Musings on biblical studies, politics, religion, ethics, human nature, tidbits from science
My response to Cornelis Hoogerwerf’s post on Γεγραμμένα, Misquoting Albert Schweitzer, has raised the question of the intended meaning of Schweitzer’s words in relation to historical probability, common sense, and more. Cornelis has said my own explanation of S’s words is wrong; I attempted to explain why I disagreed. But rather than leave the discussion … Continue reading “Schweitzer in context”
I originally wrote the following as an introduction to my next post on Russell E. Gmirkin’s new book, Plato and the Creation of the Hebrew Bible. On reflection, it was too long to be part of a post addressing the book so here it is a separate introductory post instead. Our historically conditioned deafness to … Continue reading “Some preliminaries before resuming Gmirkin’s Plato and the Creation of the Hebrew Bible“
Scholar of religion Jonathan Bernier drops an interesting aside in his blog post, The Quest for the Historical Hiawatha: From what I understand, virtually all archaeologists and historians who study the matter agree that the Iroquois confederacy–the bringing together into political and religious union the Mohawk, Oneida, Onondaga, Cayuga, and Seneca peoples–was carried out as … Continue reading “The Quest for the Historical Hiawatha — & the historical-mythical Jesus debate”
James McGrath’s review of Maurice Casey’s Jesus: Evidence and Argument or Mythicist Myths? has appeared in RBL. Casey’s work is a diatribe against persons who have been associated with the Christ Myth arguments (even though some of them do not argue a mythicist case themselves), and against a selection of what he asserts (often inaccurately) are their … Continue reading “The Casey-McGrath Profiles of Mythicists and Mythicism”
A new post has appeared on the Weststar Institute’s blog, 8 tips for dating early Christian texts. It covers considerable detail for both relative and absolute dating. My earlier post, Scientific and Unscientific Dating of the Gospels, was a summary of Niels Peter Lemche’s explanation of valid methods to arrive at an absolute date range … Continue reading “How To Date Early Christian Texts”
From time to time someone – lay person or New Testament scholar – publicly insists that there is no more bias among the professional scholars of the Bible than there is among any other academic guild. The question arose recently on the Bible Criticism and History forum and I found myself scrambling quotations from members … Continue reading “Unrecognized Bias in New Testament Scholarship over Christian Origins”
In my books an apologist includes any academic who defends some sort of privileged status for the veracity or contemporary relevance of the narratives and teachings of the Bible. N.T. Wright uses the historical methods of New Testament scholars to argue for the historical reality of the resurrection of Jesus. That ought to ring alarm … Continue reading “Strange Bedfellows in New Testament Studies”
. This post concludes my series on Crossley’s Why Christianity Happened: A Sociohistorical Account of Christian Origins (26-50 CE). The previous post is here. All posts on this book, both the recent ones from 2014 and those from 2010-11, are archived here. . Misguided equivalence How is one meant to respond to the words of … Continue reading “A Secular Approach to Christian Origins Compromised by Faith and Theology”
The previous two posts in this series: Why Christianity Happened — Toward a Secular Approach to Christian Origins Why Christianity Happened – The Secular Approach, 2 The Necessity and Problem of Bias in Christian Origins Studies James Crossley (Why Christianity Happened: A Sociological Account of Christian Origins (26-50 CE)) examines the role of bias in … Continue reading “The Secular Approach to Christian Origins, #3 (Bias)”
James Crossley is to be highly commended for attempting in Why Christianity Happened: A Sociohistorical Account of Christian Origins (26-50 CE) to adapt to the study of Christian origins approaches taken directly from history departments. The task of explaining how Christianity began has generally been the preserve of theologians many of whom (according to scholars like … Continue reading “Why Christianity Happened — Toward a Secular Approach to Christian Origins”
You have the right to remain silent Over on The Bible and Interpretation web site, James McGrath once again takes up his jousting lance to do battle against the big, bad mythicists. He raises an interesting point: If we were to combine a number of recent and not-so-recent proposals related to Jesus, we could depict him … Continue reading “Some Thoughts on the Nature of the Evidence and the Historicity of Jesus”
If Maurice Casey’s book Jesus: Evidence and Argument Or Mythicist Myths? were about Jews or Gays or Blacks or the Disabled he and his publisher may well be charged with inciting hatred against “the other”. Mythicists are portrayed as all alike, they are all psychologically twisted and motivated by evil intent, their faults are never … Continue reading “Maurice Casey’s Mythicist Myth Busted”
Richard Carrier has written a critical review of Maurice Casey’s Jesus: Evidence and Argument or Mythicist Myths? See Critical Review of Maurice Casey’s Defense of the Historicity of Jesus. It’s in depth. Over 20,000 words. So most of us will want to schedule more than one sitting to complete it. Carrier begins with an overall … Continue reading “Richard Carrier’s Review of Maurice Casey’s Jesus“
Genre can be a highly fluid concept. In studies of Gospels I’ve noticed that discussions of genre sometimes overlap with intertextuality. Moreover, we may conclude that an ancient narrative belongs to the genre “history”, but once we learn what “history” could mean to the ancients we quickly move into discussions about the place of fictional … Continue reading “Genre of Gospels, Acts and OT Primary History: INDEX”