Musings on biblical studies, politics, religion, ethics, human nature, tidbits from science
It is impossible not to smile a little at the quaint, anonymous post Does no one love Jesus anymore? on the new Sheffield Biblical Studies blog. The poster laments that “less (sic) people are interested in historical Jesus studies than in previous years” and asks what cultural factors might be at play to explain this. … Continue reading “The Clueless Search for the Historical Jesus”
Continuing from the previous post . . . . Two of three ways Greek gods visited earthlings Jean-Pierre Vernant in Mortals and Immortals: Collected Essays (1991) notes three forms in which gods appeared when they visited earth. But dammit, Dixon cites only two of these: They simply come “to” the mortal to give that mortal … Continue reading “The baptism, the dove and the transfiguration . . . continued”
A good friend who is a creationist recently offered me a creationist article to read (“or refute”). The article’s arguments against evolution are based on: a misstatement of, or failure to understand, the arguments for evolution itself a glossing over of arguments for evolution by misleading oversimplifications a failure to address the counter-evidence for evolution … Continue reading “A Creationist Method of Argument (and exposing the lie of those who compare mythicism to creationism)”
Publius who? That is the point of this post. Assertions that there is as much evidence for Jesus as for any other person in ancient times, or that if we reject the historicity of Jesus then we must reject the existence of everyone else in ancient history, are based on ignorance of how we really do know about … Continue reading “Stronger evidence for Publius Vinicius the Stammerer 2000 years ago than for Jesus”
Thomas L. Brodie has a chapter (“Towards Tracing the Gospels’ Literary Indebtedness to the Epistles” in Mimesis and Intertextuality) discussing the possibility of the Gospel authors using the NT epistles among their sources, but what I found of most interest was his discussion on methodology and criteria. The difference between Brodie’s discussion of historical methodology … Continue reading “Brodie (almost) versus McGrath on historical methodology in NT studies”
Rick has posted another constructive response, “Charity,” “Suspicion” and the Dangers of Categorization. Or, What I Learned from John Hughes, to my posts on historical method in the context of NT historical studies. Another is expected to follow discussing the nature of facts. (Previous post addressing Rick is here.) I suspect we are drawing closer … Continue reading “Charity, suspicion and categorization — exchange with Rick Sumner contd”
Rick has posted an interesting discussion titled What is History? The Nature of “Facts” in response to my Historicist Hocus Pocus post. This follows a short exchange between us in the comments beneath my own post, and is an extension of earlier blog posts of his own on the same theme. I appreciate Rick’s response … Continue reading “Historical facts and the nature of history — exchange with Rick Sumner”
Even scholars who are attempting to find an “independent” and “socio-economic” explanation for Christian origins (such as James Crossley) are, like virtually all scholars involved in this quest, “driven by the Christian imagination” itself. Burton L. Mack explains the nature of this bias in his introduction to A Myth of Innocence: Mark and Christian Origins. … Continue reading “The confessional bias of scholarship’s quest for Christian origins”
Since I now have time to go over older posts critiquing the mythicist view of Jesus, I have decided to address head on some of the arguments against mythicism that appear to have been left dangling. Such an exercise, of course, does not argue “for” mythicism. But it is important that bogus arguments, especially from … Continue reading “Historicist Hocus Pocus (Or, What on earth would happen if a course on logic were introduced into biblical studies!)”
Although a certain professor of religion regularly insists that his historical methods are the same as those of other historians who deal in nonbiblical subjects, he has failed to demonstrate the similarity. Rather, his attempt to establish this particular point is a classic in obfuscation, misrepresentation of the issues and avoidance of the challenges of … Continue reading “Historical methods: how historical Jesus studies fall over before they start”
Laziness is common among historians. When they find a continuous account of events for a certain period in an ‘ancient’ source, one that is not necessarily contemporaneous with the events , they readily adopt it. They limit their work to paraphrasing the source, or, if needed, to rationalisation. — Liverani, Myth and politics in ancient Near … Continue reading “Naivety and laziness in biblical historiography (Nehemiah case study 5)”
This continues my previous post in which I began discussing McGrath’s “review” of Price’s arguments for mythicism, although as I pointed out there, “review” must remain in quotation marks because McGrath simply writes a lot without actually addressing Price’s arguments! In my previous post I remarked on the ignorance of the oft-repeated claim that there … Continue reading “Reviewing McGrath’s review of Robert Price on mythicism (2)”
I believe that few “serious scholars” (as they say) see any reason to attribute the first couple of chapters of the Book of Genesis to historical reality. Few actually see any reason to attribute its claims that God fashioned the world in 6 days and created Adam from dust and Eve from his baculum. But … Continue reading “Gospels and Genesis as historical documents”
Associate Professor of Religion, James McGrath, helpfully offered me the following advice: Perhaps your time would be better spent interacting with those historians and philosophers of history who don’t agree with your presuppositions, and seeking to understand why and address those issues, rather than insulting those who have understandably not written a full-fledged monograph in … Continue reading “Having interacted with historians who do not agree with me, as advised . . .”