Why a volume of essays in honour of Thomas L. Thompson? The opening paragraph of the Introduction explains (with my highlighting): Thomas L. Thompson has been, for the past five decades, behind some of the – if not all – major changes in Old Testament historiography, if we consider that his criticism of the patriarchal … Continue reading “Biblical Narratives, Archaeology, Historicity – Essays in Honour of Thomas L. Thompson”
Like this:
Like Loading...
Excerpts from Philippe Wajdenbaum’s Argonauts of the Desert (related to an earlier post, Biblical Scholars, Symbolic Violence, and the Modern Version of an Ancient Myth) where he draws upon the study of structures of myths by anthropologist Claude Lévi-Strauss: . . . to give an interpretation of a myth is to create a new variant … Continue reading “Historical Jesus Scholarship and Mythmaking”
Like this:
Like Loading...
We declared a while ago on Vridar that we would never sell anything so I am at this moment trapped between gratitude and principle. Yale University Press kindly agreed to send me a review copy of M. David Litwa’s How the Gospels Became History: Jesus and Mediterranean Myths but, as it turned out, they requested their … Continue reading “Review, pt 1a: How the Gospels Became History / Litwa”
Like this:
Like Loading...
After reviewing the efforts of Bart Ehrman and Maurice Casey to present their respective cases for the historicity of Jesus we now come to chapter 4, Inadequate Methods. By way of summing up the previous discussion Raphael Lataster writes The recent defences of Jesus’ historicity by Bart Ehrman and Maurice Casey lack lucid and competent … Continue reading “Review part 4: Questioning the Historicity of Jesus / Lataster (Case for Agnosticism – I, Methods)”
Like this:
Like Loading...
In the right hand column I have added links to three new blog pages. They are under the Archives by Topic (Annotated) heading. Death and Resurrection of the Beloved Son (Levenson)| From Adapa to Enoch (Sanders) Plato and the Hebrew Bible (Gmirkin)
Like this:
Like Loading...
#. From Adapa to Jesus (2019-02-07) This post is not part of the main series but a standalone on but one detail, addressing one mythical trope and its apparent recycling and refashioning through changing circumstances and experiences: the myth of Adapa and the South Wind is discussed against the story of Jesus stilling the … Continue reading “From Adapa to Enoch (Sanders)“
Like this:
Like Loading...
We have two models for the origin of the biblical and its ancillary literature. According to Seth Sanders in From Adapa to Enoch we have a progression from the late Iron Age to the Seleucid era. The early period (during the time of the kingdom of Judah before its exile) we have “public genres of … Continue reading “More Thoughts on Origins of Biblical and Pseudepigraphical Literature”
Like this:
Like Loading...
I have been posting on points of interest in Seth Sanders’ From Adapa to Enoch: Scribal Culture and Religious Vision in Judea and Babylon and have reached a point where I cannot help but bring in certain contrary and additional perspectives from another work I posted on earlier, Russell Gmirkin’s Plato and the Creation of … Continue reading “Who Influenced Biblical and Second Temple Jewish Literature?”
Like this:
Like Loading...
Questioning the historical existence of Jesus attracts something other than mere curiosity or intellectual debate among many biblical scholars and some of the public who don’t even have any personal interest in religion. I can understand people with a personal faith in Jesus either simply ignoring the question with disdain or amusement or responding with … Continue reading “Understanding the Hostility to the Christ Myth Theory”
Like this:
Like Loading...
How reliable as historical records are the genealogies of patriarchs and the different tribes of Israel? 1977 saw the publication of Robert Wilson’s thesis, Genealogy and History in the Biblical World, a work that set the main framework for further studies of biblical genealogies. Wilson used two different studies of genealogies as a basis for … Continue reading “The Sons of Jacob and the Sons of Heracles”
Like this:
Like Loading...
Chaim Milikowsky gives his answer to the question in the title, or at least he answers the question with respect to rabbinical literature. I have added the connection to our canonical four gospels, and I could with equal justice add Acts of the Apostles. I read CM’s answer in Ancient Fiction: The Matrix of Early … Continue reading “Why the Rabbis (and Gospel Authors, too) Wrote Fiction as “True History””
Like this:
Like Loading...
I have posted many times on the works of scholars who have argued that none or very little of the Hebrew Bible can be dated before the Persian or Hellenistic periods: Thompson, Lemche, Davies, Whitelam, Gmirkin, Wajdenbaum, Wisselius, Mandell & Freedman(?) and possibly others whom memory fails at this moment. So what does the “other side” … Continue reading “The Age of the Hebrew Bible — the other view”
Like this:
Like Loading...
The question of parallels has been raised in different posts and comments lately on Vridar. Firstly, I questioned Joseph Atwill’s claim that there was a parallel between Jesus calling disciples to become “fishers of men” beside the “sea of Galilee” and a scene in Josephus’ War where Romans kill drowning Judeans in a battle that … Continue reading “When is a parallel a real parallel and not parallelomania?”
Like this:
Like Loading...
This post is a presentation of a few of the key points set out by Steve Mason in his 2016 study A History of the Jewish War, AD 66-74. The points are taken from the first part of his second chapter titled Understanding Historical Evidence. I found his explanation a most enjoyable read because it … Continue reading “Understanding Historical Evidence”
Like this:
Like Loading...