Musings on biblical studies, politics, religion, ethics, human nature, tidbits from science
I have in the past argued that our canonical gospels are not really about the life and person of Jesus but rather they are a dramatization of core theological beliefs of the early Church. Jesus is a personification, a mouthpiece and a role constructed to play out this dramatization. One could say I have sided with Adela Yarbro … Continue reading “What Does a “Life of Jesus” Look Like?”
How do we determine the best way to interpret patterns and parallels between the Gospels and other literature? Here is one parallel that someone asks us to consider: Fishing for men. While at the Sea of Galilee, Jesus predicted that his followers would fish for men. “From now on you will catch men.” Luke 5:10 Titus’ followers … Continue reading “On Parallels”
What does it mean to say that a written work from ancient times is “well attested”? If you browse Christian apologetic web sites, you’ll read that the manuscript evidence for the New Testament is superior to anything else from antiquity. The Christian Apologetics & Research Ministry (CARM) site, for example, tells us that our “New … Continue reading “Little White Lies: Is the NT the Best Attested Work from Antiquity?”
The following article or letter has just appeared in Nature, Moralistic gods, supernatural punishment and the expansion of human sociality. (Or try this link.) Warning, however: high profile journals such as Nature are known to experience the highest retraction rate among scientific publications. Presumably this is because they attract readers (i.e. payers) by publishing articles sure … Continue reading “Fear of All Knowing, Judgemental Gods Makes Us More Sociable?”
We must remember an old adage: no one joins a “dangerous cult” or a “terrorist cell.” Converts invariably see the act of joining in positive terms, as beneficial for both themselves, their society, and the cosmos (literally), and the process is far more gradual than it appears. — (Dawson 2010, p. 7) In the late … Continue reading “Who Joins Cults — and How and Why?”
It seems hardly a month passes without somebody on Vridar bringing up Galatians 1:19, in which Paul refers to James as the “brother of the Lord.” Recently I ran a search for the phrase here, and after reading each post, it struck me how much time we’ve spent wondering what it means and so little time asking why … Continue reading “The Function of “Brother of the Lord” in Galatians 1:19″
The following is copied with permission from THE SECOND WAVE OF THE NEW ATHEISM A Manifesto for Secular Scriptural Scholarship and Religious Studies This Manifesto was initiated in the summer of 2015 by Hector Avalos and André Gagné. Please contact the authors if you wish to add your signature. Hector Avalos Iowa State University Ames, Iowa HectorAvalos@aol.com André … Continue reading “THE SECOND WAVE OF THE NEW ATHEISM: A Manifesto for Secular Scriptural Scholarship and Religious Studies”
The Song of Deborah in the fifth chapter of Judges, according to most scholars, contains some of the oldest material in the Hebrew Bible. However, Serge Frolov in a journal article and an online post notes several clues that should make us suspect that it’s a later work retrojected into the past. For example, he writes: Another clue … Continue reading “The Memory Mavens, Part 9: Social Memory Distortion (1)”
Speaking of the Devil or his doppelgänger, God, in my slightly flippant recent “trolley dilemma” post, what should appear in the serious social science research literature but that very trolley problem applied to Palestinian Muslims and Allah. God usually gets a bad rap among us atheists but fair’s fair so when the research tips in … Continue reading “Putting in a Good Word for God”
There is a serious and intense poetry associated with the jihad. There are captivating a cappella chants, and the serious sharing of night time dreams that characterise the culture of the Islamic State. A deep part of the human experience common to premodern cultures but increasingly absent from ours (and whose power and meaning the … Continue reading “The Religious Thrill and Bond of the Islamic State”
Abstract of a recently published article by Princeton University Professor of Classics, Brent D. Shaw: A conventional certainty is that the first state-driven persecution of Christians happened in the reign of Nero and that it involved the deaths of Peter and Paul, and the mass execution of Christians in the aftermath of the great fire … Continue reading “The Myth of Nero’s Persecution of Christians”
A long essay by Scott Atran comparing ISIS to past revolutions to find out what is new, and what likely can and cannot be done against it. . . . ISIS is a revolution World-altering revolutions are born in danger and death, brotherhood and joy. This one must be stopped Excerpts follow — Asymmetric operations … Continue reading “ISIS is a Revolution, born in terror (like all revolutions)”
Tom Dykstra writes “a cautionary tale” concerning the unpleasant rift between mythicists (those who dispute the historicity of Jesus) and historicists (those who defend the historicity of Jesus). His primary exemplars are “historicist” Bart Ehrman and “mythicist” Thomas Brodie, Ehrman and Brodie on Whether Jesus Existed: A Cautionary Tale about the State of Biblical Scholarship. His first warning is … Continue reading “Tom Dykstra on Mythicism: Erhman, Brodie and Scholarly Conduct”
Previous posts in this series looking at Friction: How Radicalization Happens to Them and Us by Clark McCauley and Sophia Moskalenko: 1. How Terrorists Are Made: 1 – Personal Grievance 2. How Terrorists Are Made: 2 – Group Grievance 3. Slippery Slope to Terrorism 4. Love, Relationships and Terrorism So far we have noted how one becomes a terrorist … Continue reading “Terrorists on Status Seeking Adventures”