Musings on biblical studies, politics, religion, ethics, human nature, tidbits from science
In a recent blogpost, “Born of a Woman”: Paul’s Perfect Victim and the Historical Jesus, Joseph Hoffmann argued that as early as the 50s C.E. the apostle Paul was so disturbed by gossip about Jesus being born of an adulterous relationship that he had a “need to deal with it” in his letter to the … Continue reading “Hoffmann’s Mamzer-Jesus Solution to Paul’s “Born of a Woman””
* The Brother of the Lord . COVERED IN THIS POST: brother of the Lord the meaning of “brother” in the epistles brethren of a sect? plain meanings apologist objections: who is “the Lord”? battle of the prepositions question begging as methodology why not “brother of Jesus”? or “brothers of Jesus”? separating Cephas and James … Continue reading “20. Earl Doherty’s Response to Bart Ehrman’s Case Against Mythicism – Part 20”
What “Messiah” meant at the time of Paul and the earliest Christians Continuing with notes from Christ among the Messiahs: Christ Language in Paul and Messiah Language in Ancient Judaism by Matthew V. Novenson . The messianic idea We saw in Part 1 that interpreters of Paul have confidently concluded that whatever Paul meant by … Continue reading “Christ among the Messiahs — Part 2”
* Epistle to the Hebrews (Part Two) . COVERED IN THIS POST: Telling us that Jesus was never on earth First smoking gun: Hebrews 8:4 – a denial that Jesus had been on earth Platonic parallels between heaven and earth Christ could not be a priest in the same sphere as the earthly priests no … Continue reading “16. Earl Doherty’s Response to Bart Ehrman’s Case Against Mythicism – Pt. 16”
Welcome to the Blogosphere! I like mass-marketed, heavily processed food. Gosh, I do love it. For as long as I can remember, I’ve been a huge fan of Velveeta®, Cheez Whiz®, etc., so R. Joseph Hoffmann’s announcement about a blog dedicated to . . . Huh? What’s that? Oh. Processed Jesus. Well, that’s very different. First … Continue reading “The Three Brusque-Fakirs — The Jesus Process© Hits the Web”
* The Epistle to the Hebrews (Part One) . God speaking through a Son in a new reading of scripture Hebrews’ Son a heavenly entity like the Logos Hebrews 101: a sacrifice in a heavenly sanctuary an event of revelation at the start of the sect no words of Jesus on earth to be found … Continue reading “15. Earl Doherty’s Response to Bart Ehrman’s Case Against Mythicism – Pt. 15”
Thomas L. Thompson, Professor of Theology, National Endowment for the Humanities Fellow and editor of biblical studies journals, wrote in 2005 that historical Jesus scholars have always just assumed that Jesus existed: Twentieth-century scholarship, with its faith in history, assumed a historical Jesus as its starting point. It shared Schweitzer’s personal dilemma: a choice between … Continue reading “Ehrman Confesses: Scholars Never Have Tried to Prove Jesus Existed”
Recently, Robert Bumbalough asked, “. . . What of the style and grammar of the Lukan prologue vs. that of the Lukan infancy narrative vs. subsequent sections? Is there evidence [that] portions stem from the same pen?” This question reminded me of a personal, informal study I undertook a short while back, comparing the word selection … Continue reading “Who Wrote That? Verbal Affinities Between the Lukan Prologue and Acts”
I have been studying the first half of Richard Carrier’s chapter 3, “Introducing Bayes’s Theorem”, in his recent book Proving History: Bayes’s Theorem and the Quest for the Historical Jesus. I mean studying. I want to be sure I fully understand the argument before tackling the second half of the chapter, headed Mechanics of Bayes’s … Continue reading “Carrier’s “Proving History”, Chapter 3(a) — Review”
Bart Ehrman’s attempt to deal with Earl Doherty’s book, Jesus: Neither God Nor Man, is “filled with so many unguarded and undocumented statements and claims, and so many misstatements of fact, that it would take a [book three times the size] to deal with all the problems.” I have quoted Ehrman’s own words to describe … Continue reading “Ehrman’s Most Bizarre Criticism Of All Against Doherty”
In 2002 results of research into the relationship between personality and spirituality were published in Pastoral Psychology. If you’re one of those arm-chair anti-religionists who speculates that people who pray the most probably have some psychological malfunction and are expressing a need to communicate with an imaginary friend given their inability to relate to the … Continue reading “People who pray are nice”
Continuing my series of posts from Paul-Louis Couchoud‘s The Creation of Christ. Full set of posts are archived at Couchoud: Creation of Christ. We are now about to come full circle. I began this series of posts by looking at Couchoud’s account of Gospel origins. That led to his arguments for the origins of the … Continue reading “Christianity in the Gap Years: 70 – 120 CE (Couchoud continued)”
William Wrede’s The Messianic Secret Part 3: Introduction Gospels are stories In the previous installment, we read through the front matter of Wrede’s The Messianic Secret. This time, we’re going to look at the Introduction, which while technically part of the front matter, is a meaty chapter unto itself. Quite recently, Neil remarked on this blog: The … Continue reading “Reading Wrede Again for the First Time (3)”
This post continues Couchoud’s account of the nature of the Christ found in the Book of Revelation and how he epitomizes the “false Christ” that Paul denounced his apostolic rivals for promoting. Couchoud has been tracing the rise of Christianity from the Enochian community in “pre-Christian” times and the evolution of the Christ idea in … Continue reading “The Christ of John’s Revelation — Nemesis of Paul’s crucified Christ (Couchoud continued)”