Take a look at this post by Crystal St. Marie Lewis, offering parallel fictional depictions two very similar-sounding Christian perspectives, separated by a century. Read more
Take a look at this post by Crystal St. Marie Lewis, offering parallel fictional depictions two very similar-sounding Christian perspectives, separated by a century. Read more
Kevin Brown, on his blog Diglotting, has posted part one and part two of a series about the Christology of the Gospel of Mark. Kevin does a great job of highlighting what the text does – and does not – say, and in the process suggests that some common interpretations read things into the text that aren’t there. Read more
After quite a long hiatus, I am now able to resume blogging my way through Earl Doherty’s book Jesus: Neither God Nor Man. The main focus of chapter 8 is the idea that Paul’s Gospel and the Jesus at its center was revealed in Scripture rather than in historical events such as the life of an actual historical human person named Jesus. The chapter gets several things right and mentions important information about the context of earliest Christianity – and... Read more
A new article by Ronald Hendel in The Bible and Interpretation addresses the subject of cultural memory in a way that is relevant to minimalists, mythicists and other modernists. The idea that we are either going to precisely reconstruct the past, or conversely decisively disprove traditional views about it, without room for doubt or error, reflect the approach of a bygone era. Here’s a sample to whet your appetite: The minimalist/maximalist dichotomy, as far as I understand it, becomes obsolete... Read more
Joel Watts has posted what most people would probably consider an unnecessary reminder: No, we are not all Cylons. He was referring to this video: I agree that it is problematic to treat myth – ancient or modern – as though it is actual literal fact. But having said that, I do think that Battlestar Galactica – original and rebooted – did some great things. In particular, the original Battlestar Galactica did something that few other sci-fi franchises have managed:... Read more
From Stuff Fundies Like: Read more
HT SF Signal Read more
In what will presumably be a major talking point in the blogosphere in coming days, John Loftus has accused Jim West of hate speech. I suspect that the discussion of this topic on both Zwingli Redivivus and Debunking Christianity will get heated, and so let me offer this post’s comments section as a place for level-headed discussion of the broader issues as well as the details. For instance, does adding “humor” as a category in a blog post always suffice... Read more
I’ve been meaning to share this since Tim Henderson mentioned it a while back. In case you missed it, the program book for the 2011 Society of Biblical Literature Annual Meeting in San Francisco is available online. Read more
In a discussion of mythicism and of Maurice Casey’s treatment of a miracle story in the Gospel of Mark, the broader issue of what historians can say about accounts of healings and miracles is bound to come up. A historian can never rightly conclude that a miracle or other supernatural event has occurred. But surely a historian can conclude that it is likely that a historical person recovered from illness, and even that it was believed that that recover was... Read more
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