Posted on 25 Jun 2019 by The Amateur Exegete
“We do not need a scholar to help us know whether the New Testament is a reliable narrative that we can trust. I believe that we can know this ourselves if we simply read the text and study it as it is, without commentary… Continue Reading “Impeaching Robert Clifton Robinson”
Posted on 24 May 2019 by The Amateur Exegete
“For atheists, I would say your life is not meaningless even if you no longer believe you are for something like a hammer is for hammering nails- or even if you believe the universe is absurd! Just because you are not an instrument of… Continue Reading “The Weekly Roundup – 5.24.19”
Posted on 5 Apr 2019 by The Amateur Exegete
“One would certainly not expect any literary reference to Christians or Christianity or Jesus himself in Roman authors of the first century. Christianity was simply a tiny (TINY) religious movement that no one had heard of. Most Romans would not even have heard the… Continue Reading “The Weekly Roundup – 4.5.19”
Posted on 22 Feb 2019 by The Amateur Exegete
“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… Continue Reading “The Weekly Roundup – 2.22.19”
Posted on 15 Feb 2019 by The Amateur Exegete
“Slavery is part of the cultural fabric of the world that produced the Scriptures. Though some debate whether servitude or even debt-slavery should be used to describe the institution instead, the presumption of right to sexual access marks Hagar’s status as enslaved.” – Wil Gafney… Continue Reading “The Weekly Roundup – 2.15.19”
Posted on 12 Feb 2019 by The Amateur Exegete
To see all posts in this series, please refer to its index. Thomason’s “rebuttal” of Bart Ehrman’s Misquoting Jesus1 continues, this time focusing on the end of chapter one as well as on chapter two. The post entitled “Does Ehrman’s ‘Misquoting Jesus’ Give Reasons to… Continue Reading “Lost in the Weeds: SJ Thomason Takes on Bart Ehrman, part 2”
Posted on 9 Feb 2019 by The Amateur Exegete
To see all posts in this series, please refer to its index. Last year I wrote a five-part series on Heather Schuldt’s terrible attempt at taking on biblical scholar Bart Ehrman.1 Now pop-apologist SJ Thomason wants to have her moment in the sun as she responds to… Continue Reading “Lost in the Weeds: SJ Thomason Takes on Bart Ehrman, part 1”
Posted on 23 Jan 2019 by The Amateur Exegete
It never ceases to amaze me the lengths to which the inerrancy crowd will go to in order to defend a position “the Bible” never even makes for itself. The worst offenders are by far pop-apologists; people like J Warner Wallace, Hugh Ross, Frank… Continue Reading “Jesus’ Death in Mark and Luke: A Response to Pop-Apologist Mike Winger on Bart Ehrman”
Posted on 13 Dec 2018 by The Amateur Exegete
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… Continue Reading “Shaily Patel: Queer Criticism”
Posted on 11 Dec 2018 by The Amateur Exegete
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,… Continue Reading “Shaily Patel: Postcolonial Criticism”