http://www.hulu.com/embed/MvWlHlEneXyERs_tQ28_Wg Read more

A friend introduced me to a new blog, Excavating Truth. It didn’t take me long to figure out that this is one I’ll want to link to. There is a three part (so far) series on Ancient Near Eastern Cosmology, and it begins with the question “Is Darth Vader the father of Luke Skywalker?” If you share the same interests as me, I won’t need to say more than that to persuade you to take a look! 🙂 Read more

I probably should have called it the Symposium on the Secret Gospel of Mark, but I like the mystery inherent in one of the ways the title of this post could be understood. Apocryphicity offers part 1 of Tony Burke’s own reflections, as well as a student’s view.Evangelical Textual Criticism has a guest blog post about the conference. Read more

Bob Cargill has a piece in The Bible and Interpretation on Simcha Jacobovici’s recent “documentary” about nails supposedly used in Jesus’ crucifixion. Read more

I’ve made it through the first couple of chapters of Earl Doherty’s book, Jesus: Neither God Nor Man. I’m delighted that Earl Doherty himself, as well as some other mythicists, have taken the time be part of the conversation taking place around the posts on this subject. The book continues to promise that treatment of important questions will come later. We’ll see. But for a reader used to interacting with academic arguments which provide detailed evidence and which are to... Read more

Having mentioned in my previous post the importance of understanding how oral and primarily oral cultures deal with sources, attribution of “authorship,” “quotation” and other aspects of passing on tradition, I thought I would share two classic books by Jan Vansina that are on Google Books. Vansina’s work on oral tradition and history is well known, and I presume that some readers may find the previews available online interesting and beneficial. He also discusses some of the criteria that historians... Read more

Chapter 2 is a refreshing change from what preceded it. Up until now, the impression one gets when reading Earl Doherty’s book, Jesus: Neither God Nor Man, is that the author is simply trying out a different way of reading certain New Testament texts. In some instances it may seem plausible, and in others severely problematic, but in none did it naturally seem to arise from or be required by the available evidence. It has consistently seemed that the theory... Read more

I have often had the opportunity or the necessity to read a book that I expected from the outset I would disagree with or find unpersuasive. I have quite often been pleasantly surprised, while in other cases, I have written a very negative review of the book on my blog. Reading chapter 1 of Earl Doherty’s book Jesus: Neither God Nor Man was unlike both such types of past experiences. It was more like the sensation of having entered The... Read more

I have been asked more than once, including recently, what my understanding of Christianity is. I thought I would share an excerpt from a message I sent to someone who asked me that very recently, since others might find it interesting. Here’s what I wrote: I find it as hard to define “Christianity” in any absolute doctrinal terms as I find it to define “religion” and “monotheism” and other terms as a scholar. It seems like every term that human... Read more

Via Ardel Caneday, I heard about a Logos Bible software contest that offers money for seminary tuition to a current or soon-to-be seminary student, as well as free software. Presumably I needn’t say more about why I’m sharing this! 🙂 Read more