{"id":37111,"date":"2016-07-19T09:05:06","date_gmt":"2016-07-19T13:05:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/admin.patheos.com\/blogs\/religionprof\/?p=37111"},"modified":"2016-07-19T09:08:39","modified_gmt":"2016-07-19T13:08:39","slug":"melania-trump-michelle-obama-and-the-synoptic-problem","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/religionprof\/2016\/07\/melania-trump-michelle-obama-and-the-synoptic-problem.html","title":{"rendered":"Melania Trump, Michelle Obama, and the Synoptic Problem"},"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>Everyone is talking at the moment about the plagiarism of Michelle Obama\u2019s 2008 speech by Melania Trump. <a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=RcbiGsDMmCM\" class=\" decorated-link\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow\">Here is the evidence<\/a>, in case you haven\u2019t seen it:<\/p>\n<blockquote class=\"twitter-video\" data-lang=\"en\">\n<p lang=\"en\" dir=\"ltr\">So that's pretty blatant, right? <a href=\"https:\/\/t.co\/EPnHME7afV\" class=\" decorated-link\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow\">pic.twitter.com\/EPnHME7afV<\/a><\/p>\n<p>\u2014 Mike Hearn (@mikehearn) <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/mikehearn\/status\/755260215021432832\" class=\" decorated-link\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow\">July 19, 2016<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><script async src=\"\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><\/p>\n<p>One of the ironies, of course, is that many of the people who applauded the words coming out of Melania Trump\u2019s mouth would have booed the same words coming out of Michelle Obama\u2019s.<\/p>\n<p>But as a religion professor, for me the biggest irony is that a great many Republicans claim that the Bible is important to them. And you can\u2019t study the Bible in any serious fashion without learning about the Synoptic Problem, the issue of what the relationship is between the extensively-overlapping Gospels of Matthew, Mark, and Luke. And so if you have studied the Bible even in just one course at university, you should know that plagiarism is easy to spot, and you will be caught by the professor who teaches New Testament, even if other professors may not have spotted your academic dishonesty.<\/p>\n<p>Of course, we will soon see Michelle Obama and James Corden\u00a0offering\u00a0one or more cover versions of songs soon:<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" width=\"560\" height=\"315\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/8L-2fTLEiDA\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>And while I mention that case in jest, the truth is that plagiarism blurs into hommage and poorly-cited verbal quotation and paraphrase, in ways that do not excuse Melania Trump\u2019s speechwriters, but are important to understanding the Gospels, as well as in deciding just how harshly to penalize the specific issues we find in a given student assignment. <\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/wp-media.patheos.com\/blogs\/sites\/719\/2016\/07\/I-did-not-have-textual-relations-with-that-woman.jpg\" alt=\"I did not have textual relations with that woman\" width=\"800\" height=\"493\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-37112\"><\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Everyone is talking at the moment about the plagiarism of Michelle Obama\u2019s 2008 speech by Melania Trump. Here is the evidence, in case you haven\u2019t seen it: So that&#8217;s pretty blatant, right? pic.twitter.com\/EPnHME7afV \u2014 Mike Hearn (@mikehearn) July 19, 2016 One of the ironies, of course, is that many of the people who applauded the [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":136,"featured_media":37112,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[32,33,34,75],"tags":[14118,2177,14119,7384,9204,14120,11673,12187,12189],"class_list":["post-37111","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-gospel-of-luke","category-gospel-of-mark","category-gospel-of-matthew","category-politics","tag-famousmelaniatrumpquotes","tag-convention","tag-melania-trump","tag-michelle-obama","tag-plagiarism","tag-rnc","tag-speech","tag-synoptic-gospels","tag-synoptic-problem"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v21.1 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Melania Trump, Michelle Obama, and the Synoptic Problem<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Everyone is talking at the moment about the plagiarism of Michelle Obama&#039;s 2008 speech by Melania Trump. Here is the evidence, in case you haven&#039;t seen\" \/>\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\/2016\/07\/melania-trump-michelle-obama-and-the-synoptic-problem.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Melania Trump, Michelle Obama, and the Synoptic Problem\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Everyone is talking at the moment about the plagiarism of Michelle Obama&#039;s 2008 speech by Melania Trump. Here is the evidence, in case you haven&#039;t seen\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/religionprof\/2016\/07\/melania-trump-michelle-obama-and-the-synoptic-problem.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Religion Prof: The Blog of James F. 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