Musings on biblical studies, politics, religion, ethics, human nature, tidbits from science
Edited with additional notes on compatibility with other models of gospel origins 3 hours after the original posting. Previous posts in this series The Making of a Mythicist, Act 1, Scene 1 (Thomas Brodie’s Odyssey) Making of a Mythicist, Act 1, Scene 2 Making of a Mythicist, Act 2, Scene 1 (Brodie’s Odyssey) Continuing . … Continue reading “Making of a Mythicist, Act 2, Scene 2 (The Verdict Falls)”
Rabid anti-mythicist Joel Watts has hailed the major work of mythicist Thomas L. Brodie, The Birthing of the New Testament, as “a masterpiece” in his own newly published book, Mimetic Criticism and the Gospel of Mark: [Brodie’s] 2004 work, The Birthing of the New Testament, exploring the answers to the creation of the New Testament, … Continue reading “Joel Watts Acclaims Thomas Brodie a Scholarly “Giant” and His Work “A Masterpiece””
I was sitting with Everard Johnston, Lecturer in scriptures and dogma, at his house in Picton Street, Port of Spain, discussing the manuscript. By then his young wife, June, had gone to bed, and amid the sounds of the tropical night we sipped rum and coke as I tried to explain the basic idea of … Continue reading “Brodie’s Argument that Jesus Never Existed”
Chapter 3 While teaching a class in Trinidad during the late 1960s Thomas Brodie found himself repeating a line he had heard from an experienced Dominican teacher in Rome, Peter Dunker: the biblical account of Abraham was a story, a powerful meaningful story, but not historical. His students challenged him. What did he mean by … Continue reading “Making of a Mythicist, Act 1, Scene 2”
Dominican priest Thomas Brodie has written an autobiographical narrative of how he came to the realization that the New Testament writings about Jesus, in particular the Gospels, do not derive from reports about the life and teachings of an historical person at all but are entirely sourced and re-created from other theological writings. The Jesus … Continue reading “The Making of a Mythicist, Act 1, Scene 1 (Thomas Brodie’s Odyssey)”
Part 9: “A searching critical blitz of the Schmidt hypothesis” The previous post in this series began a critical analysis of an essay by John C. Meagher, delivered at the Colloquy on New Testament Studies back in 1980, before such well-known figures in the New Testament world as Charles H. Talbert, Vernon K. Robbins, and William R. … Continue reading “The Genre of the Gospels: How the Consensus Changed (Part 9)”
Part 6: Criticisms of Schmidt’s Literary Designations In this post, we’ll cover some of the more recent negative assessments of Karl Ludwig Schmidt’s designation of gospel texts as Kleinliteratur versus Hochliteratur. A cultural insult? As you recall, the reason Schmidt categorized the gospels as Kleinliteratur had to do with their structure and their core characteristics. It also made … Continue reading “The Genre of the Gospels: How the Consensus Changed (Part 6)”
The most solid argument I have read about what the word in Luke 1:2 translated as “eyewitnesses” actually means is by John N. Collins: see the post What Did Luke’s Eyewitnesses See? Collins presents a cogent argument that the word really means officials who have the responsibility for the writings/library of the community: it is … Continue reading “What Luke’s witnesses saw — according to Luke”
. This post continues from The Author of the So-Called Ignatians was an Apellean Christian TDOP = The Death of Peregrinus by Lucian. Harmon’s translation here. Links to all posts in this series are collated at: Roger Parvus: Letters Supposedly Written by Ignatius . In the letters of Peregrinus there are some passages that … Continue reading “The (Apellean) Gospel of Peregrinus”
Another provocative (and thought-provoking) Carr-ism, this one recently posted as a comment on Questioning Paul’s Letters. . . . ‘ But I have been looking at scholarly arguments that maintain Paul’s letters were, indeed, carefully crafted works of theological instructions that were composed in the form of occasional correspondence. ‘ Why did Paul need to … Continue reading “Why did Paul need to write letters?”
Craig S. Keener has written a book 869 pages long entitled The Historical Jesus of the Gospels. The primary aim of this book is to investigate how much we can know from the best sources available, and to offer examples of how these sources provide us more adequate information about Jesus than many scholars think … Continue reading “Scholars Rationalizing and Paraphrasing the Christian Myth”
This continues the previous post on Jesus: An Historian’s Review of the Gospels by Michael Grant. Why two posts on this? Since some New Testament scholars point to Michael Grant as evidence that academics outside biblical studies employ the same methods and reach the same conclusions about the historicity of Jesus as they do, won’t … Continue reading “The Historical Jesus and the Demise of History, 3b: How One Popular Historian Follows Jesus to Historiographical Perdition (Part 2)”
“He is unlike any man you have ever seen . . .” If you’ve ever watched the original Planet of the Apes, you no doubt remember the scene in which the Tribunal of the National Academy questions Charlton Heston (Taylor, aka “Bright Eyes”). None of Taylor’s explanations make any sense to the tribunal, of course. … Continue reading “Historical Reconstruction or a “Mad House”?”
Another Irish newspaper, Irish Central, says it has attempted to contact Thomas Brodie since the Irish Sun [link to the sun no longer active: Neil, 23rd July, 2019] article on Brodie’s removal from teaching positions but without success. Father Levi, introduces himself as a priest of the Church of Ireland on his blog, The Way … Continue reading “What They Are Saying About The Brodie Affair”