Armed and Pre-Existent?

Simon Joseph, author of The Nonviolent Messiah: Jesus, Q, and the Enochic Tradition, has offered a response to the recent articulation by Dale Martin of the view that Jesus and his followers may have been armed in the garden of Gethsemane. It promises to be the first of a series of posts on this subject. Brian Pound has the first part of his response to Martin in a guest post on the Jesus Blog.

Dustin Smith posted on how Jewish readers might have understood the Gospel of John if they  were familiar with the kind of “notional pre-existence” mentioned in Genesis Rabba, where the patriarchs, the Messiah, and much else “pre-exist” in the mind of God. This too promises to be part of a series.

Christopher Skinner suggested that these are things we’ll want to talk about at SBL in November. And so isn’t it about time to start planning the bibliobloggers’ gathering for this year? What about the evening of Saturday November 22nd?

Finally, here’s a link to a short story, “The Story of Simon,” composed by a blog reader, and taking some inspiration from the suggestion I shared here that John 21 might reflect the kind of story that once appeared as the ending to the Gospel of Mark. (On that topic see my article in The Bible and Interpretation for more details.)