Musings on biblical studies, politics, religion, ethics, human nature, tidbits from science
Exactly one week before the Egyptian military’s removal of the Morsi government I received a copy of Muslim Secular Democracy: Voices from Within, edited by Lily Zubaidah Rahim. One of my particular interests at the time was in Turkey and I posted some interesting observations in the book about the Muslim government there: Can Democracy … Continue reading “The Muslim Brotherhood in post-Mubarak Egypt”
Palestinian suicide bombing operations are now (hopefully) history. The last one was five years ago. It is still good (even if painful) to understand them, however. (I have certainly found much of the reading preparation for this post to be painful; sometimes I could not bring myself to repeat certain details of what I learned.) … Continue reading “Terrorism Facts #4: Personal Motives of Palestinian Suicide Bombers”
Sam Harris in The End of Faith and Letter to a Christian Nation has written a lot of uninformed nonsense about religion in general and Islam in particular. Don’t misunderstand. His logical arguments against religious belief systems are entirely valid. For a time when I was in the process of recovering from my own religious … Continue reading “End of Faith and Other Pulp Fiction”
Part 7: The Uniqueness of the Gospels What Schmidt said While researching this topic, I found an unexpected great source (for this and for other topics) in New Synoptic Studies: The Cambridge Gospel Conference and Beyond, edited by William R. Farmer. Inside, an essay by Joseph B. Tyson entitled “Conflict as a Literary Theme in the … Continue reading “The Genre of the Gospels: How the Consensus Changed (Part 7)”
Part 4: Hochliteratur (high literature) and Kleinliteratur (low literature) Translations To understand Karl Ludwig Schmidt’s argument concerning the genre of the canonical gospels, we need first to understand his usage of the terms Hochliteratur and Kleinliteratur. These terms are difficult to translate into English, because we lose the nuance of the German words, while picking … Continue reading “The Genre of the Gospels: How the Consensus Changed (Part 4)”
There are many useful and interesting insights into the way the Bible has come to be (mis)used by scholars and laity alike in Dennis Nineham’s The Use and Abuse of the Bible (1976). One cameo that attracted my attention (over half way through the book) was what Nineham had to say about the New Testament … Continue reading “Use and Abuse of the Bible – Part 1”
. This post continues from Writing Ignatius into History (How the Peregrinus thesis solves many problems) TDOP = The Death of Peregrinus by Lucian. Harmon’s translation here. All posts so far in this series: Roger Parvus: Letters Supposedly Written by Ignatius . II. THE AUTHOR OF THE LETTERS WAS AN APELLEAN CHRISTIAN In my … Continue reading “An Unusual Mix of Beliefs in the Letters of Ignatius Peregrinus”
. This post is a continuation of Making Sense of the Letters and Travels of Ignatius (Peregrinus?) TDOP = The Death of Peregrinus by Lucian. Harmon’s translation here. All posts so far in this series: Roger Parvus: Letters Supposedly Written by Ignatius . So far I have called attention to the many similarities between Peregrinus … Continue reading “Writing Ignatius into History (How the Peregrinus thesis solves many problems)”
Updated about 4 hours after first posting — especially in the opening paragraphs of “The Arab conquests are FOLLOWED by the rise of Islam“. Historian and novelist Tom Holland raises some fascinating questions about the evidence pertaining to the origins of the Muslim religion. Is it possible that all three “religions of the book” will … Continue reading “Islam, the Untold Story”
Sometimes when attempting to demolish the arguments of the Christ myth theory historical Jesus scholars point to a popular biography of Jesus, Jesus: An Historian’s Review of the Gospels, by a scholar situated well outside the faculties of theology or biblical studies, the classicist Michael Grant. The reason they point to Michael Grant’s book is … Continue reading “The Historical Jesus and the Demise of History, 3a: How One Popular Historian Follows Jesus to Scholarly Perdition (Part 1)”
Updated with an added final paragraph 40 minutes after posting You’ve got to be kidding! Of course not. Not even the fact/theory of evolution and advances in biological science can undermine any of the “religions of the book”. John Loftus of Debunking Christianity made it clear that one of the worst things he could take … Continue reading “Is the Christ Myth a Threat to the Christian Faith? (If not, what is?)”
Updated 18th January, 2013. 8:40 pm. I recently confessed that I have too often written with the assumption that my points are surely so well-known that there is no need to explain them. This post attempts to make amends for one such recent gaffe. I explain why I claimed Hoffmann is out of touch with … Continue reading “Pharisees and Judaism, Popular (Gospel) Caricatures versus Modern Scholarly Views”
Hoffmann is continuing his “engagement” with mythicism. My initial thoughts on his latest post follow. Whatever else Paul was, he was the greatest revolutionary in history when it comes to the God-concept. His ideas were completely unhistorical and at odds with Jewish teaching: he finessed his disagreements into a cult that turned the vindictive God … Continue reading “Initial response to Hoffmann’s latest”
What happens to the Documentary Hypothesis (DH) if, as outlined in recent posts, the Pentateuch was first written in the third century BCE? That’s the first question that comes to most of us when first hearing a thesis like this. This post outlines Russell Gmirkin’s chapter on the DH, and is thus a continuation of … Continue reading “What Happens to the Documentary Hypothesis if the Pentateuch was written 270 BCE?”