"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 →
"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 →
Bart D. Ehrman, The New Testament: A Historical Introduction to the Early Christian Writings, sixth edition (OUP, 2016), 120-121. A "redactor" is someone who edits a text; "redaction criticism" is the study of how authors have created a literary work by modifying or editing their sources of information. The underlying theory behind the method is simple. An... Continue Reading →
Michael D. Coogan, The Old Testament: A Historical and Literary Introduction to the Hebrew Scriptures, third edition (Oxford University Press, 2014), 10-11. Although some ancient and most modern authors have produced single works that remain essentially unchanged, that was not the case with many books of the Bible. They often went through several editions over the... Continue Reading →
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Amateur Exegete
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