Musings on biblical studies, politics, religion, ethics, human nature, tidbits from science
Continuing the series on Thomas Brodie’s Beyond the Quest for the Historical Jesus: Memoir of a Discovery, archived here. In chapter 17 Brodie is analysing John Meier’s work, A Marginal Jew, as representative of the best that has been produced by notable scholars on the historical Jesus. Brodie subtitles this section with: Sceptics See Only … Continue reading “Making of a Mythicist — ch 17 . . . Was Jesus a Carpenter?”
. Continuing the series on Thomas Brodie’s Beyond the Quest for the Historical Jesus: Memoir of a Discovery, archived here. . Brodie is analysing John Meier’s work, A Marginal Jew, as representative of the best that has been produced by notable scholars on the historical Jesus. Having begun by identifying the two key problems of … Continue reading “Making of a Mythicist — ch 17 . . . Did Jesus Model Himself on Elijah?”
Continuing the series on Thomas Brodie’s Beyond the Quest for the Historical Jesus: Memoir of a Discovery, archived here. (I am breaking up Brodie’s chapter 17 into a series of smaller posts, and adding more of my own commentary in the process. I hope I keep the distinction between my own thoughts and Brodie’s clear.) … Continue reading “Making of a Mythicist — ch 17 . . . Unreliable Criteria”
Continuing the series on Thomas Brodie’s Beyond the Quest for the Historical Jesus: Memoir of a Discovery, archived here. Chapter 17 A MARGINAL JEW: RETHINKING THE HISTORICAL JESUS — THE MONUMENTAL WORK OF JOHN P. MEIER Thomas Brodie selects for discussion John Meier’s work, A Marginal Jew, as representative of the best work that has … Continue reading “Making of a Mythicist, Act 4, Scene 6 (Two Key Problems with Historical Jesus Studies)”
Anthony Le Donne has written a book that I find is both chock-full of many fascinating nuggets in the Gospel narratives and riddled with startling revelations (if only discerned between the lines) about the foundations of “Gospel Narrative Origins” studies, The Historiographical Jesus: Memory, Typology, and the Son of David. (This post does not address … Continue reading “How Can We Know If the Jesus Narratives Are Memories Or Inventions? (Revised)”
. A recent book by Jacob Licht, Storytelling in the Bible (Jerusalem, 1978), proposes that the “historical aspect” and the “storytelling” aspect of biblical narrative be thought of as entirely discrete functions that can be neatly peeled apart for inspection — apparently, like the different colored strands of electrical wiring. This facile separation of the … Continue reading “Why the Gospels Are Historical Fiction”
Chapter 13 The Quest for History: Rule One . The theme of chapter 13 in Thomas Brodie’s Beyond the Quest for the Historical Jesus: Memoir of a Discover syncs well with a recurring theme on this blog. I have posted on it repeatedly and alluded to it constantly. I even posted on the contents of … Continue reading “Making of a Mythicist, Act 4, Scene 2 (“What Is Rule One?”)”
Dr. McGrath has taken me to task for my last post on “Getting to the Root of the Criteria Problem.” Actually, he’s unhappy about several things. You can tell he’s upset, because he calls me a canard-repeatin’ mythicist. That’s like a Tea Party guy calling you an atheist-Muslim or a communist-Nazi. It’s so bad. I … Continue reading “Who’s “Rejecting Critical Inquiry”?”
. Chapter 12 The Funeral: ‘Oral Tradition’ And Its World . Chapter 12 of Beyond the Quest for the Historical Jesus by Thomas Brodie addresses the problems Brodie came to see with oral tradition as an explanation for Gospel sources. I have covered Brodie’s arguments on oral tradition in depth here (see Two Core Problems … Continue reading “Making of a Mythicist, Act 4, Scene 1 (“We need a gentle funeral”)”
Thomas Brodie argues that the Gospel narratives are in large part sourced not from oral traditions but from the Greek versions of the Jewish scriptures. I recently posted a chapter from one of his books in which he presents the minute details of an argument for the literary indebtedness of one scene in the Gospel … Continue reading “Parallels, Drum Majorettes and Brodie”
Insults and a failure to comprehend Awhile back our favorite historicist doctor posted a comment on his own blog: One can see a similar mythicist combination of insult and failure to comprehend those with whom they disagree at the blog Vridar. Seriously, it is as though I had never written anything about [Jan] Vansina and … Continue reading “Jan Vansina and the Criterion of Embarrassment”
Continuing Thomas Brodie’s Beyond the Quest for the Historical Jesus: Memoir of a Discovery Part III The Third Revolution: Literary Art, Including Form/Genre Becoming aware of how biblical writers redesigned their materials into a new work of art Chapter 8 . Dramatic happenings in the next room Old Testament studies were much more action-packed in … Continue reading “Making of a Mythicist, Act 3, Scene 1 (Too Strange!)”
How do historians, comparative linguists, biblical and textual critics, and evolutionary biologists establish beliefs about the past? How do they know the past? That’s the subject of Aviezer Tucker‘s Our Knowledge of the Past: A Philosophy of Historiography (2004). Tucker’s interest is the relationship between the writing of history (historiography) and evidence (p. 8). It … Continue reading “Real Historians Do Bayes!”
Updated with additional conclusion 17th July Thomas Brodie argues that the Gospel accounts of Jesus, both his deeds and teachings, are like other literature of the era insofar as they are creative re-writings of earlier literary sources. The best-known example of such creative imitation in the classical world is Virgil’s use of Homer’s epics to … Continue reading “Brodie’s Mythicist Case: The Facts”