Musings on biblical studies, politics, religion, ethics, human nature, tidbits from science
I’ve been trying to think of something worthy of posting on this Easter Sunday, 2015. All I can come up with at the moment is a subject I’ve had on the back burner for some time, namely the handful of references in the Fourth Gospel (FG) that remind us of Asclepius. Longtime readers may recall … Continue reading “Curious Contacts Between John’s Gospel and the Asclepius Myth”
I recently completed Michael J. Kok’s exploration of why the Gospel of Mark came to be associated with the apostle Peter and included in our canon despite appearing at first glance to be little more than a synopsis of the other gospels and little used by the early church according to the extant records, and … Continue reading “Why Is the Gospel of Mark in the New Testament?”
I am going to have to re-read and re-think the Gospel of Mark. I have just read a two-part article in 2007 issues of the Journal for the Study of the Historical Jesus, “Jesus as the High Priestly Messiah”, Parts 1 and 2, by Crispin H.T. Fletcher-Louis. The article adds some weight, I think, to … Continue reading “Jesus as the High Priestly Messiah in the Gospel of Mark”
Here beginneth the lesson. The Gospel of Mark, chapter 10, verses 46 to 52, in the original King James English: And as [Jesus] went out of Jericho with his disciples and a great number of people, blind Bartimaeus, the son of Timaeus, sat by the highway side begging. And when he heard that it was … Continue reading “Blind Bartimaeus in the Gospel of Mark: Interpreted by the Gospel of John?”
April DeConick has written an interesting article, Who is Hiding in the Gospel of John? Reconceptualizing Johannine Theology and the Roots of Gnosticism (published as a chapter in Histories of the Hidden God) that coincidentally ties in remarkably well with the view of Roger Parvus (posted in part here) that the Gospel of John is … Continue reading “The Devil’s Father and Gnostic Hints In the Gospel of John”
Many of us are aware of the arguments of Frank Zindler that the John the Baptist passage in Josephus is an interpolation, but we leave those aside here and look at what Rivka Nir of the Open University of Israel offers as reasons for doubting the genuineness of the John the Baptist passage in Antiquities. … Continue reading “So John the Baptist was interpolated into Josephus? One more argument for the forgery case”
A shock to the system 33 But when they came to Jesus and saw that he was already dead, they did not break his legs. 34 Instead, one of the soldiers pierced his side with a spear, and at once blood and water came out. John 19:33-34, NRSV Today in this short post I return … Continue reading “Blood and Water: What Is the Function of John 19:34?”
This post continues from my earlier one that concluded with Mark W. G. Stibbe’s “very broad list of similarities” between Euripides’ Bacchae (a play about the god Dionysus) and the Gospel of John. Stibbe discusses these similarities in John As Storyteller: Narrative Criticism and the Fourth Gospel. What Mark Stibbe is arguing Stibbe makes it … Continue reading “Jesus and Dionysus (2): Comparison of John’s Gospel and Euripides’ Play”
No, I am not going to argue that Christianity grew out of the worship of Dionysus or that the original idea of Jesus was based upon Dionysus. Rather, I am exploring the possibility that the portrayal of Jesus that we find in the Gospel of John is in significant measure a variant of the Greek … Continue reading “Jesus and Dionysus: The Gospel of John and Euripides’ Bacchae”
This post presents a snippet from The Son of God in the Roman World: Divine Sonship in Its Social and Political Context by Michael Peppard. There is much more in this book that deserves closer attention and that will probably be given in the coming year. Till then, I think some of us may be … Continue reading “Jesus and the Dove — how a Roman audience may have read the Gospel of Mark”
Let’s conclude this series on John Dominic Crossan’s new book, The Power of Parable. Last time we looked at the Gospels of Matthew and Mark; this time Luke-Acts and John. Crossan argues that the Gospels are not histories or biographies of Jesus but are fictional parables and Jesus is their central character. Now Crossan does … Continue reading “Gospels as Parables ABOUT Jesus, part 4 of 4 (John Dominic Crossan)”
John the Baptist is almost unrecognizable in the Gospel of John to those who have known him only from the Synoptic Gospels. Apart from the Gospel of John’s Baptist never baptizing Jesus, (and apart from the possibility that in John’s Gospel Jesus himself uniquely does some baptizing for a time), one major difference between the … Continue reading “Why the Gospel of John Depicted John the Baptist So Differently”
After this Jesus and his disciples went into the Judean countryside, and he remained there with them and was baptizing. — John 3:22 And they came to John and said to him, “Rabbi, he who was with you across the Jordan, to whom you bore witness—look, he is baptizing, and all are going to him.” … Continue reading “Did Jesus Baptize? – A Test Case for Brodie’s ‘Unity of John’ Thesis”
A Gospel without Parables? We all know the standard line: the synoptic evangelists tell us that Jesus’ ministry heavily relied on parables, while the Fourth Gospel contains none. It’s a striking conundrum. However, for a long time now I’ve been considering the possibility that John is itself entirely a parable gospel. That is to say, … Continue reading “John’s Wedding at Cana — Chronicle or Parable?”