“If there is anyone who is sure that he can cope entirely on his own with every eventuality, I might agree that for him knowledge of the past is unnecessary. It would still be a good thing for such a person, but not necessary. But no mortal man is so rash as to make such a claim. Whether he is acting as a private individual or as a public official, even if things are currently going well, no one of any sense takes that as a reliable harbinger of what will happen in the future. And so knowledge of the past is, in my opinion, necessary as well as good.”
– Polybius, The Histories, 3.31. Translated by Robin Waterfield.
- Lots of ancient books are attributed to characters otherwise unknown, like Noah’s wife or even Adam and Eve’s daughters. What’s up with that? Liv Ingeborg Lied discusses.
- Bart Ehrman talks with Megan Lewis about that horrible, no-good “gnostic” Marcion. The more I learn about Marcion, the more I’ve become fascinated by him. It might be time for a personal deep-dive!
- Phil Long has a review of James Barker’s Writing and Rewriting the Gospels. Check it out!
- Snake handlers. SNAKE HANDLERS!!!
- Jesus exorcises demons in Matthew, Mark, and Luke. He doesn’t in John. What’s going on? John Nelson discusses.
- Chance Bonar talks about Onesimus who went from slave in Paul’s letter to Philemon to an apostle according to certain Christian traditions.
- James McGrath talks about his time at Theology Beer Camp which included some Monty Python shenanigans!
- Mark Goodacre and Bart Ehrman discuss (and disagree) on John’s knowledge of the Synoptic Gospels. This was a really interesting conversation!
The Amateur Exegete 
„History is humanity’s knowledge of itself, its self-awareness. It is not “the light and the truth,” but a search for it, a sermon about it, a dedication to it; “Like John the Baptist: He was not the light, but he was to bear witness to the light” – Johann Gustav Droysen, “Grundriss der Historik” Leipzig 1882
„Certainly, we call the immeasurable course of events in which we see the life of individuals, nations, and humanity unfold, ‘history,’ just as we summarize a totality of phenomena of a different kind under the name ‘nature.’ But has anyone ever thought that a collection of dried plants constitutes botany, or that stuffed or unstuffed animal skins constitute zoology? Has anyone ever been of the opinion that one can collect facts and pile them up, whether coherently or not? Facts, such as battles, revolutions, trade crises, the founding of cities, etc.? Has the ‘guild of historians’ really not yet noticed that the facts differ from how we know them? No sensible person would deny that the statistical approach to human affairs has its great value; but one must not forget what it can and wants to accomplish. Certainly, many, perhaps all, human relationships also have a legal aspect; but that does not mean that one should seek an understanding of the Eroica or Faust among the legal provisions concerning intellectual property.However high the position of the age, of the nation into which we individuals are born, however great the abundance of what we inherit and which benefits us without further ado, we possess it as if we did not possess it, as long as we have not acquired it through our own work, recognized it as what it is, as the result of the incessant work of those who came before us. To have worked through and experienced in spirit, in thought, what has been achieved in the history of times and peoples, of humanity, as a continuity, is called education. Civilization is content with the results of education; it is poor in the abundance of wealth, in the…” The opulence of enjoyment becomes blasé. Also, scientifically overcoming that false alternative, the dualism of those methods, those worldviews, each of which only seeks to dominate or negate the other, reconciling them in that method which corresponds to the ethical, the historical world, developing it into a worldview that has its basis in the truth of human existence, in the cosmos of moral forces – that, it seems to me, is the core of the task whose solution is at stake.” – Johann Gustav Droysen, “Die Erhebung der Geschichte zum Rang einer Wissenschaft” Munich 1863
complete text: https://www.gleichsatz.de/b-u-t/can/b4/droysen.html
Quite right, when one looks at the origin and conception as well as the wage dumping effect of the “new Poor Law of 1834” and compares it with the German social system, also known as the Hartz IV system or Hartz laws from 2005 onwards, one realizes that Friedrich August von Hayek was completely right with his statement about the “social market economy” and that this is the “road to serfdom,” and also that Democracy, which Aristotle described as the rule of the poor, is in reality a “despite the constitution being mere waste paper” Reality of arbitrary politics for the demos.
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