Musings on biblical studies, politics, religion, ethics, human nature, tidbits from science
Other Vridar posts discussing the gospels as parables: Making sense of Jesus in the Gospel of Mark Making more sense of Jesus . . . Art and Aramaic in the Gospel of Mark Jesus’ Journey Into Hell and Back — told symbolically in the Gospel of Mark? Was the Empty Tomb Story Originally Meant to … Continue reading “Gospel Parables and the “Birth” of the Messiah as a Personification of Israel”
Continuing from the previous post, discussing Nanine Charbonnel’s Jésus-Christ, Sublime Figure de Papier . . . . I stopped short in my last blog post when I came to NC’s comparison of the gospels with the OT books of Esther and Ruth. I complete that little section here. The gospels are about “the end times”, … Continue reading “Further on a “Midrashic” View of the Gospels”
If the gospels are mythical stories that have been presented as history then what value can they have for anyone today and how can we treat the gospels as a source for studying the historical Jesus? Those are the questions M. David Litwa addresses in the last pages of How the Gospels Became History: Jesus … Continue reading “Review, conclusion #2: Myth and History in the Gospels (How the Gospels Became History / Litwa)”
Professor James McGrath of Butler University recently posted on his blog a tantalising article, The Gospel of the Gaps (and the Gaps of the Gospels). I describe it as tantalising because it seemed to promise so much but left readers without answers to the questions it raised. The post began: One of the things that … Continue reading “Questions for James McGrath: Seeking Understanding”
M. David Litwa opens chapter 2, “A Theory of Comparisons”, of How the Gospels Became History: Jesus and Mediterranean Myths, with the following epigraph: The issue of difference has been all but forgotten. —Jonathan Z. Smith It is all too easy to overlook differences, agreed. I seem to recall drawing questionable conclusions about the world’s … Continue reading “Review, part 3a (Homer and the Gospels) : How the Gospels Became History / Litwa”
M. David Litwa declared at the outset of his book How the Gospels Became History Whether or not the evangelists did report actual events is a separate question and is not my concern. (p.3) So I remain mystified by his decision to make his first chapter entirely about the “Jesus Myth Theory”. It adds nothing … Continue reading “Review, part 2 (Damnation upon that Christ Myth Theory!) : How the Gospels Became History / Litwa”
As I read each chapter or section of Raphael Lataster’s book, Questioning the Historicity of Jesus, I wrote about it here, but now that I have read the concluding pages I discover that Lataster anticipated some of the points I made along the way. Especially this one, the final footnote on the final page: The … Continue reading “Review part 10: Questioning the Historicity of Jesus / Lataster (Conclusion)”
Definitions, a necessary complement to the previous post and clarification for future posts. . . . Raphael Lataster asserts that he is “not a mythicist per se”, with the term “mythicist” meaning, in this context, “the view that Jesus did not exist.” He explains, I do not assert that Jesus did not exist. I am … Continue reading “Review part 2: Questioning the Historicity of Jesus / Lataster – Some Definitions”
Brill, a publisher who value[s] academic freedom and rejects attempts to silence it. . . There are others of course but [Brill is among] these academic treasures that are on the side of truth and not beholden to ideologues of any stripe. — Jim West (ThD) The publisher Brill has forwarded me access to Raphael … Continue reading “Review part 1: Questioning the Historicity of Jesus / Lataster.”
The following appeared on Religion Prof’s blog today: I discovered that [Polish scholar Anna] Oracz has written a review of Rene Salm’s denialist take on the village of Nazareth. Her conclusion is summed up well in this sentence: “anybody seeking an honest evaluation of the evidence in “The Myth of Nazareth” will be disappointed.” I’ve read The Myth of Nazareth … Continue reading “Religion Prof Watch (Quote Mining a Review on Nazareth)”
I’m travelling again so am pulling out the occasional post I’ve had in store for such times. If circumstances do not permit some of my planned posts I’ll post another one of these. McGrath would appeal to the variables shaping “cultural memory” and theological tendentiousness and the tradition of Jewish authors rewriting “Old Testament” scriptures; … Continue reading “Addressing James McGrath’s Arguments Against Mythicism — 1”
I found the following slightly amusing: I was really struck by the article in Bible History Daily about how the story of Daphnis and Chloe echoes the story of Adam and Eve in Genesis. Here’s an excerpt: Written around 200 A.D. by the Greco-Roman author Longus, Daphnis and Chloe is a pagan pastoral romance that echoes the Biblical … Continue reading “Do Parallels Only Work in One Direction?”
I have begun to read Alan Kirk’s Memory and the Jesus Tradition, a compilation of twelve of his essays published between 2001 and 2016, and have, as usual, found myself making slower progress than I expected. At so many points in just the first few chapters I have had to detour to endnotes and seek … Continue reading “Memory and the Pursuit of the Jesus Tradition”
Neil recently posted about the Documentary Hypothesis, citing Thomas Brodie’s Genesis as Dialogue (2001), a book I enjoyed but in the end did not convince me to abandon the DH. While reading the post, one quotation caught my eye. Nor do the two diverse types of bird (the raven and the dove, 8:6–12) mean two … Continue reading “Noah’s Birds and the Documentary Hypothesis”