Musings on biblical studies, politics, religion, ethics, human nature, tidbits from science
William Wrede’s The Messianic Secret Part 4: Mark — “Some Preliminaries on the General Picture of the Messianic History of Jesus.” This unit covers Part 1, Section 1 of Wrede’s The Messianic Secret. Layers upon layers One of the things that struck me while reading this section is Wrede’s clarity of thinking, especially when it comes to … Continue reading “Reading Wrede Again for the First Time (4)”
William Wrede’s The Messianic Secret Part 3: Introduction Gospels are stories In the previous installment, we read through the front matter of Wrede’s The Messianic Secret. This time, we’re going to look at the Introduction, which while technically part of the front matter, is a meaty chapter unto itself. Quite recently, Neil remarked on this blog: The … Continue reading “Reading Wrede Again for the First Time (3)”
William Wrede’s The Messianic Secret Part 2: Front Matter A turning point in the quest In the first installment, we introduced Wrede’s watershed book on the Gospel of Mark. And watershed is a fairly apt description of The Messianic Secret, since for many scholars it marks a turning point in The Quest of the Historical … Continue reading “Reading Wrede Again for the First Time (2)”
Dr McGrath’s “reviews” (sic) of Earl Doherty’s book are what you get when a reviewer has made up his mind beforehand that he is going to read nothing but nonsense — except for any tidbits that happen to be repeats of mainstream scholarly views anyway — written by an ignorant charlatan whom he (the reviewer) … Continue reading “Concluding my response to Dr McGrath’s “review” (sic) of chapter 10 part 2″
For those of us who like to be stimulated with different views on Christian origins, René Salm has translated and made available a 1956 essay by Georges Ory, Was Jesus “John the Baptist”? This hypothesis reminds me of Robert M. Price’s suggestion that the two figures are doubles, or that Jesus was indeed something of … Continue reading “Was Jesus “John the Baptist”?”
I am copying Tim’s comment on a recent post here as a post in its own right. Some interesting backpedaling today on Exploring Our Matrix . . . McGrath: “But as yet, the Vridar crowd have not pointed out any errors. What they have pointed out is that I did not adopt the view of … Continue reading “I ask the following directly to Dr. McGrath in all sincerity”
A conservative evangelical student, asked to read Wellhausen and discuss the reasons for his ordering of sources in the Pentateuch, will not want to read Wellhausen and will try, if possible, to escape from the imposition: what he will do is to read a work which will tell him why Wellhausen was wrong. His pastoral … Continue reading “So It’s True: Today’s Biblical Scholars Really Never Have Read Wellhausen”
Well this is really quite embarrassing. I have never read more than snippets by a notorious right-wing Australian historian, Keith Windschuttle, and those I have read have been mostly quotations found in the works of his critics, but I know I have been strongly opposed to whatever Windschuttle has written about the history of the … Continue reading “Ouch! My own beliefs undermined by my own historical principles!”
Cameron seemed so polite when making first contact with my blog that I thought, Hey, this is gonna be a nice reasonable guy. How can David Fitzgerald, author of Nailed: Ten Christian Myths That Show Jesus Never Existed At All, be reasonable and still have issues with such a polite Cameron? Well, Cameron responded to … Continue reading “Neil Godfrey’s lousy defense of Christ-myth hypocrisy”
The following post by David Fitzgerald is posted here with DF’s permission; the original is at freethoughtblogs.com. Will the Real Jesus Please Stand Up? Is the “Jesus of History” any more real than the “Jesus of Faith”? (From the upcoming book, Jesus: Mything in Action, by David Fitzgerald) Christianity had a good, long run. But … Continue reading “Dave Fitzgerald sequel: Is the “Jesus of History” any more real than the “Jesus of Faith”?”
David Fitzgerald‘s essay, Ten Beautiful Lies About Jesus, that received an Honorable Mention in the 2010 Mythicist Prize contest has been expanded into a book, Nailed: Ten Christian Myths That Showed Jesus Never Existed At All. The book is clearly a hit: Nailed continues to garner more fans and accolades, and generate cranky hate mail. … Continue reading “David Fitzgerald responds to Tim O’Neill’s review of Nailed”
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”
This post continues from my post some weeks ago in which I covered primarily Philippe Wajdenbaum’s account of the rise of the Documentary Hypothesis. At that time in one of the comments I explained I had paused to take stock of how best to address the challenge that has arisen against the Documentary Hypothesis. This … Continue reading “Who wrote the Bible? (2) Challenging the Documentary Hypothesis”
This post looks at the rise of the dominant scholarly hypothesis that the Old Testament came together through the efforts of various editors over time collating and editing a range of earlier sources. The structure and bulk of the contents of the post is taken from Philippe Wajdenbaum’s discussion of the Documentary Hypothesis. The complete … Continue reading “Who wrote the Bible? Rise of the Documentary Hypothesis”