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Doesn’t “Free Will” Explain Suffering?
When teaching undergraduate students about the problem of suffering, I have sometimes found it hard to explain to them why it is a “problem” for those who believe in God. Many people do not find it an insurmountable problem; many others do. My concern is far less where someone lines up on that issue than on that they realize it is indeed a huge issue that should not be ignored or swept under a rug. It took a while for some of my students at Rutgers to see the problem years ago when I was teaching about it, as I mentioned in my last post. I continue my reflections here. Again,
October 19, 2024
Suffering. Is It Really Worth Talking About? Doesn’t the Bible Give the Right Answer?
People react lots of different ways when trying to deal with the problem of how there can be so much suffering in a world that is said to be controlled by the almighty God who loves people and wants the best for them. I decided to write my book God’s Problem: How the Bible Fails to Address our Most Important Question – Why We Suffer (HarperOne, 2008) both because many people don’t realize how many different answers the Bible itself gives (some of them at odds about it) and also because in my judgment lots and lots of people (most?) simply don’t take it seriously enough. Here’s how I talk about why I think it matters and
October 20, 2024
Why CAN’T the Hard Problems Have Simple Answers?
The Bible is not an answer machine to all your questions (despite what billboards on US I-40 tell me); many of our modern questions are not addressed in the Bible (most of them, in fact: think of the issues people are each others’ throats about half the time in our country); the Bible often gives a range of answers to various issues; sometimes these contradict one another; and sometimes they simply don’t make any sense in our modern context (if you think they do, then look through your closet to see if you have any clothing made out of more then one fabric). These are some of the issues I address toward the tail end of my Introduction in my book God’s Problem (HarperOne, 2008), excerpted here. ****************************** It is important, I think, to realize that the Bible has a wide range of answers to the problem of suffering because this realization reveals the problem of thinking that the Bible has one simple answer to every issue. Many people in our world take a smorgasbord approach […]
October 22, 2024
Oral Traditions and the Dates of Our Gospels
As many of you know, this past year I published the 8th edition of my textbook The New Testament: A Historical Introduction to the New Testament (Oxford University Press, 2024), but this time, rather than doing it myself, I asked my colleague Hugo Mendez to join me in editing / updating it, and truth be told, since hey, I believe in telling the truth, he did the vast bulk of the work on this one. Most of the changes came in his rewriting sections that needed to be brought up to snuff with current scholarship, including
October 23, 2024
Jesus as God in the New Testament
One of my personal favorite books (of mine!) is How Jesus Became God. In my New Testament textbook, The New Testament: A Historical Introduction, now in its eighth edition with Hugo Mendez, we include a couple of brief discussions of the topic in two of the sidebars. One of the tricks in writing a textbook is figuring out how to say something in a way that is succinct and interesting, when there is not much space to cover a topic fully (so, my first box here covers in 326 words what I take an entire chapter to develop in my book!) But how to make something succinct but also accurate and / or interesting? It’s always a balancing act. In any event, here are the two boxes.
October 24, 2024
Unexpected Social Agendas in the New Testament. Who Woulda Thought?
Most Christians turn to the Bible to some degree or another for guidance on their ethical views and perspectives on social agendas. For those who read it closely, the Bible can be problematic ethically. Most people realize there is a problem with the endorsement of slavery in the Bible (both Old and New Testaments); few have ever seen that there is also a problem with what today we think of a “family values.” In my book The New Testament: A Historical Introduction, now in its eight edition with Hugo Mendez (Oxford University Press, 2024), I address these issues very briefly in a couple of those side-bar boxes I’ve mentioned in the two previous posts. Here they are!
October 26, 2024
Forged Books, Anonymous Books, and The Use of Secretaries as Authors in the NT
My books Forged, for normal human beings, and Forgery and Counterforgery, for abnormal scholars, both deal with issues of the authorship of the writings of the New Testament (and other books in early Christianity) and with why there are good reasons for thinking that some of them were forgeries (written in the name of famous people like Paul or Peter by people who knew full well they were not Paul or Peter), others are anonymous though later attributed to famous people who didn’t write them (Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John). It also deals with why I don’t think we can explain any of these writings on the popular but, based on my research, totally unfounded idea that “secretaries” wrote them for these famous people. In my book The New Testament: A Historical Introduction to the Early Christian Writings, 8th ed, with Hugo Mendez I address such issues only briefly, on side-bar boxes, to give students a brief sense of the issues. Here they are!
October 27, 2024
Why Would A Christian Author Lie About Who He Was?
In my previous post I said a bit about “forgeries” in the NT, that is, books whose authors claimed to be a famous person (Peter, Paul, James, Jude), knowing full well they were someone else. In the ancient world, these books were called “lies” (pseudoi) or “books inscribed with a lie” (pseudepigrapha). But why would a Christian author lie about who he was? How could he live with himself? I discuss the matter at length in my books Forged and even more in Forgery and Counterforgery. In my textbook, The New Testament: A Historical Introduction to the Early Christian Writings (Oxford University Press) I can discuss the matter only briefly in a sidebar box, to give my students a sense of the situation in antiquity. With this post I’ll be concluding for now my thread giving some of these kinds of boxes, but since this is such an intriguing subject, I’d like to set it up by first quoting a paragraph from my book Forged, about the author of Ephesians, who claimed to be Paul (lying […]
October 29, 2024
Paul and the Crucified Messiah in 1 Corinthians
Historians usually have reasons for what they say; that is, when they make a historical claim, it is almost always based on a close reading of the surviving sources. When it’s not, they’re just blowin’ smoke. But if they’re reputable scholars AND are blowin’ smoke – that is, taking a guess –they’ll usually tell you. I suppose that’s one difference between an expert (in any field) and an amateur: the expert actually has a deep and nuanced reading of the sources that informs his/her views. I have to say, as you probably have noticed in your own areas of expertise, it is pretty easy if you are an expert to know who else is an expert and who is not. I say that as someone who is an expert in one or two areas, but an amateur in thousands. When I have an interpretation of Hamlet or Lear that I bounce off my wife – who really is a recognized expert on Shakespeare – I realize that, for the most part, I’m just taking a […]
October 30, 2024
A Particular Problem with a Crucified Messiah
In my previous post I started to show that most Jews rejected Christian claims about Jesus because Jesus was just the *opposite* of what the messiah was expected to be. The messiah was to be a figure of grandeur and power who would overthrow God’s enemies and set up a new kingdom on earth in which God’s will would prevail. Jesus was and did none of that. He was a lower-class peasant who was arrested, humiliated, tortured, and executed. He didn’t destroy God’s enemies. He was crushed by them. Paul is the first Jewish persecutor of the Christians that we know by name; there is really no doubt that he was bent on wiping out the followers of Jesus – since he himself says so (and says so to his own shame [Gal 1:13); he did not gain any glory for this rather despicable past–despicable in both his eyes and the eyes of the Christians). Presumably his reasons for hating and opposing the followers of Jesus were comparable to those of other Jewish persecutors. But […]
October 31, 2024
Would the Resurrection Make Anyone Believe Jesus Was the Messiah?
I have been talking about the early Christian understandings of Jesus as the messiah. Not just the messiah, but the “crucified messiah,” a concept that would have seemed not just unusual or bizarre to most Jewish ears in the first century, but absolutely mind-boggling and self-contradictory. I’ve been arguing that it was precisely the contradictory nature of the claim that led almost all Jews to reject the Christian claims about Jesus. Several readers have asked me whether I think Jesus understood himself to be the messiah. Probably those who know a little bit about my work and my general views of things would think that my answer would be Absolutely Not. But, well….
November 2, 2024
Take My New Testament Pop Quiz!
A blog member recently asked me if I could post the pop quiz that I used to give t0 my New Testament class on the first day of the semester. I say “used to” because I have stopped teaching the course, after doing so for 35 years (!), yielding it over to the capable hands of my colleague Hugo Mendez, to allow me to teach small seminar-courses instead here as I progress into geezerhood. I was simply going to refer the blog member to the post where I had given the quiz recently, and … and I can’t find where / when I did! I’m sure I did! Then again, I’m sure I know where my glasses, keys, and phone are. But so far as I can tell, it’s been years since I did. So — well, here it is. I think this is the post in which I *first* revealed the quiz to interested blog members some ten years ago. [editor’s note: Found it! My New Testament Pop Quiz]. After some preliminary remarks, I […]
November 5, 2024
Can We Know What Jesus Said About Himself?
Do we know what Jesus said about himself? Yesterday I started my two-prong argument for why Jesus probably considered himself the messiah. The first prong is that Jesus must have been called the messiah during his lifetime, or it makes no sense that he would be called messiah after his death. Even if there were Jews who believed that Jesus was raised from the dead after he was crucified (as indeed there were! Otherwise we wouldn’t have Christianity), the resurrection of a dead person would never lead anyone to say “Ah, he’s the messiah!”. No one expected the messiah to be a resurrected person. So Jesus was being called the messiah before his death. Otherwise, we can’t make sense of the fact that he was called the messiah after his (believed-in) resurrection.
November 6, 2024
What Would an Apocalyptic Jew (Jesus!) Mean By Calling Himself Messiah?
In this thread I am trying to argue that Jesus understood himself to be the messiah. So far I have made one of my two main arguments, with the understanding that *both* arguments have to be considered in order to have a compelling case. So the first prong doesn’t prove much on its own. But in combination with the second argument, it makes a strong case. The first argument is that Jesus’ followers would not have understood him as the messiah after his death (as they did) unless they believed him to be the messiah before his death – even if they came to believe he had been raised from the dead, that would not have made them think he was the messiah. I’ve explained why in my previous post. The second second involves showing
November 7, 2024
Why Should We Think Jesus Called Himself the Messiah?
This thread is about whether Jesus considered himself to be the Jewish messiah. My view is that Yes, he did. But he meant something very specific by that, and it is not what most people (Christians and non-Christians) today mean by it. Recall what I have tried to show thus far. There were various expectations of what the messiah would be like among Jews of Jesus’ day – a political ruler over Israel, a great priest who ruled God’s people through God’s law, a cosmic judge of the earth who would destroy God’s enemies in a cataclysmic act of judgment. All these views had one thing in common: the future messiah would be a figure of grandeur and might who would come with the authority and power of God. And who was Jesus? For most people of his day, Jesus
November 10, 2024
Another Reason for Thinking Jesus Called Himself the Messiah
I now can mount a second argument for why Jesus almost certainly called himself the messiah during his lifetime. Remember: by that I do not mean that Jesus wanted to lead a military rebellion against the Romans to establish himself as king. On the contrary, I think Jesus was not a supporter of a “military solution.” Jesus was an apocalypticist who believed that God himself would take action and do what was needed – overthrow the evil ruling authorities in a cataclysmic show of power and destroy all that was opposed to himself, and so bring in a good, utopian kingdom on earth. And Jesus would be made the king. I don’t need here to give the extensive reasons for thinking that Jesus held to this kind of apocalyptic view in general – I’ve talked about it at length both in a number of my books and on the blog. The question here is the more narrow one: did Jesus think he would be the king of the coming kingdom? I have given one strong […]
November 12, 2024
Blog Etiquette in These Troubling Times!
In these massively troubling times (no need for me to itemize the issues) and the incredibly disturbing bifurcation of opinions, views, and perspectives, where very few people have even the slightest interest in listening to someone on “the other side,” there is at least one thing that virtually everyone agrees on: these are massively troubling times with incredibly disturbing bifurcation of …. Well. right. We can at least agree it’s a mess. And what, I ask you, does that have to do with the blog? Well, in short, nothing and everything. Over lo these many years, I have tried very hard to allow everyone to express their opinions on matters connected with the blog — principally, the study of the New Testament, the historical Jesus, the origins of Christianity, the first several centuries of Christian literature and history, and cognate fields such as Hebrew Bible, early Judaism, Greek and Roman religion, with a touch of personal religious views and modern religion, etc. I have also tried very hard not to take sides on the social […]
October 28, 2024
Jerusalem Through the Ages! Interested in an Expert Discussion?
Are you interested in the amazing and important history of Jerusalem, from the ancient world till today? I am! I am pleased to announce a special event being put on by my Department of Religious Studies. a panel discussion of the new book by my colleague Jodi Magness: Jerusalem Through the Ages: From Its Beginnings to the Crusades. It will be on Sunday November 17, 1:00, remote via Zoom. I will be moderating the discussion. Many of you will know about Jodi. She is one of the world’s leading experts on the archaeology of ancient Israel, and has been my colleague at UNC since, well, roughly the beginnings of Jerusalem. In all these years I have never heard her asked a question she could not answer authoritatively. This book is exceptionally good. The people on the panel are all smart, interesting, and insightful. If you’re interested, here is the brochure announcing the event. It is a fund-raiser for my department. We have a departmental fund that I myself started years ago called the Robert Miller […]
November 8, 2024
Brief Reflections on Time and the Meaning of Life. What Do You Think?
For a long time I’ve thought a lot about time. Usually about how I don’t have enough of it, how I wish I had more of it, how I can use what I have most efficiently, how I can possibly get done what I have to do and … And, over the past couple of years, I’ve begun to think more about how all that (on one level) is nonsense and just creates anxiety and stress. My change began when someone (urgently) recommended me to read Paul Loomans’ book Time Surfing (easily available to purchase online). I wasn’t sure about it at first, just lookin’ at the cover. But oh my god. I read it three times and it started a revolution in my brain, that continues and has made the most enormous difference, not so much in how I fill my days, hours, and minutes (in my case, time-obsessive guy that I am, and seconds…) but about my emotional approach and attitude toward what I do and the time I have to do it. […]
November 16, 2024
How I Begin My Book on Jesus, Ethics, and Altruism
I’ve decided to excerpt a few bits of my book that is now in draft, to see what you think. Here’s how I’m planning to being it (the start of the Introduction) ****************************** Most people I know are moved by news of tragedy. A terrible earthquake, a drought, a famine, a flood, displaced people, innocent victims of military aggression, — we feel pity for those pointlessly suffering and feel a desire, even an obligation, to help, for example by donating to disaster relief. Almost never do we know the people in need; they are complete strangers, often in far-off lands, people we will never meet and possibly wouldn’t like if we did. Yet
November 13, 2024