Musings on biblical studies, politics, religion, ethics, human nature, tidbits from science
Continuing my reading of part 2 of Nanine Charbonnel’s Jésus-Christ, Sublime Figure de Papier . . . . . . o . . Legend? Tale? Novel? — If these labels can be applied to any of the Old Testament works they fail when we attempt to relate them to the New Testament narratives. The impasse … Continue reading “Inadequacy of the Tools in the Search for the Historical Jesus”
The only thing new in the world is the history you don’t know. –Harry S. Truman You have to start somewhere. That’s a distinct problem. How do we go about learning a subject as vast as biblical studies or biblical history? We could dive right in with some of the classics of text and form … Continue reading “Rereading Literature and History — Some Thoughts on Philip R. Davies”
In a recent post, Neil cited a paper by Dr. Alan Kirk called “Memory Theory and Jesus Research.” While Kirk does an adequate job of explaining the current state of play in memory theory, I couldn’t help but notice yet again some misunderstandings in the ways Memory Mavens remember German critical scholarship in general and … Continue reading “Alan Kirk: Misremembering Bultmann and Wrede”
While doing a little background research on folklore and oral tradition, I happened upon something written by David Aune that confused me. Aune edited The Blackwell Companion to the New Testament, and wrote the chapter on form criticism (pp. 140-155). You probably recognize Wiley-Blackwell’s well-regarded Blackwell Companions to Religion series. Generally, I admire their clarity and … Continue reading “What Sort of Work Is K. L. Schmidt’s “Framework”?”
Professor James McGrath continues to take an interest in my discussions about historical methods in the context of the “quest for the historical Jesus”. I was surprised to read the following words of his earlier today: Reading certain blogs and discussion boards on the internet, you would think that laypeople were being called upon to … Continue reading “Rules of Historical Reasoning — Still Controversial Among Religion Profs”
Bloomsbury publishers sent me an electronic copy of Memory and the Jesus Tradition, a collection of articles by Alan Kirk, for review and comment in response to my request. My first post on this book was Memory and the Pursuit of the Jesus Tradition. This post, my second, responds to chapter 10, “Memory Theory and … Continue reading “Memory Theory and the Historical Jesus”
A Long-standing Tool While searching for other things, I stumbled upon this paragraph in a Wikipedia entry. The criterion of embarrassment is a long-standing tool of New Testament research. The phrase was used by John P. Meier in his book A Marginal Jew; he attributed it to Edward Schillebeeckx, who does not appear to have … Continue reading “The Criterion of Embarrassment: Origins and Emendations”
How did traditions of the sayings of Jesus and the events of his history reach the writers of the Gospels? That is the opening question of Richard Bauckham’s chapter, “Gospel Traditions: Anonymous Community Traditions or Eyewitness Testimony?”, in Jesus Research: New Methodologies and Perceptions — The Second Princeton-Prague Symposium on Jesus Research, Princeton 2007. His … Continue reading ““How did traditions of the sayings of Jesus and the events of his history reach the writers of the Gospels?””
After a long delay, owing to intrusions from the real world, I now wish to end this part of the Memory Mavens series with a discussion of perspectives and methods. For weeks I’ve ruminated over these subjects, concerned (no doubt overly concerned) that I will miss some important points. But when I do, I know … Continue reading “The Memory Mavens, Part 11: Origins of the Criteria of Authenticity (4)”
In the first part of this post, we examined some instances of New Testament scholars employing historical criteria before the advent of Formgeschichte, demonstrating that these criteria and methods did not differ significantly from what we would later call criteria of authenticity. In this post, we’ll look more closely at the ways source critics argued … Continue reading “The Memory Mavens, Part 11: Origins of the Criteria of Authenticity (2)”
[This post has been waiting in draft status since 19 February 2015. This year I’m going to try to finish up some of the series we’ve left dangling on Vridar. –taw] A considerable number of New Testament scholars have recently jumped on the memory bandwagon (see, e.g., Memory, Tradition, and Text, ed. Alan Kirk). Characteristics … Continue reading “The Memory Mavens, Part 11: Origins of the Criteria of Authenticity (1)”
In an earlier post, I wrote: Seen from the perspective of believers, the Gospel of Mark and the Gospel of John are disconcertingly different. On the other hand, if we clear our minds of the anxiety of historicity, we see that Mark and John resemble one another much more than they do any “other” Greco-Roman … Continue reading “The Enigma of Genre and The Gospel of John”
I skip ahead to the fourth paper of the first day of the Memory and the Reception of Jesus in Early Christianity Conference (10th-11th June 2016, St Mary’s University): “The Reception of Jesus in the Gospel of John” by Helen Bond I will return in the next post to the third and the discussion following. … Continue reading “How the Gospel of John Uses and Completes the Gospel of Mark”
For all posts in this series: Roger Parvus: A Simonian Origin for Christianity It has been more than a year since I wrote the previous installment in this series. I have some excuses: new location, new job, and separation from well-stocked libraries. And also, I must admit, something unexpected happened during the break: I started losing … Continue reading “A Simonian Origin for Christianity, Part 16: Mark as Allegory”
