Musings on biblical studies, politics, religion, ethics, human nature, tidbits from science
Some scholars, notably Dennis MacDonald, have argued that the Gospels of Mark and Luke as well as Acts contain passages that have “parallels” in the Homeric epics. The presence of these parallels is said to be evidence that the Christian authors were deliberately imitating and even attempting to outdo certain well-known features of the iconic … Continue reading “Parallels or Parallelomania: How to Tell the Difference”
This is a followup to my previous post, Casey’s Mythicist Myth Busted, where I set out Casey’s list of the most influential mythicists who claim to be ‘scholars’ today (p. 10) Casey’s list counted seventeen names. Of those seventeen we saw that six were not mythicists at all (e.g. Bart Ehrman) and one was deceased … Continue reading “Who’s Who Among Mythicists and Mythicist Sympathizers/Agnostics”
If Maurice Casey’s book Jesus: Evidence and Argument Or Mythicist Myths? were about Jews or Gays or Blacks or the Disabled he and his publisher may well be charged with inciting hatred against “the other”. Mythicists are portrayed as all alike, they are all psychologically twisted and motivated by evil intent, their faults are never … Continue reading “Maurice Casey’s Mythicist Myth Busted”
–o0o– All posts in this series are archived in the O’Neill-Fitzgerald Debate –o0o– Tim O’Neill (TO) rightly says of some of the evidence for the historical existence of Jesus: After all, no-one except a fundamentalist apologist would pretend that the evidence about Jesus is not ambiguous and often difficult to interpret with any certainty, and … Continue reading “O’Neill-Fitzgerald “Christ Myth” Debate, #10: Josephus as Evidence & the Arabic Version of the Testimonium”
Most series of posts (e.g. my series on Thomas Brodie’s “Beyond the Quest for the Historical Jesus”) are found in the Archives & List of topics above. Here I have placed indexes of posts by Earl Doherty and Roger Parvus for easy reference.
R. Joseph Hoffmann on his blog The New Oxonian has been complaining about “the language and style” of “mythticists” — those he, Hoffmann, calls “disease carrying mosquitoes” and “buggers” — saying that they, the “mythticists”, lower the tone of the debate. In support of this assertion he has Tim O’Neill along calling mythicists’ arguments “conspiracist … Continue reading “What R. Joseph Hoffmann Does Not Want (Anyone) To Believe About Me”
–o0o– All posts in this series are archived in the O’Neill-Fitzgerald Debate. –o0o– Tim O’Neill (TO) excoriates Dave Fitzgerald (DF) for consistently depict[ing] the topic as some kind of starkly Manichaean conflict between Christian apologists on one hand and “critics who have disputed Christian claims” on the other (O’Neill 2011) What’s more, he produces the … Continue reading “O’Neill-Fitzgerald Debate the Christ Myth: #4, A False Dichotomy?”
Peter Kirby has posted thoughts on the meaning of the question of the historical Jesus for Christian theology: see Theology and the Historical Jesus. What he writes dovetails with recent posts here explaining why Thomas Brodie believes Christianity can and should thrive with a Jesus figure who stands beyond history. Peter shows Brodie is not … Continue reading “Theology and the Historical Jesus”
–o0o– All posts in this series are archived in the O’Neill-Fitzgerald Debate. –o0o– I don’t imagine very many people interested in the debate over the historical existence of Jesus would have the time to read Tim O’Neill’s 12,000+ word response David Fitzgerald’s response (10,000 words) to Tim O’Neill’s review (7,500 words) of David Fitzgerald’s Nailed: … Continue reading “The O’Neill–Fitzgerald Debate over the Christ Myth: Round 1, the Agenda”
Brodie’s final chapter* is essentially an attempt to justify religious faith or belief. How can one believe in the New Testament (or God)? (This is the final post on this book: the complete series is archived here.) He begins by suggesting it is quite possible to believe the New Testament’s message “as a parable”. One … Continue reading “Making of a (Christian) Mythicist, Act 5, Scene 4 (To Believe or Not to Believe the Parable) — Conclusion”
Continuing the series on Thomas Brodie’s Beyond the Quest for the Historical Jesus: Memoir of a Discovery, archived here. This post addresses the next to last chapter. It gives Brodie’s answer to the question: What can a Christian still believe in if Jesus never existed but was entirely a literary-theological creation? In Thomas Brodie’s view … Continue reading “Making of a (Christian) Mythicist, Act 5, Scene 3 (What Christianity Can Mean If Jesus Did Not Exist)”
Come writers and critics who cauterize with your pen . . . You’ve spoken too soon, the wheel’s still in spin . . . . . . Mythicism is compatible with Christian faith. That is certainly the argument of Fr Thomas L. Brodie in chapter 20 of Beyond the Quest for the Historical Jesus: Memoir … Continue reading “Making of a (Christian) Mythicist, Act 5, Scene 2 (Staying Christian With a Symbolic Jesus)”
Updated 8:30 am UTC As a follow up to my last post I am sharing here another valuable snippet I read in Clarke Owens’ Son of Yahweh: The Gospels as Novels. Owens’ first chapter, “Literary Criticism and the Historical Jesus”, is brilliant and deserves to be read and addressed by everyone who has an interest … Continue reading “The Historical Jesus Quest Is Theology in Disguise”
Continuing the series on Thomas Brodie’s Beyond the Quest for the Historical Jesus: Memoir of a Discovery, archived here. This post begins with the final section of Brodie’s book, Part V, Glimmers of Shadowed Reality: Some steps towards clarifying Christianity’s origin and meaning. In this final section Thomas Brodie attempts to offer an explanation for … Continue reading “Making of a Mythicist, Act 5, Scene 1 (Explaining Christian Origins Without Jesus)”