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December 27, 2021
On Misreading The Gospels: Platinum Guest Post by Joel Scheller
I am pleased to present this interesting guest post to Platinum members to fellow Platinum Joel Scheller. Joel has taken on one of the most important issues that we can ask of the New Testament: Are the Gospels meant to be read historically? Or, as John Shelby Spong argued, are they meant to be symbolic and liturgical expositions of the significance of Jesus? If you have comments and questions for Joel, let us hear from you! *************************** After Dr Ehrman wrote a tribute article regarding the late Anglican Bishop, John Shelby Spong, I began reading this man’s books, and became enamored with many, but not all, of his assertions. His book “Biblical Literalism: A Gentile Heresy” really struck a chord with me because of Spong’s explanation regarding the difference in what we actually know about the historical Jesus from what we read in the Gospels. As fellow blog member, Dan Kohanski, so recently and aptly explained in his guest blog “What We KNOW About Jesus”, our actual knowledge of Jesus’ life and ministry is […]
December 28, 2021
Did My Shift in Thinking Destroy my Own Views? Guest Video Post #4 by Kurt Jaros
Kurt Jaros provides here the fourth in his series of videos about my views of whether we can know what the authors of the New Testament actually wrote. It is an intriguing series: Dr. Jaros is a conservative evangelical Christian scholar who thinks that other public evangelical figures have misrepresented my views. But this is a tricky one. What do you think? Dr. Jaros will be willing to address any comments/questions you have. ****************************** Misquoting Ehrman – Part Four: Ehrman’s Shift Oops! Did I get Dr. Ehrman’s position wrong? In a debate against Dan Wallace, Ehrman claims to have changed his mind on whether we can speak meaningfully about the original text. Does his shift lead to a significant change about the knowledge we can have of the original wording of the text? In this video, I look at the distinction between the “original” and the “earliest available form” of the text.
January 13, 2022
A Particularly Intriguing Podcast Interview: Jesus, the Bible, and Early Christianity
On December 20 I had a very interesting interview on the Podcast called Blogging Theology (Blogging Theology – Exploring Life, the Universe and Everything with a former Christian, now Muslim Paul Williams, who, as it turns out, is highly knowledgeable about the Bible, early Christianity, and the scholarship connected with them.. This is the kind of interview I really enjoy: an astute questioner with the right queries that get to the heart of important issues. Here it is. I hope you enjoy it!
January 18, 2022
How Can We Understand the Prophets of the Hebrew Bible? Isaiah as a Case Study
I have started to discuss the prophets of the Hebrew Bible, in large part to correct widespread misunderstandings of what they were doing and what their books were about, and in part to emphasize just how interesting and important they are. These are Israelite teachers who believe that God was delivering a message through them to the crises they were facing in their time. To understand their message, we have to know what the particular crises were – there were many different ones confronted by different prophets, and each had a message to deliver in the face of the one he was addressing. Even so, there is a broad consistency among the messages you will find in the prophets – though it is not at all what most people tend to think. These prophets were not anticipating a messiah to come hundreds of years later or a cataclysmic end of the world to come thousands of years later. They were talking about their own situations and what God wanted to be done – and what […]
January 15, 2022
Did Abraham Actually Do It? Did He Sacrifice His Son Isaac? Platinum Guest Post by Douglas Wadeson
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Tags: Platinum
January 5, 2022
A New Course to Watch (Live!) Remotely: “In the Beginning”
I am pleased to announce that I will be doing a six-lecture online (recorded) course called: “In the Beginning: History, Legend and Myth in the Pentateuch. Part 1. The Book of Genesis.” This will not be in connection with the blog per se, but there is an important connection worth noting for blog members (see below). The plan is to make this course the first installment of a rather long series of courses that I am calling, “How Scholars Read the Bible.” (The next six-lecture course – no surprise! – will be the rest of the Pentateuch after Genesis). Each lecture in this course, and the ones that follow, will be thirty minutes of length. We will later be announcing the release date of the course (it will probably in February). But I want to let you know about it now, so that it can be on your radar screen. And because there is a special opportunity connected to it. I will be delivering the lectures to a live audience (remotely), and anyone who purchases […]
January 7, 2022
Is the Book of Isaiah the Books of Three “Isaiahs”?
Divisions of the Book of Isaiah Before using the book of Isaiah to explain the kinds of things the Hebrew prophets generally proclaimed, I need to say something about the peculiarity of this long, 66-chapter writing in particular. A number of the books of the Bible appear to have been edited by later redactors — for example, by someone who added a conclusion in light of the new situation in which he was living. In the case of Isaiah, however, we are dealing with a situation that is far, far more extreme. For well over a century scholars have recognized that major portions of the book do not actually derive from Isaiah of Jerusalem. The evidence is that a number of passages do not fit into Isaiah’s own historical context. Evidence of Multiple Authors Most of the first 39 chapters of Isaiah clearly date to the ministry of Isaiah of Jerusalem in the eighth century b.c.e. This is obviously true of the very end of the section, written when Hezekiah was king of Judah […]
January 16, 2022
The Message of First Isaiah
I’ve been talking about the prophets of the Hebrew Bible and giving some background on one of the earliest in particular, Isaiah of Jerusalem. Here I’d like to summarize what he teaches to help provide an idea of the sorts of things Israelite prophets were saying. A you’ll see, Isaiah is deeply involved with political and military issues connected with his nation. The following brief exposition comes from my textbook The Bible: A Historical and Literary Introduction. ****************************** The message of Isaiah, in essence, is that the people of Judah (the southern kingdom) have strayed from God; this is most evident in the social injustice that pervades society, but it is the leaders of the people who are principally at fault. These problems cannot be fixed simply by attending to proper religious rituals. The nation will be punished by God at the hands of the Assyrians. Right off the bat Isaiah laments how the people of Israel (meaning, in this case, Judah) have fallen away from God. God had raised them as his own children, […]
January 19, 2022
The Prophets of Scripture: A Brief Summary of their Message and Mission
Let me repeat what I said at the outset of this thread in order to explain where it’s going now. A couple of weeks ago I decided I wanted to give a couple of posts on the differences between the understandings of “salvation” in Jesus and Paul; then I realized to explain either one I would have to go over the basic ideas of Jewish apocalypticism; then it occurred to me that it would be useful to address the historical roots and development of apocalypticism; then I realized I couldn’t really do that without talking about the classical prophets of the Old Testament (Isaiah, Jeremiah, etc.). But then it occurred to me that to do that I’d have to explain what “prophecy” even was in the OT, before the classical prophets. I’ve seen this as an important discussion, since most Christian readers assume that the prophets of the Bible were mainly interested in predicting the coming of Jesus, or at least the coming of some kind of messiah who would save the people by suffering […]
January 20, 2022
What Is The Difference Between an Evangelical and a Fundamentalist?
I often get asked what the difference is between a fundamentalist and an evangelical, and I’ve realized that in my book on Revelation – almost done with the editing! (I think…) – I may need to address the matter. Here is my first shot at it. Tell me what you think. ****************************** It is rather difficult to differentiate cleanly between “fundamentalists” and other “evangelicals” – in large part because
January 22, 2022
The Maccabean Revolt
In order to understand the difference between what the prophets of the Hebrew Bible proclaimed, and what came to be the views of apocalyptic Jews, I need to sketch a set of historical events that the people of Israel had to live through. Without this kind of historical knowledge, you simply will not understand ancient Judaism at the time of Jesus. That is to say, you really have to know what happened among ancient Jews in order to make sense of what their theological beliefs were, since these beliefs were molded by and informed by nothing so much as the historical context out of which they emerged. And so here is a very brief sketch of the history of Judea over the four hundred years from approximately 540 BCE, when the Persians were in control, up to 63 BCE, when the Romans came in and took over. I’ve taken the sketch from my textbook, The Bible: A Historical and Literary Introduction. ****************************** The Later History of Judea In the Persian period (starting in the late […]
January 23, 2022
Gold Q&A for January!
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January 11, 2022
Where Did the Apocalyptic Views of Jesus (and others) Come From?
I have spent a few posts explaining the overarching views of the ancient Hebrew prophets; in this lecture I want to explain how a very different “apocalyptic” view — one embraced by Jesus, John the Baptist before him, and the earliest Christians after him — emerged within ancient Israel. It has to do with how historical circumstances forced thinkers in Israel to re-evaluate what the prophets had said. Here is the simple version of the story, as I lay it out in my textbook on the Bible, edited a bit. ****************************** The Prophetic Perspective We have seen that the classical prophets of the Hebrew Bible differed from one another in a number of ways, in the historical contexts that they addressed, in their manner of addressing them, and in the specifics of their messages. But there are certain common features that tie all the prophets together, especially with respect to their understanding of God, his reaction to Israel’s failure to do his will, and the coming disasters that will occur as a result. If you […]
January 25, 2022
Major Perspectives of Ancient Jewish (and Jesus’!) Apocalyptic Views
Jewish apocalypticism was a very common view in Jesus’ day – it was the view of the Essenes who wrote the Dead Sea Scrolls, of the Pharisees, of John the Baptist, later of the Apostle Paul – and almost certainly of Jesus. I can demonstrate that in some later thread if it seems appropriate. For now, let me just say that this is a widely held view among critical scholars – by far the majority view for over a century, since the writings of Albert Schweitzer, author of The Quest of the Historical Jesus What did early Jewish apocalypticists believe? Let me break it down into four component themes. I have
January 26, 2022
An Old Interview on Fresh Air: How Jesus Became God
I was reminiscing of days gone by (“Things just ain’t like they used to be. And they never were.”) and browsing through some old posts, and came upon this one. It’s an interview I rather enjoyed from 2014, on my then-new book How Jesus Became God. Hope you like it too. How Jesus Became God As I have said before, every author who has done reasonably well selling trade books for a general audience knows that what drives sales is not the outstanding quality of a book — lots of terrific books go nowhere in sales, and others that are truly lousy end up being bestsellers — or in advertising. It’s all about media attention. When it comes to radio, one of the very best, top-flight programs to land is Fresh Air with Terry Gross. I don’t know this for a fact, but someone has told me that the show has 4.5 million listeners. That’s a lot. Terry Gross and How Jesus Became God I have been on Terry Gross six times now, and have […]
January 27, 2022
How Important Was Paul, Actually, For Early Christianity?
I’d like to say a bit more about Paul in relationship to the beginning of Christianity. Yesterday I argued that Paul could not have invented the idea of the resurrection. I should point out that Paul himself – who was always proud of the “revelation” of the truth given to him and his part in disseminating it (see Galatians 1-2) – admits in 1 Cor. 15:3-5 that he “received” from others the view that Christ died for sins and rose from the dead, before appearing “first” to Cephas and then others. I should stress, this language of “receiving” and “passing on” has long been understood as a standard way of indicating how tradition was transmitted from one person to another. Paul did not “receive” this information from his visionary encounter with Jesus (Jesus didn’t tell him: first I appeared to Cephas then to… and then to… and then finally to you!). Paul received this core of the Gospel message from those who were Christians before him. People today often think of Paul as the second-founder […]
January 30, 2022
Special Live Event: What Book Should I Write Next?
I am excited to announce a new and unusual fund raiser for the blog, to take place on Thursday January 27 at 7:30 pm EST. For anyone who is willing to make a donation, I will be holding a discussion on: “What Book Should I Write Next?” Those who come will be able to talk it over with me and give me their opinions. Here’s the deal. I have all but finished my book on Revelation: Expecting Armageddon: What Revelation Really Reveals. I have just a couple of mop-up exercises, then it’s off to the publisher. And now I have to decide what to do next. This is the first time in my adult life, since 1983, that I did not have the next writing project lined up, in my head, ready to be started, after finishing the current one. For some time now, while in the throes of the last two books, I thought that I simply would stop now. The past couple of years have been a bit hellacious for the ole’ work […]
January 18, 2022
What Do You Think? What’s It Mean to Study Religion in a Secular University?
One of my classes this semester is a First Year Seminar, designed, obviously for students in their first year of college (either semester) and meant to be a bit more hands-on and with an unusual creative component. I’ve mentioned the course on the blog in previous years; it is called “Jesus in Scholarship and Film.” (The creative element: for a final writing project they have to write a Gospel.) In preparation for the second meeting of the semester this time I asked the students to reflect on what they thought would be the difference between studying religion – and especially the New Testament and the historical Jesus – in a faith context such as a church, synagogue, or Sunday School, and in a secular research university funded in part by the state. It led to an interesting discussion and the students had good ideas. Most of the comments were along similar lines, that there must be a difference between discussing biblical writings in light of your faith / personal beliefs and studying them as historical […]
February 1, 2022