Larry Hurtado just announced on his blog that the Center for the Study of Christian Origins at the University of Edinburgh, of which he is Director, now has a blog. There’s no content as yet, but it sounds like it will be worth keeping an eye on. Read more

Here are the links to the sections of my review of The Historical Jesus: Five Views edited by James K. Beilby and Paul R. Eddy (Intervarsity Press, 2009): IntroductionChapter 1: Robert M. PriceChapter 2: John Dominic CrossanChapter 3: Luke Timothy JohnsonChapter 4: James D. G. DunnChapter 5: Darrell L. Bock Read more

The final chapter in The Historical Jesus: Five Views is by Darrell Bock and represents a conservative Evangelical perspective on the topic of the historical Jesus. Bock begins by noting that some would regard this as an oxymoron. From the one side, the Evangelical view of Scripture might be argued to be incompatible with critical historical inquiry, while from the other, historical skepticism seems incompatible with the Evangelical view of the Bible as the Word of God. Bock’s aim in the chapter is... Read more

Wolfgang’s Vault just released a playlist with some hits from the 80s, 1984-1986 to be precise, including this one: http://concerts.wolfgangsvault.com/common/swf/wgv_st_player.swf Read more

A few links seem particularly worth mentioning. First, Israel Finkelstein has a web page which includes some of his articles (HT Jim West). The Bible and Interpretation has an article on linguistic dating of texts in the Hebrew Bible. Papers for the Paul and Scripture section at this year’s SBL will be made available online on the section’s blog. And finally, Ari has discussions of Dunn and Evans on the burial of Jesus – a subject still of great interest... Read more

One thing cannot be reasonably denied. Mainstream historical Jesus scholarship (I am not, of course, referring to pseudoscholarly works of apologetics masquerading as something more serious) uses the same methods as mainstream historical study. Those who study early Christianity, those who study Jewish history, those who study Hellenistic and Roman history, those who study any of these overlapping areas or some subset thereof, all interact regularly at conferences, in scholarly volumes and publications, and in numerous other ways. While scholars... Read more

A recent comment from a well-known skeptic asked about the “crazification factor” for mythicism. I don’t know what it is, but here’s a photo from a recent mythicist rally that may give some indication. Presumably the only response I can offer to Mythicist True BelieversTM is this: Read more

There is nothing that is countered by enough evidence that some people will not still manage to believe it. There is nothing that is supported by enough evidence that some people will not still manage to doubt it. Read more

A discussion on Facebook of my recent blog post helped me distill the essence of what disturbs me about mythicism. Here it is in a nutshell: This is why I find mythicism so disturbing. There is a willingness to bring in any and every late source to attempt to argue against Jesus’ existence, but resistance to bringing in even the earliest sources in favor of his existence. Yet those who argue in favor of the mainstream historical conclusions that are... Read more