writings. (Mark also shares the syzygies or paradoxes found in some gnostic type sayings (e.g. the blind see, the dead live, etc), although Mark fleshes them out into narrative form.)

Example: In the sabbath cornfield dispute, Mark has Jesus pronounce that “the sabbath was made for man and not man for the sabbath.” This is in response to Pharisees accusing Jesus’ disciples of violating the sabbath by plucking corn, and as a follow-up to the analogy of David being allowed to eat the shewbread sacred to the priests. It seems to me as if this is suggesting that for all the Mosaic or other rules that might have come to historic or contemporary importance, what Jesus wants is for people to accept things how they were meant to be, and how they were, back at the beginning. God gave the sabbath for mankind, and the Son of God had come now and wanted everything how it was meant to be from the start. Continue reading “A common meaning behind Gospel of Mark’s cornplucking and divorce controversies”

Biblioblogs peddling bigotry and ignorance

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by Neil Godfrey

Filed under: Biblical Scholars, Biblical Studies, Ethics & Human Nature, Religion and Atheism
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Daily Mirror headline from www.currybet.net blog

I rarely look at anything much on the web now unless it is (a) work related; (b) news related (don’t read “real” newspapers anymore); (c) and gmail. Work consumes most of my time, and this blog is a kind of mental escape.

But today I decided to have a look at what a few other blogs are doing, particularly biblioblogs. I had thought biblioblogs were blogs about the Bible, but that appears to be only partially true. I had also expected those blogs run by professional scholars would be in the lead when it came to promoting tolerance and humane values. I have kind of tended to associate secularism, rationalism and humanism with advanced studies, and to think that more often than not they are accompanied by the more progressive and democratic values.

So I guess my naivety was hit hard when I checked out numero uno biblioblog by an academic and church pastor, Zwinglius Redivivus. The Bible passage that this biblioblogger seems to repeat most often is

“Do not pray for this people nor offer any plea or petition for them, because I will not listen when they call to me in the time of their distress. (Jeremiah 11:14)

And it is always in connection with a newsbyte worthy of the worst scandal rag of a newspaper from a Rupert Murdoch publication. The worst news sells papers when its wrapped up in the worst possible titillating or bigoted way, and it appears to be what a lot of other academics in religious departments want to read on a regular basis — at least when it comes packaged with Doctor Jim’s Jeremiads.

Is there an article about incest? Or a plot to murder? Then bring it on and flaunt it with all the bigoted ignorance of a mind still warped by primitive b.c. ramblings of hate and judgment. Continue reading “Biblioblogs peddling bigotry and ignorance”

God taught Cain the wisdom of Plato

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by Neil Godfrey

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I have been doing some follow up reading on a paper presented at a Netherlands Seminar on Historical Methodology and chanced upon the following passage from Plato in Timaeus. It is speaking of newly created human beings at the dawn of time:

in the second place, they must have love, in which pleasure and pain mingle; also fear and anger, and the feelings which are akin or opposite to them; if they conquered these they would live righteously, and if they were conquered by them, unrighteously.

Given the context of the paper I was reading, it was not hard to hear the echo of God’s instruction to Cain in Genesis 4:

And Cain was very angry, and his countenance fell.
So the LORD said to Cain, “Why are you angry? And why has your countenance fallen? If you do well, will you not be accepted? And if you do not do well, sin lies at the door. And its desire is for you, but you should rule over it.”

Many of us can acknowledge that this instruction to Cain is an unusual image in the context of a primeval tale about Cain and the first murder. Sin is something that must be mastered, ruled, lest it master or rule us. It is a striking image that has prompted countless discussions among believers.

And there it is, the same image, sitting in the writings of Plato. Not only the same image, but the same same context of the sin of anger.

Now I’ve given the away what my next post will be about — the lateness of the composition of Genesis and the influence of Greek philosophy, particularly Platonic thought, that went into the creation of its myths.


2010-05-10

Dating Mark early

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by Neil Godfrey

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Rob did not read the rules
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In order to know how to interpret a document it is very often helpful to know when it was written. Maurice Casey (Aramaic Sources of Mark’s Gospel) and James Crossley (The Date of Mark’s Gospel), however, turn this around and use their interpretation of the Gospel of Mark to determine when the Gospel was written. They date this gospel to within ten years of the supposed death of Jesus.

They begin by falling in line with the untested and unquestioned assumption of their peers that assumes that the gospels are based on a historical Jesus. There is no evidence for this proposition, so biblical scholars proceed by means of a circular methodology to discover the evidence they need to support it by analyzing different parts of the gospel texts. Cultural tradition and contemporary public and institutional support for this process enables it to flourish unquestioned, and give licence to its practitioners to ignore or ridicule any attempts to expose their circularity. Words of practical advice from Schweitzer and Schwartz to Hobsbawm and Thompson are dismissed. Discussions by Elton and Carr on historiography are misrepresented. They have learned nothing from the exposure of the same methodological flaws at the root of Albrightianism. All this has been addressed in previous posts and comments.

One passage addressed by Casey and Crossley in support of their case that the Gospel of Mark was written before 40 c.e. is Mark 2:23-28

And it came to pass, that he went through the corn fields on the sabbath day; and his disciples began, as they went, to pluck the ears of corn.
And the Pharisees said unto him, Behold, why do they on the sabbath day that which is not lawful?
And he said unto them, Have ye never read what David did, when he had need, and was an hungred, he, and they that were with him?
How he went into the house of God in the days of Abiathar the high priest, and did eat the shewbread, which is not lawful to eat but for the priests, and gave also to them which were with him?
And he said unto them, The sabbath was made for man, and not man for the sabbath:
Therefore the Son of man is Lord also of the sabbath.

Even though there is no historical evidence for a strong presence of Pharisees in Galilee until after the Jewish war and the fall of Jerusalem in 70; and even though we have no evidence that the laws of Leviticus were widely practised in Galilee in the time of Jesus; and even though Casey and Crossley concede there is no evidence that there was any sabbath law regarding the picking of grain until late rabbinic times, and even though there is evidence that the Pharisees were in fact far more lenient towards the poor and did not make crushing burdensome rules for them and were popular among the poor, Casey and Crossley, and many of their peers, are convinced that scenes like this are historical.

Importance of an Aramaic source Continue reading “Dating Mark early”

2010-05-09

“Minimalist” Thomas Thompson’s take on The Messiah Myth

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by Neil Godfrey

Filed under: Biblical Scholars, Biblical Studies, Historical Methods and Historiography, New Testament
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Thomas L. Thompson’s The Messiah Myth can be a somewhat mystifying read for anyone looking for an engagement with conventional historical Jesus studies. It can leave a reader who is looking for a repeat of this scholar’s demolition of the historicity of the biblical Patriarchs and Kingdom of Israel even more flummoxed. In his first chapter he explains:

The purpose of this book is not historical reconstruction. Nor is it centered in the problems of the historical Jesus. (p.16)

Rather,

It is about the influence of the ancient Near Eastern figure of the king in biblical literature, and this has much to do with how figures such as Jesus are created.

So Thompson is addressing Jesus as he has been created out of this Near Eastern literary figure, and not a historical figure behind the gospels.

Thompson sees no evidence for a historical figure. He critiques historical Jesus studies since the days of Schweitzer for “lack of clarity” in the method by which scholars have approached the gospels and attempted to find in them historical information.

On the one hand [Schweitzer] assumed that Jesus existed apart from the gospels and on the other that the gospels were about this historical person and reflected his beliefs. This lack of clarity in method supported the radical separation of a Jesus of history from the Christ of faith. (p.8)

Thompson sees an even more profound error in what he believes is a prevalent misreading of the apocalyptic images in the Gospels. This is something I am still thinking through. I am waiting to read Amos and the Cosmic Imagination by James Linville (to get a different but presumably related perspective from Thomspon’s — meet Dr Jim [Link //drjimsthinkingshop.com/about/ and blog is no longer active… Neil, 23rd Sept, 2015]) as part of my attempt to grasp the rationale for understanding apocalyptic language as something other than an expression of literal beliefs in apocalyptic scenarios. Will return to this question at the end of the post.

A difficult assumption

That the stories of the gospels are about a historical person is a difficult assumption. To what extent does the figure of Jesus — like the figures of Abraham, Moses and Job — fulfill a function in a narrative discourse about something else? Is Jesus rather — like so many other great figures on ancient literature — the bearer of a writer’s parable? The question does not refer to our knowledge of a historical person. It asks about the meaning and function of biblical texts. (p.9)

This question — what is the meaning and function of the gospels — is one Thompson addresses in The Messiah Myth in a way that few other scholars have done. Certainly historical Jesus scholars acknowledge the Gospels are theology and faith-messages. But they also assume they are records of oral traditions traced back to a historical event, and in so doing they violate the very basics of scholarly historical enquiry by reconstructing Jesus and early Christianity upon an untested and unquestioned assumption. Thompson argues that Gospels are born not from a set of unique oral traditions, but from a well established literary matrix traceable back through centuries and millennia.

Literary creations replace their authors Continue reading ““Minimalist” Thomas Thompson’s take on The Messiah Myth”