(7 votes, average: 4.71 out of 5)
Loading...In celebration of our tenth year anniversary on April 18, I’m publishing all the posts from previous years on April 18. It’s a random collection. Here’s the second in the series, from 2013; it’s a self-congratulatory one (!) that I was using to explain the different kinds of colleges/universities around the country (in later posts on that thread).
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It is always interesting for me to travel around the country giving lectures at different colleges and universities. This past week I have been struck with just now different institutions of higher education can be from one another. Let me preface my remarks by saying – in this post — that I absolutely love my university. The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill is always ranked very near the top of state research universities in the country, and for very good reasons. The faculty are on the whole absolutely stellar. Just within my own Department of Religious Studies we have eighteen full time tenured or tenure-track faculty, not counting adjuncts and emeriti, and every single one of them has a national reputation in his or her field, and several have international reputations. We all write books, articles, book reviews, essays, and so on. Many are absolutely at the top of their fields. It would be hard to assemble a more impressive faculty if you tried. I would stack us up against any faculty of religious studies in any institution of higher learning anywhere on the planet.
The posts on the blog go back ten years That’s a LOT of posts, on all sorts of interesting things related to the study of the NT and early Christianity. Join the blog and you will have access to the entire archive! Click here for membership options
It’s surprising to me that you got so involved in and committed to fundamentalism/evangelicalism (FE) in mid-high school. You came from an Episcopalian background-which if not liberal is a far cry from FE. I think you’ve said that you were a good though not outstanding student but you did become a champion debater. You were interested in sports and I’m guessing you had a fairly normal social life. I don’t have the impression your family was especially religious. Kansas wasn’t as conservative as many places, especially not Lawrence.
I went to Catholic schools and went to college questioning though not completely rejecting all religion. Though a good student I was far from being a champion debater. FE was at the opposite end of anything I would consider.
I think I’m about 5 years older than you, maybe too old to be influenced by what at the time we called “Jesus Freaks.” Did the timing of that movement have something to do with your interest in FE?
Do you think now that, given your background, it’s odd you became so interested in FE? It seems so to me-at lease compared to how I saw things. But everyone is different.
My family was always pretty religious in an Episcopal sort of way, and conservative. For me evangelical Christianity was simply taking it up a notch. And yup, I thought Jesus Freaks were pretty cool.
1. Isn’t the conversion of Constantine at the Milvian Bridge more mythology than history? Wasn’t his conversion more political than theological? Wasn’t he trying to unite a very fragmented Rome and realized that going “Christian” was the only way to do it?
I deal with this issue at some length in my book the Triumph of Christianty. I argue it was a real conversion, really happened, and for “religious” reasons, though these, in antiquity, were not in a separate category from “political.” But it was definitely not in order to unify a fractured Rome. (In the book I explain why I came to these views and what the evidence is for them)
,,, I do not know how to say it properly, I am a Norwegian, accountant and not even close to being a scholar in your field. And my approach ,,,,,, which comes from my long spiritual / religious “evolution” have brought me (not intentionally) much closer to the Jungian expression ““Who looks outside, dreams; who looks inside, awakes.”, so I guess we are on “different pages” in different ways,,,but in my mind, it doesn’t matter,,,, we all come together.
Anyway, not only am I impressed with your work ,,,,,,, but I also want to give you all the credit for bringing the truth and knowledge up to our consciousness. I can at least speak for myself, it is very valuable !!
(This question isn’t about the topic of this post.)
I recently rewatched your “The Historical Jesus” on Wondrium/Great Courses–an oldie but a goodie! You talked about the Criterion of Dissimilarity in a way that puzzled me, so I wanted to check on something.
You mentioned various facts from the New Testament and said that they either passed or didn’t pass the Criterion of Dissimilarity, but it seems that this wouldn’t be a test that a passage would pass or fail. Rather, it could be a serendipitous fact, that the Criterion of Dissimilarity would either give our confidence a boost or simply be irrelevant. Said another way, a passage would never *fail* the C of D but could be *boosted* if it made us think, “This NT passage contrasts with typical Jewish teaching of the time, so they must’ve felt strongly that it was true, so that boosts our confidence that they really believed it.”
And is it just me, or is there a lot of overlap between the Criterion of Dissimilarity and the Criterion of Embarrassment?
Thanks.
Off-topic question: I was reading the Jefferson Bible recently and struck by power and the emotion that remains in the story when you strip away the supernatural. Do you have any thoughts on the Jefferson Bible? Are the ethical teachings that remain something you could subscribe to, or would you cut it down further?
Thanks!
I think it was a brilliant exercise; I suppose everyone would pick and choose their favorites, but eliminating the supernatural and retaining the most imoprtant ethical teachings seems to be how most serious deists who want to find what’s valuable in the NT do it. They just don’t usually use actual scissors and paste.
It is both very time consuming, and quite expensive, especially to do it in multiple languages, as Jefferson did. You not only have to have and utterly ruin copies with each text, you need at least two to get both sides of the text. (I believe we still have some of his copies from which he cut the text.) As for time, it is amazing what our ancestors were able to do, but I think it was mostly because they did not have television!
Hi Bart, Any clever, catchy biblical Greek phrases that we should know?
How much Greek must I know to appreciate the original text?
γνωθι σεαυτον. (“Know yourself”) It would take about a year of serious classwork to be able to be able to handle mos to the NT with a lexicon. Doing it on your own — it would take some guidance from an expert (it’s easy to get things wrong on your own, esp. wth ancient languages)
Off-topic question: Regarding the Matthew 21:1-11 version of Jesus’s triumphal entry into Jerusalem, do you think the text requires that Jesus be simultaneously riding both a donkey and its colt? I’m thinking one way having this make sense is Jesus’s riding both sequentially: He rode the donkey for a while, then—for the grand entrance—he rode the colt. Would that work? Or is there a better explanation?
Yes, it appears to be sequential. Straddling them! In order to fulfill prophecy….
I think you meant “simultaneously”? I remember encountering this passage when I peeked into Asimov’s guide to the Bible. I refused to accept it — and didn’t bother pursuing the matter further since I knew that Asimov simply had to be wrong. Years later, I mentioned it to a friend who is much smarter than I am. He said, “no, he’s right. Take a look.” I did, and yep, there was no denying it. I’d read/heard the passage many times before, but had never really taken the time to actually read it and comprehend it. Thereafter, I began to make the effort to start investigating and accepting truths that I find uncomfortable.
Yup. Simultaneous. Sorry. I first thought of it when it was pointed out by the superb scholar of Matthew, John Meier.disabledupes{08258f3f44d582374f8a071aa369d737}disabledupes
Thanks Bart for sharing this. This window into your world drives home to me how “lay” most people really are regarding Christianity including myself. Kind of feel like Forest Gump when he said “I’m not a smart man but” ……. I want to learn.
Thank you for tackling all the subjects you do regarding Christianity that are so misunderstood and giving this knowledge the way you do to those of us interested in learning.
I’m sure you’re overwhelmed with things to work on, but if you do someday have the time I wish you’d address the claims Jimmy Akin makes here about Joseph having a 2nd home.
https://jimmyakin.com/2022/03/where-was-josephs-residence.html
I thought about doing so, but decided I’m just going to let it lie instead of starting a back and forth….
No reason for you to spend the time on the matter, but maybe it would be an interesting investigation for one of your Grad students or an extra credit assignment for an undergraduate? My non-expert impression so far: lots of dot connecting by a very smart person. Joseph has an extra house? Possible, but not, to me, very probable — but again, that’s just my biased lay-person impression.
If there were no eyewitnesses to the Virgin Birth, how would the writers of the gospels have known about it?
Same way you and I have. People told stories about it.