Here is the third and final section of the paper that I read at the Life of Brian conference.  The entire paper tried to argue that parody can be an effective historical method.  By providing a caricature of a narrative or an alleged historical event, the film was able to highlight some very important historical realia that otherwise are too easy to miss, or that have not been given enough prominence by biblical scholars and historians. This third part of my paper is the really controversial one (although part 2 raised some concerns as well!).   Here is where I argue that Jesus was not given a decent burial, and I use the film to explain why. I should say that in a few days I am going to be devoting a sustained thread to just this issue, of why I think the story of Joseph of Arimathea in the NT is legendary, that Jesus was almost certainly not given a decent burial on the day of his crucifixion.  My thread will be a response [...]

A couple of weeks ago we had a very fun Movie Club as a fundraiser for the blog, trying to raise funds to cover our operating expenses, since all the membership fees and any regular donations that come in go directly to our charities -- but we still have to pay our bills!  This one was on the Life of Brian.  Have you seen it?  If not, you should.  If you've seen it ten times, you should see it eleven. During our discussion of the film I pointed out that there was a conference in London some years ago to celebrate the 35th anniversary of its release -- a group of academics specializing in New Testament and/or ancient Judaism reading serious papers (often with some humor) about the relevance of their field for the film, and vice versa.  Seriously.  (John Cleese came to the conference and thought the whole thing was outrageously funny and great fun -- a group of academics discussing a film he and his Monty Python buds had come up with.  He [...]

Here is the third and final section of the paper that I read at the Life of Brian conference.  The entire paper tried to argue that parody can be an effective historical method.  By providing a caricature of a narrative or an alleged historical event, the film was able to highlight some very important historical realia that otherwise are too easy to miss, or that have not been given enough prominence by biblical scholars and historians. This third part of my paper is the really controversial one (although part 2 raised some concerns as well!).   Here is where I argue that Jesus was not given a decent burial, and I use the film to explain why. I should say that in a few days I am going to be devoting a sustained thread to just this issue, of why I think the story of Joseph of Arimathea in the NT is legendary, that Jesus was almost certainly not given a decent burial on the day of his crucifixion.  My thread will be a response [...]

I have decided to give, in three installments, the paper that I read for the  Life of Brian conference.   It was written for a general audience, even though scholars were in the crowd as well.   It includes some short clips from the movie, which I showed by way of Power point, and which my computer assistant on the Blog, Steve Ray, managed to load up here for us.  What I have to say makes better sense with the clips (there is one in this installment and two in the third), so I recommend looking at them at the proper time in the paper.   The rest is self-explanatory: so here is the opening bit of the paper. ************************************************************************************ When the Life of Brian came out in 1979, I was an earnest and devout 23-year old student at Princeton Theological Seminary, studying for ministry.   Even though Princeton Seminary at the time was not, on the whole, strongly conservative in its theological orientation, I was.   I had come to the school from Wheaton, an evangelical [...]