Musings on biblical studies, politics, religion, ethics, human nature, tidbits from science
I have been posting on the works of several scholars who argue that the Old Testament scriptures were composed much later than traditionally thought (Thompson, Davies, Lemche, Wesselius, Wajdenbaum) but there remains much more to be written about their arguments, and more published scholars to draw into the same net (Nielsen and Gmirkin are two … Continue reading “The Books of Moses — Unknown 300 years Before Christ?”
Slightly revised R.S’s. parenthesis [That’s illogical . . . facts unfettered], 6:00 am, 4th December, 2012 NOTE: See Rene’s comment #5 below, titled “Clarification by Dr Avalos” for corrections to some of the detail in this post: René Salm has posted the following: I discovered Ehrman’s blog yesterday (http://ehrmanblog.org/rene-salm-at-the-society-of-biblical-literature-meeting/) and found that he and his … Continue reading “More SBL Fallout from René Salm’s paper”
This post is a continuation of a protracted series on the views of Philippe Wajdenbaum whose doctoral thesis, arguing that a good many of the Biblical stories and laws were inspired by Greek literature, has been published as Argonauts of the Desert: Structural Analysis of the Hebrew Bible. Several of the more recent posts have … Continue reading “New Understandings of the Old Testament: Jacques Cazeaux”
This post continues my series on Philippe Wajdenbaum’s doctoral thesis adapted for publication as Argonauts of the Desert: Structural Analysis of the Hebrew Bible. For the previous post see Collapse of the Documentary Hypothesis (1) & Comparing the Bible with Classical Greek Literature. I begin here with my concluding lines from that post: We will … Continue reading “Biblical Scholars, Symbolic Violence, and the Modern Version of an Ancient Myth”
The influences of Mesopotamian creation stories in Genesis are clear. But how those stories came to be re-written for the Bible is less clear. Russell E. Gmirkin sets out two possibilities in Berossus and Genesis, Manetho and Exodus: Hellenistic Histories and the Date of the Pentateuch: The traditional Documentary Hypothesis view: Around 1400 BCE the … Continue reading “The Genesis Creation Story and its Third Century Hellenistic Source?”
I recently posted on Eric Zuesse’s Christ’s Ventriloquists: The Event that Created Christianity with a link to David Hamilton’s views of the book. The book also comes with nice endorsements from Richard Dawkins and James Crossley and others. The author had sought a similar endorsement from me and I sent him my conclusion of his … Continue reading “Comments on Eric Zuesse’s Christ’s Ventriloquists: The Event that Created Christianity”
This post recapitulates earlier posts on the Documentary Hypothesis and introduces Philippe Wajdenbaum’s case for comparing the Bible with Classical Greek literature and finding the biblical author’s (sic) sources of inspiration there. Late last year I wrote Who Wrote the Bible? Rise of the Documentary Hypothesis. That post outlined the milestones towards the DH as … Continue reading “Collapse of the Documentary Hypothesis (1) & Comparing the Bible with Classical Greek Literature”
This post will open by taking us back thirty or forty years to a scenario in Old Testament scholarship that is remarkably similar to a debate taking place right now among New Testament scholars. I am currently reviewing a book, Jesus, Criteria, and the Demise of Authenticity, that spotlights the flaws of the traditional approaches … Continue reading “Did a Single Author Write Genesis – II Kings? (Demise of the Documentary Hypothesis?)”
For many months now I have been hoping to post on the remarkable similarities between the ideal laws espoused by Plato and many laws and moral principles we read about in the Bible. I began linking Plato’s laws to their counterparts in Exodus-Leviticus-Numbers-Deuteronomy but in the process ran across so many other passages that resonate … Continue reading “Plato’s and the Bible’s Laws and Ethics Compared”
Emanuel Pfoh‘s chapter in ‘Is This Not the Carpenter?’ raises the questions that I think get to the very heart of what the “historicist-mythicist” divide over Christian origins is really all about. It’s a favourite of mine, and once again like another favourite that I’ll mention again in this post, comes from an anthropological perspective. … Continue reading “Why Historical Knowledge of Jesus Is Impossible: ‘Is This Not the Carpenter?’ chapter 5”
Niels Peter Lemche is the author of the fourth chapter of ‘Is This Not the Carpenter?’, “The Grand Inquisitor and Christ: Why the Church Does Not Want Jesus”. He frames his case around the parable in Dostoyevsky’s novel, The Brothers Karamazov, that tells of Christ being arrested on his return to earth in the time … Continue reading “Why the Church Does Not Want Jesus — ‘Is This Not the Carpenter?’ chapter 4”
Continuing the series of Couchoud’s The Crucified Christ — archived here. In this chapter Couchoud attempts first of all to account for the origin of the concept of Christ crucified and then to address what this meant for Paul and his churches, in particular its mystical and timeless character. The greatest gift of Paul to … Continue reading “Crucified God: origin and original meaning of the concept (Couchoud continued)”
Edited conclusion and added the last paragraph since first posting this. This is not about mythicism versus the historicity of Jesus. It makes no difference to me if Jesus was a revolutionary or a rabbi, lived 100 b.c.e., 30 c.e. or was philosophical-theological construct. All of that is completely irrelevant for assessing the validity of … Continue reading “Theologians Reject Basics of History: A Way Forward”
Why, when different religions meet, does syncretism sometimes follow? What need does it fulfil? This was the question in the minds of Claude Orrieux and Édouard Will in Ioudaïsmos — Hellenismos; essai sur le judaïsme judéen a l’époque hellénistique, 1986, when they sought to understand the religious reactions of Judeans living in Judea when faced … Continue reading “Bible: composed as a reaction against Greek domination?”