Musings on biblical studies, politics, religion, ethics, human nature, tidbits from science
Larry Hurtado’s ongoing attempts to defend the reasons biblical scholars opt to ignore the arguments of the Christ Myth theory reinforce fundamental points in my original post, Reply to Larry Hurtado: “Why the “Mythical Jesus” Claim Has No Traction with Scholars”. Hurtado’s latest response is Focus, Focus, Focus. Some excerpts and my comments: The question is … Continue reading “Focus, Focus, Focus — but Not Blinkered”
A historical study of Socrates echoes numerous points of interest in biblical studies, both in the Old and New Testaments. Following on from my reference to a point in Robin Waterfield’s Why Socrates Died: Dispelling the Myths I want to note here Waterfield’s explanation for why we have quite divergent accounts of Socrates’ apology (or defence … Continue reading “Why the “Biographies” of Socrates Differ”
One of the purposes of Vridar is to share what its authors have found of interest in biblical scholarship that unfortunately tends not to be easily accessible to the wider lay public. (Of course, our interests extend into political, science and other topics, too. For further background see the authors’ profiles and the explanations linked … Continue reading “Reply to Larry Hurtado: “Why the “Mythical Jesus” Claim Has No Traction with Scholars””
While thumbing through Cristiano Grottanelli’s Kings and Prophets: Monarchic Power, Inspired Leadership, and Sacred Text in Biblical Narrative, I remember now why I snatched it up a couple of years ago. For some time now, I’ve been working on a simple thesis that would explain the silence regarding Jesus’ actual teaching in the epistles (of Paul, … Continue reading “Saul’s Folly: The King Can’t Be a Jack of All Trades”
What do ancient historians think of the efforts of biblical scholars to inquire into “the historical Jesus” and the origins of Christianity? M.I. Finley was an influential historian of ancient history who found time out from his studies on the classical (Greco-Roman) world and methodological problems in ancient history more generally to write a handful of … Continue reading “An Ancient Historian on Historical Jesus Studies, — and on Ancient Sources Generally”
Underestimating serious problems While researching background information on a post I’ve been picking away at for several weeks, I came across a problem that bothered me to the point where I had to pull some books out of storage. As you no doubt recall, the consensus explanation for the Synoptic Problem posits a “Q” source … Continue reading “What’s the Matter with Biblical Scholarship? Part 2”
In an earlier post, I wrote: Seen from the perspective of believers, the Gospel of Mark and the Gospel of John are disconcertingly different. On the other hand, if we clear our minds of the anxiety of historicity, we see that Mark and John resemble one another much more than they do any “other” Greco-Roman … Continue reading “The Enigma of Genre and The Gospel of John”
Recently we talked about the Life of Aesop, a biographical novella of the fabulist written around the same time as the gospels: Aesop, Guide to a Very Late Date for the Gospels?; Aesop / 2, a Guide to a Late Gospel of Mark Date; Did Aesop Exist? This post singles out one more point in Tomas Hãgg’s … Continue reading “Reading the Classics and the Gospels Differently”
Postmodernism has been making its inroads into historical Jesus studies with what I think are most convenient results. This post is a plug for the old-fashioned rules for the proper way to do history. We can’t get any more old-fashioned than the nineteenth century founder of modern history, Leopold von Ranke, who has become a … Continue reading “The Basics of History — They’re Still the Basics”
In his recent book, Why Are There Differences in the Gospels?, Michael Licona struggles to show that we skeptics make far too much of the differences in the canonical gospels. Many of these differences, he argues, result from ordinary compositional devices typically used by authors of Greco-Roman biographies. This volume will pursue the identification of several techniques employed … Continue reading “How and Why Plutarch Expanded His “Lives””
One of the most common refrains in the scholarly output of scholars dedicated to the study of the historical Jesus and Christian origins is that “there is no reason to doubt” that Jesus or some other gospel figure said or did such and such. That is supposed to shut down critical inquiry, it seems. If there … Continue reading ““No reason to doubt . . .”? Fine, but that’s no reason to stop critical thinking”
If you are more interested in why a second messiah in the first place? and why the tribe of Joseph for a second messiah? skip to the end of this post where I cite one of several explanations. I don’t know the answer to the question in the title (in part because much depends upon how we define and … Continue reading “How Early Did Some Jews Believe in a Slain Messiah son of Joseph?”
I continue from the previous post with Bart Ehrman’s post and the query raised about its argument. Ehrman continues: There is a second reason for thinking that Paul is not the one who invented the idea that Jesus’ death was some kind of atoning sacrifice for sins. That’s because Paul explicitly tells us that he learned … Continue reading “Did Paul Learn the Gospel from Others? Bart Ehrman’s and Earl Doherty’s Arguments”
Scholars who study the historical Jesus will sometimes compile lists of minimal “secure facts” — the few things we can be reasonably certain “must be” true about the life of Christ. At the barest minimum, we have: “An itinerant Jewish teacher or preacher from Galilee who was crucified by Pilate.” In the words of E. … Continue reading “Is Jesus’ Itinerancy a Secure Fact or a Narrative Device?”