Towards the end of the semester in my Paul class, we’ve focused on the disputed and inauthentic epistles attributed to Paul. One detail that never struck me quite as forcefully before about 2 Thessalonians is its ending: “ I, Paul, write this greeting with my own hand. This is the mark in every letter of mine; it is the way I write.” I had noticed before that this – like the warning about “a letter as though from us” – could... Read more
And via George Takei, I came across this image of the procedure for uninstalling/exorcising Windows Vista: This kind of operating system cannot be removed except by prayer and fasting… Read more
I’ve been wondering for some time whether extreme skepticism of the depiction of Jesus even in our earliest sources hasn’t gone too far. A number of scholars have been bringing the pendulum back the other way. Bart Ehrman, for instance, thinks that Jesus thought himself to be the Messiah. If we remove all such views and statements from the period prior to the crucifixion, it becomes well nigh impossible to explain how anyone came to view Jesus that way later. There... Read more
When I saw this cartoon by David Hayward, it struck me as a poignant depiction of the dishonesty that pervades a great many religious congregations. The pastor has presumably been going through some challenging times. When he finally admits where he is at for the first time, the congregation finally feels that they can tell him that they got there before him. We need more congregations where there is no illusion that the pastor is necessarily ahead of everyone else... Read more
Jim Spinti drew attention to a new book by Jan Bremmer, Initiation into the Mysteries of the Ancient World, published by De Gruyter and open access in ebook form. The books discusses the problems with the categories encountered in nineteenth century scholarship (which continues to be used by mythicists today), and covers topics such as whether these cults influenced Christianity. Read more
While they may have genuinely thought they were being skeptical and critical, from our later vantage point, it seems that those who felt that we cannot say anything about Jesus’ own statements and views, but only those of the later church, were rather giving expression to their reverence for Jesus as a figure who still had at least some overtones of divinity for them. Having all one’s conclusions be about the fallible humans who came after Jesus, and who may... Read more
“Conspiracy believers are the ultimate motivated skeptics. Their curse is that they apply this selective scrutiny not to the left or right, but to the mainstream. They tell themselves that they’re the ones who see the lies, and the rest of us are sheep. But believing that everybody’s lying is just another kind of gullibility.” — William Saletan, in the article “Conspiracy Theorists Aren’t Really Skeptics” Read more
A while back I came across this image of a conversation on The Big Bang Theory: Today, IO9 linked to a webcomic that makes the same point. They called it “Indiana Jones and the Avoiders of the Lost Ark” but it could easily have been called “Indiana Jones – How It Should Have Ended”: After thinking about this, I found myself wondering whether the same could be applied to the Bible. Are there any main characters who are actually irrelevant to... Read more
Some might think, given the headline, that this post would be about Richard Carrier. But mythicists aren’t the first or the only fringe stance to try to use math to obscure the weakness of their arguments. P.Z. Myers drew attention to a response to Michael Behe that Ken Miller posted online. You can read it here. PZ writes: I recall sitting in a creationist lecture in the 1980s, and the guy leading us through his ‘mathematical’ disproof of evolution. You see, there... Read more
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