Musings on biblical studies, politics, religion, ethics, human nature, tidbits from science
Way back in the previous century, I attended Ohio University at Athens. A young, naive freshman, I headed off one gloomy autumn day to the campus library, searching for source material for an astronomy paper. The stacks were vast; I was looking at more books than I had ever seen in one place. By New World … Continue reading ““It is absurd to suggest . . .” — Shirley Jackson Case on The Historicity of Jesus“
A volume on linguistics and literary studies published last year contained a chapter by Paul Hopper, Distinguished Professor of the Humanities Emeritus at Carnegie Mellon University, titled A Narrative Anomaly in Josephus: Jewish Antiquities xviii:63. The chapter can now be downloaded from academia.edu. (I was alerted to this through a post by Peter Kirby on Biblical Criticism & History Forum.) … Continue reading “Fresh Evidence: The Forged Jesus Passage in Josephus”
James McGrath directs readers interested in learning more about mythicism to read Dispelling the Jesus Myth, a blogpost by Simon J. Joseph. So I did. Simon’s post introduces nothing new into the discussion. It is the same litany of objections to mythicism one has run across countless times before so I was about to move … Continue reading “Dispelling the Jesus Mythicist Myth”
Alvar Ellegård (November 12, 1919 – February 8, 2008) was a Swedish scholar and linguist. He was professor of English at the University of Gothenburg, and a member of the academic board of the Swedish National Encyclopedia. . . . He also became known outside the field for his work on the conflict between religious dogma … Continue reading “Theologians as historians”
Let’s continue with this series that I left hanging nearly a year ago now. . . . We’re looking at the way oral tradition has been assumed to lie behind many of the Gospel narratives about Jesus and at the arguments that have been marshaled to support that assumption. We are basing these posts upon … Continue reading “Oral Tradition Taken for Granted (continued)”
Richard Carrier has written a critical review of Maurice Casey’s Jesus: Evidence and Argument or Mythicist Myths? See Critical Review of Maurice Casey’s Defense of the Historicity of Jesus. It’s in depth. Over 20,000 words. So most of us will want to schedule more than one sitting to complete it. Carrier begins with an overall … Continue reading “Richard Carrier’s Review of Maurice Casey’s Jesus“
Social-Scientific Criticism In an earlier post — Casey: Taking Context out of Context — we discussed the disturbing habit in NT scholarship of explaining away textual difficulties by playing the high-context card. For example, in What Is Social-Scientific Criticism? John H. Elliott of the Context Group writes: Further, the New Testament, like the Old Testament and … Continue reading “What the Context Group (and Casey) Missed”
[Observant readers will recall that we tackled this subject once before in When Is Paul’s Silence Golden?] Ad hoc soup The standard historicist response to the question of Paul’s silence on the historical Jesus relies heavily on Freudian Kettle Logic — to wit, “(1) Paul did mention Jesus quite a bit; (2) We shouldn’t be surprised that Paul didn’t mention Jesus very … Continue reading “Casey: Taking Context out of Context”
–o0o– All posts in this series are archived in the O’Neill-Fitzgerald Debate. –o0o– What a careful, honest or even just competent treatment of the subject would do would be to deal with all relevant positions throughout the analysis . . . . (O’Neill, 2013) . Tim O’Neill (TO) repeats, and repeats again and again in … Continue reading “O’Neill-Fitzgerald “Christ Myth” Debate, #8: Why should anyone have noticed Jesus?”
–o0o– All posts in this series are archived in the O’Neill-Fitzgerald Debate. –o0o– Tim O’Neill (TO) excoriates Dave Fitzgerald (DF) for consistently depict[ing] the topic as some kind of starkly Manichaean conflict between Christian apologists on one hand and “critics who have disputed Christian claims” on the other (O’Neill 2011) What’s more, he produces the … Continue reading “O’Neill-Fitzgerald Debate the Christ Myth: #4, A False Dichotomy?”
I was introduced to the work of Shelly Matthews through the Acts Seminar Report. She is one of the Seminar Fellows. I have since read — and enjoyed very much — her historical study Perfect Martyr: The Stoning of Stephen and the Construction of Christian Identity. Shelly Matthews is one of the few theologians I … Continue reading “The Fiction of Stephen the First Martyr”
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)”
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”
Links to all posts in this series are collated at: Roger Parvus: Letters Supposedly Written by Ignatius This post continues from The (Apellean) Gospel of Peregrinus and concludes the series. TDOP = The Death of Peregrinus by Lucian. Harmon’s translation here. . In posts two through six I showed why Peregrinus should be regarded as … Continue reading “Final of “Letters Supposedly Written by Ignatius”: Tackling New Questions”