"To be clear, some religious people evaluate their subjective experience as a piece of the evidential pie without taking this strong of a stance – but I want to address those who attempt to build atop the 'unshakable' ground of religious experience. The epistemology illustrated creates a host of problems. If taken seriously, it is... Continue Reading →
For other posts in this series, please visit the series' page. The Christian Defenders' second reason for believing that the Bible is true is that the Bible contains "embarrassing details." They begin, If I were to create a religious book I would make sure its theology, details, and people were flawless. I wouldn’t leave questions... Continue Reading →
"The stories of the ancestors of the Israelites do not come from any one period but developed over time. It is best to see the ancestors as composite characters." - John McDermott Bart Ehrman asks and answers the question "Why does it matter if Mark's Gospel was written first?" What it boils down to is... Continue Reading →
Gerd Theissen, The New Testament: A Literary History (Fortress Press, 2012), 43-44. The Gospel of Mark is artfully structured. It consists of individual pericopes, each of which makes its own point. Through their arrangement into a gospel they acquire a "surplus of meaning": in the framework of the story of Jesus they point to the mystery... Continue Reading →
Today over on the Mira Scriptura podcast is a conversation I had with @MiraScriptura covering a wide range of topics including my journey from Christianity to atheism, views on the Documentary and Supplementary Hypotheses, love for the Gospel of Mark, thoughts on Bernard Lamborelle's The Covenant, and much more. I also got the chance to play inquisitor... Continue Reading →
Shaily Patel, "Excursus: Methods of Ideological Criticism," in Bart D. Ehrman, The New Testament: A Historical Introduction To the Early Christian Writings, sixth edition (OUP, 2016), 193. Like feminist criticism, queer criticism is a way of reading the New Testament that contests certain norms depicted in the text, especially those that privilege heterosexuality and fixed gender... Continue Reading →
Shaily Patel, "Excursus: Methods of Ideological Criticism," in Bart D. Ehrman, The New Testament: A Historical Introduction to the Early Christian Writings, sixth edition (OUP, 2016), 192. Postcolonial criticism emphasizes the influence that empires and imperial policies, both ancient and modern, have on the texts, history, and scholarship of the New Testament. Postcolonial interpreters analyze how... Continue Reading →
"The death of the messiah [in Mark's Gospel], at the hour of the cross, is the advent of the υἱὸς τοῦ ἀνθρώπου, who has come with great power and glory (13:26)." - Danny Yencich On 11.25.18 Twitter users @Shann_Q0 and @paulogia0 had a discussion with pop-apologist SJ Thomason covering a wide-range of topics including Gospel authorship,... Continue Reading →
In her excellent book In the Company of Jesus: Characters in Mark's Gospel,1 New Testament scholar Elizabeth Struthers Malbon uses the tools of narrative criticism2 to analyze the story we find in the Gospel of Mark. As the title of her work suggests, Malbon focuses on characters that we find within the Markan story, characters that are often... Continue Reading →
A podcast exploring the most read and least understood anthology the world has ever known.
Amateur Exegete
Recent Comments