Musings on biblical studies, politics, religion, ethics, human nature, tidbits from science
Why is the Sermon on the Mount so often upheld as the ultimate in ethics? Surely we have progressed ethically in 2000 years. Continue reading “The questionable ethical standard of the Sermon on the Mount”
Births can be messy things and it appears to have been no different with the gospels.
One speculation to suggest why the authors of the canonical gospels did not attach their names to them is that the gospel story was so commonly well known at the time that there was no need for such authentication.
To take just one facet of this argument here: Continue reading “messy gospel births”
In my “dating the gospels late” post I made a few statements that would appear outrageous to some. Rather than attempt to answer some of the objections raised in the tiny comments box I am opting to make separate posts justifying the points I made.
Here I cite reasons for claiming one anachronism in the gospels: Jesus’ disputes with the Pharisees in Galilee. Though there may have been the odd Pharisee in Galilee prior to 70 ce the impression given by the gospels that they were a significant presence there is unlikely historically — for the following reasons: Continue reading “Pharisees in Galilee?”
Earlier post looked at Elisha’s miracle as Mark’s principle source for the mass feeding miracles – here I list a few distinctly Moses sources, and a comparison with Matthew’s parallel accounts, summarized from Dale C. Allison Jr’s The New Moses: A Matthean Typology (pp.238-242). Continue reading “Additional Sauces for the Feedings of 5000 and 4000”