Musings on biblical studies, politics, religion, ethics, human nature, tidbits from science
This post is an interlude, a necessary detour in our series on God and why people believe in God. In that series we have limited our focus to four fundamental mental tools or devices: naive physics, naive biology, agent detection, theory of mind. Before continuing that series I think it a good idea to backtrack … Continue reading “Where Does Morality Come From? — a fifth mental tool”
I found the following take on Livy‘s history of early Rome of interest. I reproduce a translation of his own words and conclude with the words of another Roman historian, Arrian (born in the last decade of the first century CE), who likewise found reason to maintain without critical comment myths and divine agents in … Continue reading “Mythistory — History and/or Tradition”
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”
The second 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) is “The Reception of Jesus in Paul” by Christine Jacobi. In sum, to the best of my understanding (and there is considerable external noise in the video) here is Christine … Continue reading “The Reception of Jesus Tradition in Paul”
Several times I’ve referred to comparisons between the ancient tale of Aesop with the gospel accounts of Jesus, referring readers to Lawrence Wills’ book, The quest of the historical gospel : Mark, John, and the origins of the gospel genre, and Whitney Shiner’s chapter “Creating Plot in Episodic Narratives: The Life of Aesop and the Gospel of Mark” in … Continue reading “Lawrence Wills: “The Life of Aesop and the Hero Cult Paradigm in the Gospel Tradition””
Concluding my series on the evolution of morality as per Steven Pinker in The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined. . . . The previous posts: Towards Understanding How Morality Works Towards Understanding Morality – another step? . Pinker writes that over the past three centuries there has been a progression of … Continue reading “Towards Understanding Morality — a renewed start?”
The previous post brought us to the point of explaining different moral perspectives in terms of different relational models (and broad themes of ethics and foundations). For example, marriages have been (and in places still are) understood within the framework of Authority relations. The wife remained under the authority of her father or more generally of the males … Continue reading “Towards Understanding Morality – another step?”
Traveling again, but have brought along with me for spare-time reading Oral Tradition and the Gospels: The Problem of Mark 4 by Barry W. Henaut. Henaut argues in depth something many of us have surely wondered about from time to time. How can we really be so sure of an oral tradition behind our canonical … Continue reading “The assumption of orality behind written texts”
My Couchoud series posts (outlines of his work discussing the beginnings of Christianity, The Creation of Christ) are archived here. This post continues the series. The churches in Clement’s day, and in particular the Church of Rome, were governed by Elders. Paul, of course, knew of no such institution. The heads of the various churches … Continue reading “The Pastorals, a remedy for a grave defect in Paul’s epistles (Couchoud)”
Contrary to the understanding of a few theologians oral historian Jan Vansina does NOT use the “criterion of embarrassment” in the same way as a number of historical Jesus scholars do. His discussion of embarrassment in fact supports the arguments of those scholars who argue the criterion is invalid! I asked Dr McGrath for a … Continue reading “Oral History does NOT support “criterion of embarrassment””
Niko Huttunen has extended Troels Engberg-Pedersen’s work on showing how the apostle Paul’s thought was in many respects a mutation of ancient Stoic philosophy: Paul and Epictetus on Law: A Comparison. One detail of a more general interest (I think anyway) is Huttunen’s concluding discussion of comparisons of the philosopher Epictetus‘ use of Heracles (Hercules) … Continue reading “Paul’s Christ and Hercules Compared as Moral Examples”
It is not easy to think of Mark as a literary genius when 410 of his Gospel’s 678 Greek verses or 376 of the 583 sentences begin with “and” (kai). While much has been written about the history-changing impact of Mark being the first to compose a written gospel, there is much in this written … Continue reading “The Oral/Written Gospel (Finding Meaning in Mark’s “Bad Greek” . . . Pt.2)”
This post addresses R. Joseph Hoffmann’s discussion of Maurice Goguel’s 1926 defence of the historicity of Jesus in response to the early mythicist arguments, initially launched by Bruno Bauer in 1939, and developed in particular by Reinach, Drews and Couchoud. Hoffmann divides Goguel’s defence (Jesus the Nazarene: Myth or History?) into the following six sections. … Continue reading “Weaknesses of traditional anti-mythicist arguments”
Since Marcion is assumed to be “anti-Jewish” it seems nonsense at first blush to associate his “heresy” with the “Jewish error” in the Pastorals. But in fact what Marcion rejected was the typographical or allegorical reading of the Jewish scriptures. He read them literally and was accused of believing a form of Jewish error. See … Continue reading “The anti-Marcionite character of the Pastoral epistles?”