Musings on biblical studies, politics, religion, ethics, human nature, tidbits from science
Last month I posted Another Pointer Towards a Late Date for the Gospel of Mark? but this morning I was reminded of an article I read and posted about some years back that surely calls for a date soon after 70 CE. That article does not address the date per se but it does raise … Continue reading “Spit at a Late Date for the Gospel of Mark?”
Here’s another contribution to our quest for the origins of John the Baptist as found in the synoptic gospels. Recent discussions have centred on the account found in Josephus — see Is Josephus’s John the Baptist Passage a Chronologically Dislocated Story of the Death of Hyrcanus II? Greg Doudna’s article behind the post, Another Pointer … Continue reading “The Death of John the Baptist — Sources and Less Obvious Contexts”
When we began Nanine Charbonnel’s [NC] discussion of the various Old Testament figures being epitomized in Jesus we had only two references to Adam, both in Paul’s writings (Rom 5:17-19 and 1 Cor 15:45-49). (The same post also introduced NC background discussions on the Adam figure per Paul Ricoeur and Philo of Alexandria.) A commenter … Continue reading “The Gospel of Mark’s Jesus as the New Adam”
Back in August this year, I introduced a hypothesis that what we read in Josephus’s Antiquities about John “the Baptist” is actually a misplaced episode about the John Hyrcanus II. (See the relevant section linked here in the discussion of the festschrift for Thomas L. Thompson, Biblical Narratives, Archaeology and Historicity: Essays In Honour of … Continue reading “Another Pointer Towards a Late Date for the Gospel of Mark?”
And he said to them, “Truly I tell you, some who are standing here will not taste death before they see that the kingdom of God has come with power.” — Mark 9:1 We know what follows so we read on to see “the fulfilment” of that saying six days later with Peter, James and John … Continue reading “Who Will See “The Kingdom of God Coming with Power” in Mark 9:1?”
Forget any notion of an anti-Roman “nationalism” yearning to be free from Rome. Forget messianic hopes and a desire to be ruled by God alone. Steve Mason proposes in A History of the Jewish War, A.D. 66-74 causes much more common to wars more generally: The Judaean-Roman conflict broke out … not from anti-Roman ideas … Continue reading “What Caused the Jewish War of 66-74 CE?”
A document I have not posted about yet is Secret Mark [link to earlychristianwritings.com] or the Secret Gospel of Mark [link to Wikipedia]. (The most controversial aspect of the passage and the letter accompanying it is the possible hint of a homoerotic Jesus.) The briefest introduction to the fragment is at the Gnostic Society Library, … Continue reading “Tinker Tailor Soldier Forger (A Fresh Look at Secret Mark)”
Continuing the series on Nanine Charbonnel’s Jésus-Christ, sublime figure de paper . . . . –o– John the Baptist Maybe I’m just naturally resistant to new ideas but I found myself having some difficulty with Nanine Charbonnel’s [NC] opening stage of her discussion about John the Baptist. (Recall we have been looking at plausibility of gospel … Continue reading “The Symbolic Characters in the Gospels #2: John the Baptist and the Twelve Disciples”
I don’t know if the Gospel of Mark did begin its life as a Hebrew text but in the light of the previous post it is necessary to share some of the reasons a few scholars (or at least Jean Carmignac : see also Wayback Machine) have thought it did. Chapter three of The Birth … Continue reading “A Semitic Original for the Gospels of Mark and Matthew?”
This post looks at the evidence for Luke having reworked Mark’s ending. (The Gospel of Mark appears to have originally ended with verse 8 with the women fleeing from the tomb in fear.) The next post will identify the evidence for Luke having simultaneously used and changed Matthew’s ending. One step at a time. … Continue reading “How Luke Reworked Mark’s Ending”
Here’s a snippet of something I came across while venturing into all sorts of pathways to check the claims of, and/or to learn the background to, various publications by scholars of some note. The common starting-point of all three writers [Smith, Robertson, Drews] is that the earliest Gospel narratives do not “describe any human character … Continue reading “Once More We Rub Our Eyes: The Gospel of Mark’s Jesus is No Human Character?”
The background to the following post is The Gospel of John as a form of Jewish Messianism? (Part 2). It presumes some awareness of how in some Jewish quarters Daniel 7’s Son of Man was being interpreted in a way that led to controversial Jewish texts like the Similitudes of Enoch and the Gospel of … Continue reading “How the Gospel of Mark Retrofitted Jesus into a Pre-Existing Christ Idea”
While writing a post relating the Logos, Word, of the Gospel of John’s Prologue to hitherto longstanding Jewish ideas I came across the following explanation of “the formal characteristics of Midrash as a mode of reading Scripture” that requires a separate post or full quotation. It is a portion of an article by Daniel Boyarin … Continue reading “The Prologue of the Gospel of John as Jewish Midrash”
To continue from the first part first part of this post: The Double Bind For the similar quandary on the question of Jesus as the Messiah in Pauline scholarship Reynolds directs readers to a section of Novenson’s Christ Among the Messiahs; coincidentally the section he cites has been set out in an earlier post here: … Continue reading “The Gospel of John as a form of Jewish Messianism? (Part 2)”