{"id":1244,"date":"2010-05-27T00:36:00","date_gmt":"2010-05-27T00:36:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/religionprof\/2010\/05\/doctor-who-and-the-jesus-tradition\/"},"modified":"2010-05-27T00:36:00","modified_gmt":"2010-05-27T00:36:00","slug":"doctor-who-and-the-jesus-tradition","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/religionprof\/2010\/05\/doctor-who-and-the-jesus-tradition.html","title":{"rendered":"Doctor Who and the Jesus Tradition"},"content":{"rendered":"<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC \"-\/\/W3C\/\/DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional\/\/EN\" \"http:\/\/www.w3.org\/TR\/REC-html40\/loose.dtd\">\n<html><head><meta http-equiv=\"content-type\" content=\"text\/html; charset=utf-8\"><meta http-equiv=\"content-type\" content=\"text\/html; charset=utf-8\"><\/head><body><p>There is an obvious way that Doctor Who could be related to the Jesus tradition: we just need someone with a TARDIS to go back and\u00a0record what <a href=\"http:\/\/atheism.about.com\/b\/2008\/04\/11\/replacing-doctor-who-with-jesus.htm\" class=\" decorated-link\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow\">Jesus<\/a> said and did, which we can then compare with the later Gospels.<\/p>\n<div class=\"separator\" style=\"clear: both;text-align: center\"><\/div>\n<p>Since that is not currently feasible, here\u2019s plan B (which <a href=\"http:\/\/judyredman.wordpress.com\/2010\/05\/27\/dr-who-as-a-test-case-for-human-memory\/\" class=\" decorated-link\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow\">Judy Redman began to elaborate on her blog<\/a>, based on a comment I left there). We can take a television show (LOST would work, too) and get people who are enormous fans to agree to watch an episode only once and then try to recall exactly what the Doctor said and did. If we get people who have never watched the show before, people who like it and people who <em>love <\/em>it to all do this, we can also see how the importance of the Doctor\u2019s words and actions to\u00a0an individual influence the accuracy of preservation.<\/p>\n<p>The reason for doing this is not simply a desire to find a way to bring together Doctor Who and Biblical studies together for the sake of those who love both. There are few similar situations to that which would have existed in early Christianity, in which Jesus had disciples\/students who would have made an effort to preserve his teaching, but would not have had the benefit of written notes in most if not all cases. And so checking the recall of the Doctor\u2019s words and actions on\u00a0Doctor Who (or the words of Jacob or\u00a0another main character\u00a0on LOST) might be the closest parallel we can study in our time.<\/p>\n<p>Of course, <a href=\"http:\/\/ntweblog.blogspot.com\/2010\/05\/flaw-in-mciver-and-carrolls-article.html\" class=\" decorated-link\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow\">Mark Goodacre will probably point out<\/a> that unless the episode of Doctor Who they watch is voiced over in Koine and the viewers understand it fluently, then the situation will not provide a precise parallel or render accurate data on the number of words that can be recalled verbatim without the assistance of a text.<\/p>\n<div class=\"blogger-post-footer\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/blogger.googleusercontent.com\/tracker\/7622297540113836091-7591306654819339957?l=exploringourmatrix.blogspot.com\" alt=\"\" width=\"1\" height=\"1\"><\/div>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>There is an obvious way that Doctor Who could be related to the Jesus tradition: we just need someone with a TARDIS to go back and\u00a0record what Jesus said and did, which we can then compare with the later Gospels. Since that is not currently feasible, here\u2019s plan B (which Judy Redman began to elaborate [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":136,"featured_media":14405,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[133],"tags":[2765,5677,12273,12639,12811],"class_list":["post-1244","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-doctor-who-science-fiction","tag-doctor-who","tag-jesus","tag-tardis","tag-time-travel","tag-tradition"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v21.1 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Doctor Who and the Jesus Tradition<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"There is an obvious way that Doctor Who could be related to the Jesus tradition: we just need someone with a TARDIS to go back and\u00a0record what Jesus said\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/religionprof\/2010\/05\/doctor-who-and-the-jesus-tradition.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Doctor Who and the Jesus Tradition\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"There is an obvious way that Doctor Who could be related to the Jesus tradition: we just need someone with a TARDIS to go back and\u00a0record what Jesus said\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/religionprof\/2010\/05\/doctor-who-and-the-jesus-tradition.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Religion Prof: The Blog of James F. 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