On the whole I’ve found the textbook I’ve been using for my class on the Bible this semester, Stephen Harris’ Exploring the Bible
But the last chapter we read, on the world in which Christianity emerged, had some at one annoying facet. In a way that I associate with an earlier generation of scholars, Harris lists parallels between Jesus and Dionysus. To be fair, he also emphasizes that Jesus was a historical person. But I found myself wondering what the point of listing such parallels was. Presumably he wasn’t suggesting direct borrowing was responsible. And so I found it frustrating to find a list of similarities that obscured a much greater number of differences, and with no attempt to offer an explanation or interpretation of the similarities listed. Even a vague generality, such as that people across a wide array of different cultures tend to like their heroes and deities to do certain things, would have been useful.
Even though Harris’ book has a new title, it is in essence a new edition of a textbook that has been around for some time. And so perhaps the chapter on the Greco-Roman context of earliest Christianity was developed before Samuel Sandmel invented his cure for parallelomania.
Ad-Free & Subscriber Log-In