Musings on biblical studies, politics, religion, ethics, human nature, tidbits from science
Critique of the Gospel History of the Synoptics by Bruno Bauer Volume 1 —o0o— 142 Second section. The preparations for Jesus’ public appearance. § 12. The effectiveness of the Baptist. 1. The locality. In those days, as Matthew has already told us, when Jesus lived in Nazareth, John the Baptist appeared and called his people … Continue reading “§ 12. The effectiveness of the Baptist”
Critique of the Gospel History of the Synoptics by Bruno Bauer Volume 1 —o0o— 35 § 3. The Supernatural Conception of Jesus. Although Mark does not yet know that the father of Jesus is called Joseph – this naming occurs in later times – he only knows the name of the mother, but since he … Continue reading “§ 3. The Supernatural Conception of Jesus”
66 II. Seneca as teacher and minister of Nero. 1. The dissolution of Roman particularism. With Nero’s self-inflicted fall, the Julian dynasty disappeared from the world stage. The empire, established by the great Julius and his adopted nephew Augustus through the force of arms, was considered the inheritance of a family that intimidated doubters of … Continue reading “BRUNO BAUER: Christ and the Caesars – II. Seneca as teacher and minister of Nero”
11 I. Seneca’s Religious Foundation. Before we begin, we will present the reader with the dismissive judgments passed by a newer school of history on Stoicism, the starting point of Seneca, for examination. 1. Recent judgments on Stoicism. One of the signs of the impending imperialism that dominates our present time is a fraction of … Continue reading “BRUNO BAUER: Christ and the Caesars – I. Seneca’s Religious Foundation”
I wrote in the previous post that certain New Testament scholarship comes across as trying to establish the historicity of this or that detail in the Gospels by relying upon a naive reading of the text and concluding that if we cannot trace the event to some other literary influence then, by default, it is … Continue reading “A side-note on evidence for “scripturalized tradition” behind the gospels”
Here is a list of reviews and discussions of Bart Ehrman’s Did Jesus Exist? on Vridar. By Others Earl Doherty’s Responses to Bart Ehrman’s Did Jesus Exist? Now an eBook: Doherty’s Rebuttal of Ehrman’s Case for the Existence of Jesus Hermann Detering’s Review of Bart Ehrman’s Did Jesus Exist? Pdf file — or in three … Continue reading “Did Jesus Exist? (Ehrman) – Reviews“
The letters of Paul that are understood to have been written some twenty to ten years before the fall of Jerusalem in 70 CE speak about the crucifixion of Jesus as a simple fact. There is never any elaboration of when or where it happened (unless one treats 1 Thess 2:13-16 as genuine). The message … Continue reading “The Crucifixion of Jesus as Implicit History of the Jewish War”
By the time I finished reading Nanine Charbonnel’s penultimate chapter of Jésus-Christ, sublime figure de papier a queasy sense of déjà vu dragged my mind back decades to a time when I believed that the Bible was a coded book that needed “keys” to open up its true meaning to modern readers. Before Michael Drosnin‘s … Continue reading “Are There Really “Keys” to Understanding the New Testament? (Charbonnel continued)”
This post is detailed. But it is getting down to the nitty gritty of a case for the midrashic creation of the Jesus figure in the gospels. Performative utterance: In the philosophy of language and speech acts theory, performative utterances are sentences which are not only describing a given reality, but also changing the social … Continue reading “4 Jewish Word Plays behind the Word Becoming Flesh / 3 … (Charbonnel: Jésus-Christ, Sublime Figure de Papier)”
SO HOW DID the amoral Trump come to be beloved by evangelical voters, a question that remains one of the abiding mysteries to this day? Begin with the premise that Donald Trump hadn’t darkened the door of a church or chapel since the age of seven, as he would openly admit in his past incarnation. … Continue reading “The Day the Evangelicals First Met Donald Trump”
Continuing from Ascension of Isaiah: Other Questions. . . . . . . . Earl Doherty without doubt was the major contributor to the Jesus myth perspective from the 1990s through to the early 2000s. I highly respected his grasp of both the big picture and the detail, his clear-headed engagement with the scholarship, and his … Continue reading “Ascension of Isaiah: Questioning Three of Earl Doherty’s Arguments”
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”
My post “The Chosen People Were Not Awaiting the Messiah” led to more diverse comments than I had been expecting and I thought I should cover a little more of Akenson’s grounds for his view that there is no unambiguous evidence for popular messianic expectations as part of the background to the life of Jesus … Continue reading “Were Jews Hoping for a Messiah to Deliver Them from Rome? Raising Doubts”
Finally, it is worth pointing out that the NT as we have it, and especially the gospels, is entirely dependent on that branch of Jesus’ disciples, gathered around Peter (and Paul), which is centered on the kerygma of the resurrection. Acts has preserved a few traces of other groups: Apollos and the disciples at Ephesus, … Continue reading “The Gospels Not the Best Place to Look for the Origins of Christianity”