- Dan McClellan responds to “proof” that Jesus is God, especially in relationship to the Trinity.
- Brent Nongbri reviews The Gospel according to Hobby Lobby by Michael Blanding. Looks to be another interesting work covering the Green family.
- Robyn Walsh talks about publishing in antiquity.
- Mark Goodacre queries whether the beloved disciple was from Jerusalem.
- If you see Heather Thiessen on the street, start singing “In the Garden” to her and you’ll have a friend for life! That song always confused me because who is Andy?
- Bart Ehrman fact-checks Wes Huff on the growth and spread of Christianity in the Roman Empire. (I’m beginning to see more and more how sloppy a lot of Huff’s work tends to be. It’s…alarming.)
- So, apparently a new book on the historicity of the Gospel of John came out in May and for whatever reason one of the persons blurbing it is Lydia McGrew. Really?! From what I can tell, she is the only woman who provided a blurb and that is alarming given how many credentialed New Testament scholars there are out there that are women, including those with an interesting in the Gospel of John. McGrew is a philosopher and an apologist, not a scholar of the New Testament. Moreover, her views are on the fringe and she has time and again demonstrated a dearth of knowledge about NT studies generally.
Cool round-up.
I couldn’t agree with the last bullet point more: Isn’t Candida Moss, for instance, a Gospel of John scholar?
And that’s not even to mention other published scholars on the New Testament like Paula Fredriksen, Robyn Walsh, Pheme Perkins, etc.
Regarding the McGrews, I’ll admit I’m not that familiar with their work, but they seem to underestimate the extent of the conflict between theologically-motivated storytelling and what might pass for historical writing in the ancient world.
One interesting way to put the problem might be to compare it with the problems you would encounter if all you had to go on for learning about events in some location was a local pastor’s weekly sermon. The flawed nature of recall, the bias toward personal stories that tie-in to biblical passages, an ecclesiastical preference for supernatural explanations, and many other factors would come into play.
-J Source
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