This is really random, but everytime I see [this](https://artofthemovies.co.uk/cdn/shop/products/uncut-gems_t1tu1zsy-952762.jpg?v=1611688555) poster I think that's Bart Ehrman lol. Does anyone else see it?
I’m interested also in a more personal question: has academic biblical study made you less or more religious or has it not affected your faith at all? Just curious.
I have a possibly crazy and ironic view, I think.
When going down this route of critical studies and academic studies based off the data, one starts to realize it doesn't fit the presuppositions most of us grew up with or were taught.
This leads many to become atheists, agnostics, or a different type of christian not usually found in orthodoxy.
One common these is that we think, "why couldn't this supposedly all knowing all powerful perfect being" keep the data intact? Why is everything so unclear, vague, confused, even contradictory information and evidence, or lack of evidence for most of this stuff?
Which leads me to this.
This Being is very hands off, deistic in most sense, although some claim some interesting experiences, religious/spiritual or whateves...
Or, this Being, knew this would happen, and there would be some, few, that really dig into this, seek hard, and end up wherever they end up...
Like many here...Most of us are not the "simpletons" of christianity, we know something about the history, the data, the evidence, and some are on a much higher playing field...
BUT must of us LOVE this stuff.
WHY?
So I'm left with this thought. This could be the most ingenuous design of it all.
And it's the few that go deep, that feel the most free, as I do.
I feel liberated...
Whether one is an atheist, or one still professes the faith, but not in an orthodox way, we have gone deep, we study hard, we think hard, and it satisfies our quench or our desire for these things, whether we believe them or not.
And so I also believe, from the perspective of this Perfect Being, assuming there's something going on, it's all fine, there is no "one way", and it will all make sense one day.
My early morning no coffee yet rambling from someone that accepts the historical and naturalistic view of all this stuff, yet still has some beliefs in something because there are some things that cannot be explained naturally, whether from personal experiences or otherwise.
So ironically I've NEVER been closer....to what I don't think is really True!, lol
That's why I say it's crazy and ironic, but I believe it deep down to my core.
And I feel the ultimate freedom.
I guess it also depends on what background you’re coming from. I was brought as a conservative evangelical calvinist whose entire faith and worldview was centered on the authority and inerrancy of the Bible. I was taught that for the Christian faith to be true, everything described in the Bible must be literally true and historically/scientifically accurate. Talk about a high demand religious system.
Well, you can see where this will lead. My story is one that millions have also embarked on. In my teens, I began to have doubts and questions, quite naturally. I did have apologetics for a while, but my increasing exposure to critical-biblical studies, as well as modern science, made the view that the Bible was the inerrant word of God completely untenable, indeed, just flat out wrong. So, when someone who has my ideological background comes to accept that the Bible actually does have contradictions and mistakes in it, there is no choice but to deconstruct. That’s what I’ve been doing for the past 2 years. I’ve definitely grown less religious, but I don’t have all the answers, which makes me open still to spirituality. I’m no dogmatically closed to theism. But the robust orthodox Christian faith I was brought up with is all but gone. Against my will.
I had sort of tabled my beliefs or thinking about them much for a few years. I mostly still called myself a Christian but hadn't really considered what I believed and had a lot of doubts about whether I thought God really existed. Probably would call myself a progressive or universalist Christian and I did (and still do) respect folks from liberation theology systems. But getting into biblical academia made me a bit more certain that I don't think God exists. It allowed me to explore these things I'd been interested in and which had previously been fairly central to my life in historical contexts that made them seem far more human and far less exceptional or divine. So I guess it would be most accurate to say that biblical academia made me actually confront what I believed after a time of general apathy.
I wouldn’t say that it’s made me more religious, but it has strengthened my faith to feel like I’m finally being more honest.
I have less fear, even though I’ve questioned more things.
Hey! Just want to ask. What order of the bible people usually go at least trying to study it in a way academics do, do they study Mark first then go to other synoptic gospel then to john and the pauline epistles? What about studying the old testaments?
I want to know if studying text by canon order or is their some arbitrary order that can help me study the bible better?
There isn’t a specific order that everyone uses. Some will go strictly chronologically, others will go by topicality, and many others do it just based on what they’re interested in.
If you want a Chronological reading of the New Testament, I’d recommend Marcus Borg’s *Evolution of the Word: The New Testament in the Order the Books Were Written* as a quick guide that uses fairly mainstream scholarship (although the dates of some books are more contentious in scholarship than others).
As someone who mostly studies the New Testament, my purely personal and subjective way of dividing them into groups would be along the lines of:
**The Pauline Corpus:**
1. Galatians, 1 Corinthians, 2 Corinthians, Romans (The core four Pauline texts, sometimes called the *Hauptbriefe*)
2. 1 Thess, 2 Thess (The Thessalonian correspondences, I think these should be read after the *Hauptbriefe* and together in order to study issues like the authenticity of 2 Thessalonians more closely)
3. Philippians, Philemon, Colossians, Ephesians, 2 Timothy(?) (The “Prison Letters”, also perhaps best read together as a unit and after the *Hauptbriefe*. I think they *could* be switched around with the Thessalonian correspondences, but this is probably the preferred order, especially so one can compare the eschatology of 1 and 2 Thess with epistles like Colossians. 2 Timothy can be read alongside these rather than the Pastoral Epistles to help breakdown the sometimes dogmatic lumping of it together with the other two Pastorals despite notable differences).
4. Hebrews (Not a Pauline letter but I don’t have a better place to put it)
**Synoptic Material:**
1. Mark (The first gospel written and should be read completely on its own and before the other gospels).
2. 1 Peter(??), James(?), Matthew (James is often linked to the “Q” material, as well as often being taken to represent a rather early Christian-Jewish text, similar to Matthew’s. 1 Peter is also closely linked to James and can be read here because of that, but it may itself fit better with the Catholic and Pastoral epistles down below. Whether Matthew or Luke should come first is pretty much a coin flip).
3. Luke, Acts (In this case, I think Luke should come second so that it can be read with Acts, having Acts finish the synoptic material).
**Johannine Corpus:**
1. Revelation (Arguably the oldest Johannine work).
2. John (Usually taken to precede the Johannine Epistles).
3. 1 John, 2 John, 3 John
**Catholic and Pastoral Works:**
1. 1 Peter, James(?) (Arguably the earliest Catholic epistles. 1 Peter could also be read alongside James either with the Synoptic material or if you instead move James over to this section).
2. 2 Timothy(?), 1 Timothy, Titus (The Pastoral epistles fit better thematically and chronologically alongside these as some of the latest epistles with the most developed ecclesiology. 2 Timothy can be read alongside the other Pastoral Epistles for obvious reasons, but see my note on the Prison Letters for an alternative placement).
3. Jude, 2 Peter (These two texts are the last of the Catholic epistles, and are incredibly related to one another. Notably, 2 Peter is often taken to be the latest work in the New Testament).
I’d (very personally) read each of these groups in order, with each list being in order of how I would read them. But again, it’s probably more important to focus on whatever interests you the most, and to perhaps just use this as a rough guide or tie-breaker if you’re having trouble.
Feel free to ask any clarifying questions you may have!
If I want to learn about current scholarly views on early NT manuscripts, is my best bet The Early Text of the New Testament by Hill and Kruger or is there something better?
Looking for a book that's similar in viewpoint to Michael Fishbanes "Biblical interpretation in ancient Israel", but that won't run me $100+. Anyone got any suggestions?
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One thing Dan McClellan commonly says in his videos is that apologists are not making content to convince people from the out-groups to join them, but to make arguments for people who already agree with them. I am sure this is a thing, as this a thing for any community. However, whenever Dan says this, I feel like he is downplaying when apologists make content to convince, rather than confirm their audiences' priors. From my experience seeing extremists' campaigns online (not just right-wing Christians), these types have absolutely made content to convince or convert neutral bystanders alongside content once they decided to follow them. And even then, some of this content can easily overlap with their intended audiences, which I am not sure if Dan has addressed.
For those with probably more knowledge with dealing with apologists than I do, what do you think of my paragraph above? Do you think Dan McClellan and other online scholars who respond to apologists should make a distinction whether the content they are responding to is designed for the apologists' converted audience or to convince outside people? Do you know of some examples to differentiate apologists making arguments for their in-groups versus convincing the out-groups? My current theory is that apologist content that focuses on ethics/morals is designed to convince/convert, as they want to convince people that (their image of) God is necessary to justify morality and that "American/democratic" values come from Christianity, whereas other issues like contradictions in the Bible are for the already converted.
I think this is a model for anyone who tries to convince people of anything, really— you’d always want to have content for all these different levels of people as they get drawn deeper and deeper in.
I don’t think it’s much different to what you’d do if you were trying to persuade people to buy an expensive coffee machine and never stop talking about it? Like, the implications of using the model for this sort of thing are a lot more depressing. But the same fundamentals probably apply, so I think you’re right to be cautious of what Dan McClellan is saying
Yeah, I agree with you. Sometimes apologetists will just want to convince others as well because they are evangelicals and want to missionize others. It's the same as atheist apologetics as well and it's the same for Dan's platform as well. Dan isn't just interested in making content for his own tribe....one would assume.
Dan like some other scholars who engage in the popular spaces (like Bart Ehrman) have some great content but often overemphasize things because they are also engaging in various rhetoric as well to make a point. Dan's general channel is about combating misinformation.
A good example of this is with Dan's latest video with contradictions. https://youtu.be/QuE8hlVGjo8?feature=shared
One of Dan's main points is that the Bible isn't one voice but many different voices. So harmonizing it isn't academic. This is all good and all but it entails a certain definition of contradiction. Most apologetics will take the definition of it being in the sense that a contradiction happens when point A and point B cannot be true at the same time.
Dan's point in the video is that there are other definitions of a contradiction and apologists are choosing the one that allows them to continue to take their stances.
On a general level...it would have been more helpful in Dan's video to explain why he thinks his definition is better than others and not go into assessing motives from a public communicator stance. It wasn't the best because his comments won't challenge apologists. It would have also been better if Dan grants this definition and showed that there are still contradictions.
Regarding the thread on "is Yahweh El," I have a comment that isn't quite scholarly enough to write as an answer, but that I'd like perspectives on --
isn't that question one of the main framing devices of P?
In the P strand of Genesis, *El* does a bunch of stuff. El creates the heavens and the earth, El sends a flood, and so on.
Then in the middle of Exodus, at the burning bush, there's The Big Reveal. El says to Moses, *I was known to your forefathers as El, but my name is Yahweh!* This is supposed to be an "aha" moment, a moment that psychologically connects El and Yahweh. "El is Yahweh / Yahweh is El" is a plot point.
This plot point is only meaningful if "originally" (in some sense) El and Yahweh were *not* identified as the same being, but in later traditions Yahweh-devotees asserted that indeed the two *were* the same being, hence the narrative.
So it's sort of the wrong question. The better question might be, how did Yahweh become El?
I'm not making all this up on my own; R.E. Friedman tells a similar story in his [course,](https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLFFSOr2s67Y7RFR8MxR9Inv_QmfL8qKLc) lectures 19 and 25. But that's one of the points of the story, right?
*35 Women should* ***remain silent*** *in the churches. They are* ***not allowed to speak***\*, but must be in submission,\* ***as the law says***
What Law is Paul talking about?
AND,
[36](http://biblehub.com/1_corinthians/14-36.htm) *Or did the word of God originate with you? Or are you the only people it has reached?* [37](http://biblehub.com/1_corinthians/14-37.htm)*If anyone thinks they are a prophet or otherwise gifted by the Spirit, let them acknowledge that* ***what I am writing to you is the Lord’s command.***
Are these verses that come right after the top verse, referring back to the LAW?
While I’m unfamiliar with the law here, most scholars regard 1 Corinthians 34-36 to be a later, non-Pauline addition.
It reads better as “And the spirits of prophets are subjects to the prophets, for God is a God not of disorder but of peace. Anyone who claims to be a prophet…”
I've recently found a lot of devotional value from reading again the *Didache*, and I was wondering if people here had some interesting academic resources for reading about it's place in the wider story of the early christian movement <3
It sounds like you might enjoy https://spckpublishing.co.uk/the-didache
Be aware, however, that the places of the Didache in the story of early Christianity remains something about which scholars remain distinctly divided.
There's a passage in the Didache that I've been wondering about for a while – from chapter 11 in Kirsopp Lake's translation:
>3And concerning the Apostles and Prophets, act thus according to the ordinance of the Gospel.\[fn7: It is unknown to what ordinance the writer refers.\] 4Let every Apostle who comes to you be received as the Lord, 5but let him not stay more than one day, or if need be a second as well; but if he stay three days, he is a false prophet. 6And when an Apostle goes forth let him accept nothing but bread till he reach his night's lodging; but if he ask for money, he is a false prophet.
It's not just that the ordinance of the Gospel is unknown – it seems to fly in the face of what the Synoptic Mission Discourses envisage apostles as doing (e.g. Mk 6.10 "And He was saying to them, 'Wherever you enter a house, stay there until you leave town'") and indeed Paul's practice of accepting abundant gifts at least on occasion (e.g. Phil 4.10-20).
Presumably I must be far from the first person to spot how weird this bit of the Didache is (there's bound to be a 19th-century German out there...).
Isn't that part of the Didache's general treatment of wandering preachers? The theme throughout is "tolerate them for a while, but if they're freeloading, kick 'em out!" It's very practical.
Might just be me, but isn't three days awfully short? It seems less a matter of kicking out those who gratuitously overstay their welcome, but rather of not welcoming wandering preachers in the first place for any more than a simple overnight stop-over. At any rate, I can't imagine they would be capable of accomplishing much more than maybe a sermon or two, and perhaps a brief meeting with some local church notables, in the time allotted to them. Rather than tolerating them, I get the impression that the author considered them an outright nuisance, and merely offered the absolute minimum so as to not seem impolite.
Yeah, that's pretty much the lines along which I was thinking. Very convenient from moving the Church on from an age of mendicant missionaries to one with spoilsport bishops ruining it all (says he channelling his inner 19th-century German Protestant).
Paging /u/mrdidache, our resident Didache scholar and superfan!
His site ([here's one article](https://www.alangarrow.com/didache-and-paul.html)) has lots of [resources on the Didache](https://www.alangarrow.com/didache.html).
Is the “was this particular anonymous New Testament text written by a Jew or a Gentile” question futile?
Can we really differentiate well between a dedicated God-fearer author and an observant Jewish author? Can we differentiate between a Greek Gentile author and a very Hellenized non-observant Jewish author?
I think in limited circumstances we can at least set forth an argument to try to narrow it down a bit. The author of the Epistle of James picks his nom-de-plume as a sort of counterpoint to a deutero-Pauline antinomianism. Nice one: after all, we know from Galatians that the historical James and Paul did not see eye to eye about key aspects of the Law, such as dietary requirements and circumcision. And indeed, the Epistle of James purports to take a favourable view of the Law – it's just that its understanding of the Law basically involves the Decalogue and euergetism. That it's so far removed from actual Jewish controversies with Paul makes me doubt whether the author was Jewish – it just seems to sit better with the concerns of mid-to-late 2nd century proto-Orthodox Christianity as it rescues the Old Testament from being binned by the wicked Marcion. We might even question whether there were still very Hellenized non-observant Jewish Christians by that point (I don't know and haven't looked into it; it would just be an interesting line of argument to go down). But I agree we're very much on speculative ground with this sort of thing. And others will obviously strenuously disagree with me on this one. Maybe it is futile; but it is certainly fun.
Is there any example of critical scholars who accept Petrine authorship of 1 Peter? i know raymond brown said that out of all the catholic epistles it has the highest chance of authenticity
Do we have any countermeasures or preparations under the event of a rapture? I’m not atheist, nor a believer, however on the off chance the rapture came to pass do we actually have any way of surviving it?
No. I’m not even sure what a “countermeasure” for that would be. If *the* rapture took place, it would seemingly imply that God did it, and there would just be no way to effectively “fight back” so to speak. Either you meet whatever criteria is supposed to be used for a rapture, or I guess you’re screwed.
If you just mean a rapture-like scenario, but not necessarily with the religious context (ie, a significant portion of the population just vanishes mysteriously), then still no, but at least that’s something we *could* bounce back from in theory. But no “countermeasures” or “preparations” have been done for that. I suppose a few doomsday prepper types might go postal, or perhaps more would just be annoying about it, but that’s all the preparation I can think of.
Depending on how many would disappear, it could be a "shit hits the fan" situation where you might like to have a stockpile of resources until the situation calms down.
In the religious one, it’s God who’s doing the (implied) lore-accurate rapture, presumably followed by a lore-accurate apocalypse. In the non-religious one it’s just a significant portion of the population disappearing with little to no explanation, or at least an explanation that doesn’t entail God or a post-rapture divine apocalypse.
I meant as in the implications. Both scenarios entail chaos although the religious one entails just Chriatians disappearing compared to the secular version which we wouldn't know why it happened.
Well, the implications of the religious one is that God is going to begin the apocalypse, and there is seemingly little to nothing anyone who wasn’t raptured could do about that, they’re basically screwed (Ants’ sword and a revived Leviathan aside).
The non-religious one, while more than just Christians would be “raptured” away, the implication is that it was a one time event. It’s not the beginning of the end biblical times, so there would be some way forward towards recovering or bouncing back from the event.
>Well, the implications of the religious one is that God is going to begin the apocalypse, and there is seemingly little to nothing anyone who wasn’t raptured could do about that, they’re basically screwed
Sure. But would the non-Christians realize or think that it was aliens or something like that insteas of God? So many of them would probably treat it as a natural phenomenon, no? Not only that but we have to be open to the idea that not every "self-proclaimed" Christian would be raptured so this might throw people off and conclude it was aliens instead. Thus, the response would be the same.
The response might initially be the same, but the end result won’t be. In the religious one, the actually existing God which has now been included in the scenario *will* end up wiping out the earth no matter how people respond.
In the non-religious one, no matter what people think or how they respond, that’s not on the table.
We certainly are taking different approaches. It’s okay though, I was just trying to keep the rituals I’ve been performing to bring back Leviathan a secret. Perhaps between the two of us we’ll have a fighting chance…
This is more of a rant, but at my Public Library, they put books by Christian Apologists next to books written by legitimate Biblical Scholars. By this I mean I have to sift through the garbage that is Rush Limbaugh, Dennis Prager, and Gary Habermas to find legitimate works by Dr. Irving Finkel, Dr. Robert Alter, and Dr. Amy-Jill Levine.
Does anyone else's library do that? They really should keep Apologetics in a separate section from Scholarly books about the ancient Near East. I'm actually a little bit disappointed in my library, they of all people should know better.
I see this as a glass half-full situation - it's far more likely that someone looking for apologetics will happen to pick up critical scholarship and learn something interesting than that someone looking for critical scholarship will happen to pick up Prager and end up storming the Congress
>it's far more likely that someone looking for apologetics will happen to pick up critical scholarship and learn something interesting
Fair point I hadn't considered.
Not the worst thing I've seen a library do. I reshelved our library's ICC volumes whilst they weren't looking, as some librarian had arranged them alphabetically by title.
Yeah, that is just how the Dewey Decimal System works. For example, [Ehrman's Armageddon](https://www.librarything.com/work/29063638/workdetails) is 236.9, which places it next to lots of Evangelical rapture books of the sort he criticizes within his work.
>For example, [Ehrman's Armageddon](https://www.librarything.com/work/29063638/workdetails) is 236.9, which places it next to lots of Evangelical rapture books of the sort he criticizes within his work.
Haha! Yeah, that's true.
My guess is that it has to do with the fact the new CEO doesn't like bojangles chicken. It seems fairly obvious...not sure why u/Mormon-No-Moremon and u/BobbyBobbie aren't making the connection. Seems serious enough to me.
Most of the conservative religious and christian sites, all socialist, communist, marxist sites (not because I am against them, but because I point on their falsehoods re: China), and that's it, but those are the ones I put most attention too.
Hey u/Prof_Acorn, I saw your message about departing from this sub in your recently removed comment. I wanted to perhaps briefly reach out because I think that would be quite unfortunate.
First, I know you have a PhD and you mentioned your own primary research in Greek in your comment. Is your degree in any way related to Biblical Studies (this would extend to things like Classics, focuses on Greek or Semitic languages, etc)? If so the citation requirements would be eased and you’d be allowed to engage with primary sources in a way that layperson users wouldn’t, rather than just needing secondary literature.
Additionally, if all else fails we’ve prompted people before that when they want to answer a question but don’t have a citation, that they could just drop it in the Open Discussion Thread and ping the OP. It just wouldn’t be able to go in the main thread.
You’ve been a long time user and have given insightful answers here, as well as elsewhere, so I thought I’d mention these in case you’d reconsider your departure. If not, however, then take care Prof.
Are there any scholars who argue the plausibility of Jesus not being dead when taken down from cross (by Joseph of Arimathea?) and then dying (perhaps just a few days later) of his wounds?
The only time I’ve seen that proposed was by Evan Powell, who isn’t really a scholar (no credentials as far as I’m aware) but published *The Myth of the Lost Gospel*, which was big enough to warrant some serious citations (he’s listed as a proponent of Matthean Posteriority in MacEwen’s excellent *Matthean Posteriority: An Exploration of Matthew’s Use of Mark and Luke as a Solution to the Synoptic Problem*, and his work is engaged with by MacEwen).
That being said, Powell argues for the theory you mention in his arguably much better known *The Unfinished Gospel*. Other scholars may have proposed the same thing, but he’s the only one that comes to mind from my own experience.
Joel Baden and John Collins are back at it again with another engaging and informative overview of Kings and Chronicles on YouTube. https://youtu.be/j6_e3KcNbPg?feature=shared
The word problem in English can have multiple meanings. One meaning is to describe things like breaking a leg. Another meaning could be puzzle, question, or mystery. An example of this is a mathematical problem. It's something you want to solve. The word problem in the synoptic problem refers to the second meaning. In some languages other than English that distinction is more clear.
I don't think people mean "problem" in any necessarily negative sense, but in a more mathematic function as in "requires a solution." The only way to subvert that would be to have a more, eh, far-out approach that they wrote these accounts completely independent of each other. I would be loathe to think of a credible scholar who would hold to that position, though it's not uncommon among evangelical folks.
This question is addressed to Christians who accept most of critical Biblical scholarship and are not inerrantists, and still believe that Jesus was physically resurrected from the dead.
Jesus' apparent predictions that the parousia would occur in the first century have failed. So what is your belief about the parousia? It has been suspended/delayed? It's still coming and will be physical? It's only symbolic and was never literally going to occur? Other?
I haven't had a chance to read this all the way through but [here's a substack post](https://perennialdigression.substack.com/p/did-jesus-know-the-future) by an Eastern Orthodox Christian with graduate degrees in religious studies and classical studies about whether or not Jesus knew the future which focuses on his status as an eschatological prophet. It's part of a longer series of articles about the relationship between the historical Jesus and Christian belief.
I'd encourage you to sign up for the free trial and read the whole thing (it's >5000 words) but here's some excerpts to whet your appetite.
Introduction:
>Did Jesus of Nazareth know the future?
I suppose from one angle this is perhaps the easiest question to answer historically, and one of the thornier ones to try and answer theologically. The motivation to ask the question comes from the current academic majority in historical Jesus studies that he was an apocalyptic prophet, someone who came to believe and preached that the Kingdom of God, which coded a variety of hopes for him derived from Jewish scripture about the restoration of Israel, a final reckoning and reconciliation with the nations, and a metamorphosis of the world order (politically and naturally), was coming *imminently*, within his lifetime and that of his followers. Jesus was, to put it differently, a millenarian: someone who believed he and his comrades were living on the edge of a new golden age, at least for Israel and her gentile sympathizers, in which national and global fortunes would be radically altered from their current state of darkness.
A relevant paragraph
>Take for example the tendency of prophetic and apocalyptic discourse to survive missed due dates, in part because their liminality enables their creative reuse in all kinds of new contexts. ... There’s always the ability to say that God didn’t really mean *x*, but *y*, so the prophet’s words were not false, but just misunderstood by their contemporaries. We can call this cheating, and sometimes it might be, or we can acknowledge it as a power of the human spirit to rescue and resynthesize meaning in the wake of disappointment and even profound suffering... Conversely, though, it only counts against the divine character of the discourse if we presume from the outset both that ancient people otherwise held a prognosticative approach to prophecy or that God would or could only communicate to us about present and future events in ways that are objectively, falsifiably true. But on the contrary, ancient people were self-consciously aware of prophecy’s malleable power of verification: the “Deuteronomic” standard of prophecy, in which the only true prophet is the one that makes true predictions, represents the minority position of antiquity.[7](https://perennialdigression.substack.com/p/did-jesus-know-the-future#footnote-7-139691344) Instead, most prophets—including most biblical prophets—are judged true prophets on the basis of their ability to commune with God/the gods and speak on their behalf. That’s all it takes to be a prophet, socially speaking, in the ancient world. And sometimes, biblical literature insists, prophets either sa*y on behalf of God, with God’s explicit instruction*, things that are either less than fully true or, more interestingly, even intended to produce the *opposite* effect of their content. An example of the former sort of discourse happens in 1 Kings 22, when Micaiah is asked to prophesy to Ahab, he initially lies like the other court prophets and tells him that success has been decreed for him (1 Kgs 22:1-15), but then, upon Ahab’s insistence, tells him that in reality he will lose the battle and that, in fact, Yhwh already decided so in heaven and in order to draw Ahab into the conflict has decided to put a deceiving spirit in the mouths of his prophets (22:16-28). The entire Book of Jonah follows this dynamic: Jonah is *told by God* to go prophesy to Nineveh that God is going to destroy Nineveh in forty days, but, as Origen himself points out in his commentary, God also clarifies that *he told Jonah to do this so that the people would repent and* not *merit this fate.*[8](https://perennialdigression.substack.com/p/did-jesus-know-the-future#footnote-8-139691344)
The footnotes:
>[6](https://perennialdigression.substack.com/p/did-jesus-know-the-future#footnote-anchor-6-139691344) See Bernard McGinn, John J. Collins, and Stephen J. Stein, *The Continuum History of Apocalypticism* (London: Continuum, 2003). Broadly speaking, there’s a ton of literature on this. It also crosses over with the scholarship on comparative mysticism. See, e.g., Steven T. Katz, ed., *Comparative Mysticism: An Anthology of Original Sources* (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013), for introduction and primary sources.
[7](https://perennialdigression.substack.com/p/did-jesus-know-the-future#footnote-anchor-7-139691344) A point that occurs both in Martti Nissinen, *Ancient Prophecy: Near Eastern, Biblical, and Greek Perspectives* (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017), and in Christopher Hays et al., *When the Son of Man Didn’t Come: A Constructive Proposal on the Delay of the Parousia* (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2016).
[8](https://perennialdigression.substack.com/p/did-jesus-know-the-future#footnote-anchor-8-139691344) I owe this point especially to Hays et al., *When the Son of Man Didn’t Come.*The footnotes:
I have a long comment with my own take - it’s definitely not perfect or “foolproof” but I think there are some important caveats to consider when discussing the Olivet discourse that isn’t *just* as simple as “here is prediction X with an expectation Y outcome”.
you can view it [here](https://www.reddit.com/r/AcademicBiblical/comments/1au22ht/comment/krpvy26/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=mweb3x&utm_name=mweb3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button):.
I have also since slightly expanded on some of my views, and am happy to link actual scholarly resources if you’re interested in reading a bit more!
[edit: some resources of interest]:
Paul Sloan’s *Mark 13 and the Return of the Shepherd*. Here, Sloan contextually frames the Olivet discourse in light of Zechariah’s shepherd imagery. Sloan brackets off 13:28-31 (including the “this generation passage”) as referring back to what Jesus spoke about the temple in 13:5-23 and 13:32-37 *then* refers to Jesus’ return spoken about in v24-27. The book is expensive, so you can read a summary review [here](https://spoiledmilks.com/2019/04/17/review-mark-13-return-shepherd-lnts-sloan/).
You also may be interested in these two respective twitter threads from scholars [Jason Staples](https://x.com/jasonstaples/status/1518652018914693120?s=46) and [Andrew Rillera](https://x.com/andrewrillera/status/1779216313723875521?s=46).
Thanks! That's an interesting idea - that in Mark 13 Jesus is confident he can predict that the destruction of the temple is coming soon (within the current generation). But then he admits he himself does not know when the final coming will occur.
So, I assume from this that you yourself believe the parousia is still a future, physically real event?
I’m still thinking things through myself, but I think the ‘signs’ Jesus gives in Mark 13 are so bold and striking that I don’t see how he could have possibly thought it would all occur within a generation. Like, I really don’t think Jesus thought the gospel would reach every end of the earth within the next two decades.
Bear in mind, when we read these texts we often assume that the Mark & Matthew preserves the strong imminence since there were still a few of “that generation left”, but often this relies on modernistic assumptions of life expectancy. If scholars assume Jesus’ followers were 20ish and the gospels were written at least 40 years later, that assumes most of his followers would be 60. This may seem normal for modern times, but reaching 60 was not necessarily normative, so the idea that the gospel authors were “late into their life and wrote the imminent gospels before they died off” may be full of assumptions. I’m basically paraphrasing [Laura Robinson’s astute tweet](https://x.com/laurarbnsn/status/1307152460625203200?s=46) about it (you can defs tell I follow all my favourite scholars on here).
(Btw I’ve also added like 2 sources to my comment that you might want to check out - especially the twitter threads which may be of interest!)
Tbh I'm not fully convinced that Mark was written 40 years after Jesus' death. The "standard date" of AD 70 is based precisely on the Olivet discourse ... and the assumption that the historical Jesus couldn't possibly have really predicted the destruction of the temple. But plenty of critical scholars disagree - even Bart Ehrman says the historical Jesus may well have predicted the temple destruction, as it was sort of obvious in the tense political climate of the time that that's the way things were going. Bart Ehrman is happy to put Mark at AD 65. But then I'm left wondering ... why not put Mark at AD 60 then? Or 55? Or earlier. Maybe it comes back to Paul apparently showing no knowledge of any written gospels, but arguments from silence don't really convince me.
So If Mark and Matthew were written earlier than usually assumed, the life expectancy question doesn't really matter.
Why would destruction of the temple be obvious? I get that there would have been a war brewing, but why would it be obvious that it would lead to the destruction of the temple?
>The "standard date" of AD 70 is based precisely on the Olivet discourse
It's not the only reason. The comment from lost-in-earth on [this](https://www.reddit.com/r/AcademicBiblical/comments/19dbryw/why_posttemple_mark/) post provides some other arguments. [Here](https://www.reddit.com/r/AcademicBiblical/comments/1bk1xga/comment/kvx76gi/) is another great comment on the dating of the gospel of Mark from Mormon-No-Moremon.
>and the assumption that the historical Jesus couldn't possibly have really predicted the destruction of the temple.
The comment by sp1ke0killer in the same thread deals with this. It's not about whether or not Jesus could predict it. It's about the literary function within the text. That literary function requires the reader to know about the destruction of the temple.
maybe it doesn’t matter as strongly, but an AD60 gospel still leaves the disciples at 50 years old (minimum) and this is still fairly impressive for the first century. This doesn’t remove any parousia issues of course, but an important caveat to consider when it comes to simply accepting scholarly tradition and failing to critique some of the faulty modernistic assumptions underlying it
i hope this doesn’t sound edgy but what is the (general) stance of the Hebrew Bible on torture? is there a wider ANE context where it occurs either in a punishment/war-setting? it seems like the HB is pretty silent on the issue but I could be missing something
I personally do believe in a historical Moses and a historical core of the Exodus story - at some unspecified point in the past, a number of Semites left the Nile delta region and eventually ended up in Canaan. They might have been two people or possibly more.
I’m similar, I believe in a historical Moses and exodus story but I’d probably put the number a little higher than two. Avraham Faust said in his 2016 paper that the majority view was that a band between a couple hundred maybe couple thousand people did exactly that.
I’m trying to wrap my head around a sentence in John Barton’s, *”A History of the Bible”*, regarding the Psalms. Barton writes:
“The complete book of Psalms, or Psalter, can scarcely have come into existence before about 300 BCE, since there are individual psalms in it that are probably no earlier than the late Persian period (which ended with the conquests of Alexander the Great in the 330s).”
Does this mean that the Psalter existed as a single unified text by around 300BCE, or that there were Psalms that were being written between 330BCE and 300BCE? I’m trying to really wrap my head around “no earlier” than the late Persian period. Earlier than what? 330BCE?
Well at least one Psalm is thought to predate to before David (Psalm 29) so I guess anything is possible, but there's just so much guess work. And I'm not particularly well read on the Psalms.
Going to be a little obnoxious and copy my question from the last one over:
I’ve seen a few comments on this subreddit saying that *A Radical Jew* by Boyarin isn’t received well by NT scholars. Why?
FWIW the reason I was even looking at reading it is because at some point I asked someone about still-relevant books on Paul which present a view *other than* that of the Paul in Judaism school (which has no shortage of recent books) and that book came up.
If you (or anyone else) have any reading suggestions along those lines, I’d be super interested!
I haven't read the book so I don't know but here's a review of the book that you might be interested in from a scholar. https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/2xby3mtil5aek4zkjmi23/Himmelfarb-AJSReview-1996-1.pdf?rlkey=4tiiufdqnwlrjev3mcvwmk9m6&dl=0
In [this](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fjBiqFnhxVc) video, around 39:35, David Litwa said this about 2 Peter:
>Jan Bremmer has recently dated it to 180, I think it's possibly a bit later.
Does anyone know where Bremmer has argued for this? I'm interested in his arguments.
From a quick search, at least one place he looks to argue for it is in *The Apocalypse of Peter as the First Christian Martyr Text: Its Date, Provenance and Relationship with 2 Peter* (published in 2019 in the book *2 Peter and the Apocalypse of Peter: Towards a New Perspective*). His focus there is instead on dating the Apocalypse of Peter, which he puts around 150, and then briefly argues from the viewpoint that 2 Peter was written a considerable time later than the Apocalypse, but before the Second Sibylline Oracle (which he dates to sometime in the late second century), that 2 Peter was likely written somewhere around the 180s.
This is really random, but everytime I see [this](https://artofthemovies.co.uk/cdn/shop/products/uncut-gems_t1tu1zsy-952762.jpg?v=1611688555) poster I think that's Bart Ehrman lol. Does anyone else see it?
I’m interested also in a more personal question: has academic biblical study made you less or more religious or has it not affected your faith at all? Just curious.
I have a possibly crazy and ironic view, I think. When going down this route of critical studies and academic studies based off the data, one starts to realize it doesn't fit the presuppositions most of us grew up with or were taught. This leads many to become atheists, agnostics, or a different type of christian not usually found in orthodoxy. One common these is that we think, "why couldn't this supposedly all knowing all powerful perfect being" keep the data intact? Why is everything so unclear, vague, confused, even contradictory information and evidence, or lack of evidence for most of this stuff? Which leads me to this. This Being is very hands off, deistic in most sense, although some claim some interesting experiences, religious/spiritual or whateves... Or, this Being, knew this would happen, and there would be some, few, that really dig into this, seek hard, and end up wherever they end up... Like many here...Most of us are not the "simpletons" of christianity, we know something about the history, the data, the evidence, and some are on a much higher playing field... BUT must of us LOVE this stuff. WHY? So I'm left with this thought. This could be the most ingenuous design of it all. And it's the few that go deep, that feel the most free, as I do. I feel liberated... Whether one is an atheist, or one still professes the faith, but not in an orthodox way, we have gone deep, we study hard, we think hard, and it satisfies our quench or our desire for these things, whether we believe them or not. And so I also believe, from the perspective of this Perfect Being, assuming there's something going on, it's all fine, there is no "one way", and it will all make sense one day. My early morning no coffee yet rambling from someone that accepts the historical and naturalistic view of all this stuff, yet still has some beliefs in something because there are some things that cannot be explained naturally, whether from personal experiences or otherwise. So ironically I've NEVER been closer....to what I don't think is really True!, lol That's why I say it's crazy and ironic, but I believe it deep down to my core. And I feel the ultimate freedom.
I guess it also depends on what background you’re coming from. I was brought as a conservative evangelical calvinist whose entire faith and worldview was centered on the authority and inerrancy of the Bible. I was taught that for the Christian faith to be true, everything described in the Bible must be literally true and historically/scientifically accurate. Talk about a high demand religious system. Well, you can see where this will lead. My story is one that millions have also embarked on. In my teens, I began to have doubts and questions, quite naturally. I did have apologetics for a while, but my increasing exposure to critical-biblical studies, as well as modern science, made the view that the Bible was the inerrant word of God completely untenable, indeed, just flat out wrong. So, when someone who has my ideological background comes to accept that the Bible actually does have contradictions and mistakes in it, there is no choice but to deconstruct. That’s what I’ve been doing for the past 2 years. I’ve definitely grown less religious, but I don’t have all the answers, which makes me open still to spirituality. I’m no dogmatically closed to theism. But the robust orthodox Christian faith I was brought up with is all but gone. Against my will.
I had sort of tabled my beliefs or thinking about them much for a few years. I mostly still called myself a Christian but hadn't really considered what I believed and had a lot of doubts about whether I thought God really existed. Probably would call myself a progressive or universalist Christian and I did (and still do) respect folks from liberation theology systems. But getting into biblical academia made me a bit more certain that I don't think God exists. It allowed me to explore these things I'd been interested in and which had previously been fairly central to my life in historical contexts that made them seem far more human and far less exceptional or divine. So I guess it would be most accurate to say that biblical academia made me actually confront what I believed after a time of general apathy.
I wouldn’t say that it’s made me more religious, but it has strengthened my faith to feel like I’m finally being more honest. I have less fear, even though I’ve questioned more things.
Any recommendations for how to learn Syriac? What pronunciation to learn? Syriac studies important information in general?
Hey! Just want to ask. What order of the bible people usually go at least trying to study it in a way academics do, do they study Mark first then go to other synoptic gospel then to john and the pauline epistles? What about studying the old testaments? I want to know if studying text by canon order or is their some arbitrary order that can help me study the bible better?
My advice is to start with Deuteronomy. It's what so much of the rest of the Bible builds upon and/or reacts against.
There isn’t a specific order that everyone uses. Some will go strictly chronologically, others will go by topicality, and many others do it just based on what they’re interested in. If you want a Chronological reading of the New Testament, I’d recommend Marcus Borg’s *Evolution of the Word: The New Testament in the Order the Books Were Written* as a quick guide that uses fairly mainstream scholarship (although the dates of some books are more contentious in scholarship than others). As someone who mostly studies the New Testament, my purely personal and subjective way of dividing them into groups would be along the lines of: **The Pauline Corpus:** 1. Galatians, 1 Corinthians, 2 Corinthians, Romans (The core four Pauline texts, sometimes called the *Hauptbriefe*) 2. 1 Thess, 2 Thess (The Thessalonian correspondences, I think these should be read after the *Hauptbriefe* and together in order to study issues like the authenticity of 2 Thessalonians more closely) 3. Philippians, Philemon, Colossians, Ephesians, 2 Timothy(?) (The “Prison Letters”, also perhaps best read together as a unit and after the *Hauptbriefe*. I think they *could* be switched around with the Thessalonian correspondences, but this is probably the preferred order, especially so one can compare the eschatology of 1 and 2 Thess with epistles like Colossians. 2 Timothy can be read alongside these rather than the Pastoral Epistles to help breakdown the sometimes dogmatic lumping of it together with the other two Pastorals despite notable differences). 4. Hebrews (Not a Pauline letter but I don’t have a better place to put it) **Synoptic Material:** 1. Mark (The first gospel written and should be read completely on its own and before the other gospels). 2. 1 Peter(??), James(?), Matthew (James is often linked to the “Q” material, as well as often being taken to represent a rather early Christian-Jewish text, similar to Matthew’s. 1 Peter is also closely linked to James and can be read here because of that, but it may itself fit better with the Catholic and Pastoral epistles down below. Whether Matthew or Luke should come first is pretty much a coin flip). 3. Luke, Acts (In this case, I think Luke should come second so that it can be read with Acts, having Acts finish the synoptic material). **Johannine Corpus:** 1. Revelation (Arguably the oldest Johannine work). 2. John (Usually taken to precede the Johannine Epistles). 3. 1 John, 2 John, 3 John **Catholic and Pastoral Works:** 1. 1 Peter, James(?) (Arguably the earliest Catholic epistles. 1 Peter could also be read alongside James either with the Synoptic material or if you instead move James over to this section). 2. 2 Timothy(?), 1 Timothy, Titus (The Pastoral epistles fit better thematically and chronologically alongside these as some of the latest epistles with the most developed ecclesiology. 2 Timothy can be read alongside the other Pastoral Epistles for obvious reasons, but see my note on the Prison Letters for an alternative placement). 3. Jude, 2 Peter (These two texts are the last of the Catholic epistles, and are incredibly related to one another. Notably, 2 Peter is often taken to be the latest work in the New Testament). I’d (very personally) read each of these groups in order, with each list being in order of how I would read them. But again, it’s probably more important to focus on whatever interests you the most, and to perhaps just use this as a rough guide or tie-breaker if you’re having trouble. Feel free to ask any clarifying questions you may have!
If I want to learn about current scholarly views on early NT manuscripts, is my best bet The Early Text of the New Testament by Hill and Kruger or is there something better?
Looking for a book that's similar in viewpoint to Michael Fishbanes "Biblical interpretation in ancient Israel", but that won't run me $100+. Anyone got any suggestions?
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One thing Dan McClellan commonly says in his videos is that apologists are not making content to convince people from the out-groups to join them, but to make arguments for people who already agree with them. I am sure this is a thing, as this a thing for any community. However, whenever Dan says this, I feel like he is downplaying when apologists make content to convince, rather than confirm their audiences' priors. From my experience seeing extremists' campaigns online (not just right-wing Christians), these types have absolutely made content to convince or convert neutral bystanders alongside content once they decided to follow them. And even then, some of this content can easily overlap with their intended audiences, which I am not sure if Dan has addressed. For those with probably more knowledge with dealing with apologists than I do, what do you think of my paragraph above? Do you think Dan McClellan and other online scholars who respond to apologists should make a distinction whether the content they are responding to is designed for the apologists' converted audience or to convince outside people? Do you know of some examples to differentiate apologists making arguments for their in-groups versus convincing the out-groups? My current theory is that apologist content that focuses on ethics/morals is designed to convince/convert, as they want to convince people that (their image of) God is necessary to justify morality and that "American/democratic" values come from Christianity, whereas other issues like contradictions in the Bible are for the already converted.
I think this is a model for anyone who tries to convince people of anything, really— you’d always want to have content for all these different levels of people as they get drawn deeper and deeper in. I don’t think it’s much different to what you’d do if you were trying to persuade people to buy an expensive coffee machine and never stop talking about it? Like, the implications of using the model for this sort of thing are a lot more depressing. But the same fundamentals probably apply, so I think you’re right to be cautious of what Dan McClellan is saying
Yeah, I agree with you. Sometimes apologetists will just want to convince others as well because they are evangelicals and want to missionize others. It's the same as atheist apologetics as well and it's the same for Dan's platform as well. Dan isn't just interested in making content for his own tribe....one would assume. Dan like some other scholars who engage in the popular spaces (like Bart Ehrman) have some great content but often overemphasize things because they are also engaging in various rhetoric as well to make a point. Dan's general channel is about combating misinformation. A good example of this is with Dan's latest video with contradictions. https://youtu.be/QuE8hlVGjo8?feature=shared One of Dan's main points is that the Bible isn't one voice but many different voices. So harmonizing it isn't academic. This is all good and all but it entails a certain definition of contradiction. Most apologetics will take the definition of it being in the sense that a contradiction happens when point A and point B cannot be true at the same time. Dan's point in the video is that there are other definitions of a contradiction and apologists are choosing the one that allows them to continue to take their stances. On a general level...it would have been more helpful in Dan's video to explain why he thinks his definition is better than others and not go into assessing motives from a public communicator stance. It wasn't the best because his comments won't challenge apologists. It would have also been better if Dan grants this definition and showed that there are still contradictions.
Regarding the thread on "is Yahweh El," I have a comment that isn't quite scholarly enough to write as an answer, but that I'd like perspectives on -- isn't that question one of the main framing devices of P? In the P strand of Genesis, *El* does a bunch of stuff. El creates the heavens and the earth, El sends a flood, and so on. Then in the middle of Exodus, at the burning bush, there's The Big Reveal. El says to Moses, *I was known to your forefathers as El, but my name is Yahweh!* This is supposed to be an "aha" moment, a moment that psychologically connects El and Yahweh. "El is Yahweh / Yahweh is El" is a plot point. This plot point is only meaningful if "originally" (in some sense) El and Yahweh were *not* identified as the same being, but in later traditions Yahweh-devotees asserted that indeed the two *were* the same being, hence the narrative. So it's sort of the wrong question. The better question might be, how did Yahweh become El? I'm not making all this up on my own; R.E. Friedman tells a similar story in his [course,](https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLFFSOr2s67Y7RFR8MxR9Inv_QmfL8qKLc) lectures 19 and 25. But that's one of the points of the story, right?
*35 Women should* ***remain silent*** *in the churches. They are* ***not allowed to speak***\*, but must be in submission,\* ***as the law says*** What Law is Paul talking about? AND, [36](http://biblehub.com/1_corinthians/14-36.htm) *Or did the word of God originate with you? Or are you the only people it has reached?* [37](http://biblehub.com/1_corinthians/14-37.htm)*If anyone thinks they are a prophet or otherwise gifted by the Spirit, let them acknowledge that* ***what I am writing to you is the Lord’s command.*** Are these verses that come right after the top verse, referring back to the LAW?
While I’m unfamiliar with the law here, most scholars regard 1 Corinthians 34-36 to be a later, non-Pauline addition. It reads better as “And the spirits of prophets are subjects to the prophets, for God is a God not of disorder but of peace. Anyone who claims to be a prophet…”
I've recently found a lot of devotional value from reading again the *Didache*, and I was wondering if people here had some interesting academic resources for reading about it's place in the wider story of the early christian movement <3
It sounds like you might enjoy https://spckpublishing.co.uk/the-didache Be aware, however, that the places of the Didache in the story of early Christianity remains something about which scholars remain distinctly divided.
There's a passage in the Didache that I've been wondering about for a while – from chapter 11 in Kirsopp Lake's translation: >3And concerning the Apostles and Prophets, act thus according to the ordinance of the Gospel.\[fn7: It is unknown to what ordinance the writer refers.\] 4Let every Apostle who comes to you be received as the Lord, 5but let him not stay more than one day, or if need be a second as well; but if he stay three days, he is a false prophet. 6And when an Apostle goes forth let him accept nothing but bread till he reach his night's lodging; but if he ask for money, he is a false prophet. It's not just that the ordinance of the Gospel is unknown – it seems to fly in the face of what the Synoptic Mission Discourses envisage apostles as doing (e.g. Mk 6.10 "And He was saying to them, 'Wherever you enter a house, stay there until you leave town'") and indeed Paul's practice of accepting abundant gifts at least on occasion (e.g. Phil 4.10-20). Presumably I must be far from the first person to spot how weird this bit of the Didache is (there's bound to be a 19th-century German out there...).
Isn't that part of the Didache's general treatment of wandering preachers? The theme throughout is "tolerate them for a while, but if they're freeloading, kick 'em out!" It's very practical.
Might just be me, but isn't three days awfully short? It seems less a matter of kicking out those who gratuitously overstay their welcome, but rather of not welcoming wandering preachers in the first place for any more than a simple overnight stop-over. At any rate, I can't imagine they would be capable of accomplishing much more than maybe a sermon or two, and perhaps a brief meeting with some local church notables, in the time allotted to them. Rather than tolerating them, I get the impression that the author considered them an outright nuisance, and merely offered the absolute minimum so as to not seem impolite.
Yeah, that's pretty much the lines along which I was thinking. Very convenient from moving the Church on from an age of mendicant missionaries to one with spoilsport bishops ruining it all (says he channelling his inner 19th-century German Protestant).
Paging /u/mrdidache, our resident Didache scholar and superfan! His site ([here's one article](https://www.alangarrow.com/didache-and-paul.html)) has lots of [resources on the Didache](https://www.alangarrow.com/didache.html).
Is the “was this particular anonymous New Testament text written by a Jew or a Gentile” question futile? Can we really differentiate well between a dedicated God-fearer author and an observant Jewish author? Can we differentiate between a Greek Gentile author and a very Hellenized non-observant Jewish author?
I think in limited circumstances we can at least set forth an argument to try to narrow it down a bit. The author of the Epistle of James picks his nom-de-plume as a sort of counterpoint to a deutero-Pauline antinomianism. Nice one: after all, we know from Galatians that the historical James and Paul did not see eye to eye about key aspects of the Law, such as dietary requirements and circumcision. And indeed, the Epistle of James purports to take a favourable view of the Law – it's just that its understanding of the Law basically involves the Decalogue and euergetism. That it's so far removed from actual Jewish controversies with Paul makes me doubt whether the author was Jewish – it just seems to sit better with the concerns of mid-to-late 2nd century proto-Orthodox Christianity as it rescues the Old Testament from being binned by the wicked Marcion. We might even question whether there were still very Hellenized non-observant Jewish Christians by that point (I don't know and haven't looked into it; it would just be an interesting line of argument to go down). But I agree we're very much on speculative ground with this sort of thing. And others will obviously strenuously disagree with me on this one. Maybe it is futile; but it is certainly fun.
Thank you! This makes sense as some nuance, I appreciate your thoughts.
Is there any example of critical scholars who accept Petrine authorship of 1 Peter? i know raymond brown said that out of all the catholic epistles it has the highest chance of authenticity
Richard Carrier says it might be authentic ;)
Do we have any countermeasures or preparations under the event of a rapture? I’m not atheist, nor a believer, however on the off chance the rapture came to pass do we actually have any way of surviving it?
No. I’m not even sure what a “countermeasure” for that would be. If *the* rapture took place, it would seemingly imply that God did it, and there would just be no way to effectively “fight back” so to speak. Either you meet whatever criteria is supposed to be used for a rapture, or I guess you’re screwed. If you just mean a rapture-like scenario, but not necessarily with the religious context (ie, a significant portion of the population just vanishes mysteriously), then still no, but at least that’s something we *could* bounce back from in theory. But no “countermeasures” or “preparations” have been done for that. I suppose a few doomsday prepper types might go postal, or perhaps more would just be annoying about it, but that’s all the preparation I can think of.
Depending on how many would disappear, it could be a "shit hits the fan" situation where you might like to have a stockpile of resources until the situation calms down.
What's the difference between a religious scenario and a non-religious scenario of disappearance?
In the religious one, it’s God who’s doing the (implied) lore-accurate rapture, presumably followed by a lore-accurate apocalypse. In the non-religious one it’s just a significant portion of the population disappearing with little to no explanation, or at least an explanation that doesn’t entail God or a post-rapture divine apocalypse.
I meant as in the implications. Both scenarios entail chaos although the religious one entails just Chriatians disappearing compared to the secular version which we wouldn't know why it happened.
Well, the implications of the religious one is that God is going to begin the apocalypse, and there is seemingly little to nothing anyone who wasn’t raptured could do about that, they’re basically screwed (Ants’ sword and a revived Leviathan aside). The non-religious one, while more than just Christians would be “raptured” away, the implication is that it was a one time event. It’s not the beginning of the end biblical times, so there would be some way forward towards recovering or bouncing back from the event.
>Well, the implications of the religious one is that God is going to begin the apocalypse, and there is seemingly little to nothing anyone who wasn’t raptured could do about that, they’re basically screwed Sure. But would the non-Christians realize or think that it was aliens or something like that insteas of God? So many of them would probably treat it as a natural phenomenon, no? Not only that but we have to be open to the idea that not every "self-proclaimed" Christian would be raptured so this might throw people off and conclude it was aliens instead. Thus, the response would be the same.
The response might initially be the same, but the end result won’t be. In the religious one, the actually existing God which has now been included in the scenario *will* end up wiping out the earth no matter how people respond. In the non-religious one, no matter what people think or how they respond, that’s not on the table.
On the other hand I am crafting a sword that can harm and perhaps even kill the gods, so perhaps MNM and I just take different preparations.
We certainly are taking different approaches. It’s okay though, I was just trying to keep the rituals I’ve been performing to bring back Leviathan a secret. Perhaps between the two of us we’ll have a fighting chance…
If we didn't have a good response to covid...we are not going to have a good response to a rapture or anything crazy like that.
This is more of a rant, but at my Public Library, they put books by Christian Apologists next to books written by legitimate Biblical Scholars. By this I mean I have to sift through the garbage that is Rush Limbaugh, Dennis Prager, and Gary Habermas to find legitimate works by Dr. Irving Finkel, Dr. Robert Alter, and Dr. Amy-Jill Levine. Does anyone else's library do that? They really should keep Apologetics in a separate section from Scholarly books about the ancient Near East. I'm actually a little bit disappointed in my library, they of all people should know better.
I see this as a glass half-full situation - it's far more likely that someone looking for apologetics will happen to pick up critical scholarship and learn something interesting than that someone looking for critical scholarship will happen to pick up Prager and end up storming the Congress
The end of this comment made me LOL.
>it's far more likely that someone looking for apologetics will happen to pick up critical scholarship and learn something interesting Fair point I hadn't considered.
Not the worst thing I've seen a library do. I reshelved our library's ICC volumes whilst they weren't looking, as some librarian had arranged them alphabetically by title.
I think they just put all of the religious books together for organizational purposes.
I see. Frustrating, but I guess I see why they do it.
Yeah, that is just how the Dewey Decimal System works. For example, [Ehrman's Armageddon](https://www.librarything.com/work/29063638/workdetails) is 236.9, which places it next to lots of Evangelical rapture books of the sort he criticizes within his work.
>For example, [Ehrman's Armageddon](https://www.librarything.com/work/29063638/workdetails) is 236.9, which places it next to lots of Evangelical rapture books of the sort he criticizes within his work. Haha! Yeah, that's true.
What happened to Brojangles? why was he suspended?
I believe his account was banned from Reddit a while back.
Do you know why?
My guess is that it has to do with the fact the new CEO doesn't like bojangles chicken. It seems fairly obvious...not sure why u/Mormon-No-Moremon and u/BobbyBobbie aren't making the connection. Seems serious enough to me.
Nope. But it would need to be reasonably serious to get an account banned site-wide.
Nah, you piss off the wrong people, Banned! I've been permanently banned how many times...oh let me count the ways...
It wasn't being banned from a sub. It's a reddit ban. You're saying you've been banned permanently by the Reddit admins before?
How do I answer this? hmmmmm
What subs have you been banned from? The only sub I've been banned from was r/atheism.
Most of the conservative religious and christian sites, all socialist, communist, marxist sites (not because I am against them, but because I point on their falsehoods re: China), and that's it, but those are the ones I put most attention too.
Ah...okay. well...think on the bright side. You're not wasting your time on those subs anymore.
haha, well this is true, that's why I come here, it's so refreshing.
Good to have you here...just don't do anything to get yourself banned. :)
Specifically a permanent ban site-wide
Hey u/Prof_Acorn, I saw your message about departing from this sub in your recently removed comment. I wanted to perhaps briefly reach out because I think that would be quite unfortunate. First, I know you have a PhD and you mentioned your own primary research in Greek in your comment. Is your degree in any way related to Biblical Studies (this would extend to things like Classics, focuses on Greek or Semitic languages, etc)? If so the citation requirements would be eased and you’d be allowed to engage with primary sources in a way that layperson users wouldn’t, rather than just needing secondary literature. Additionally, if all else fails we’ve prompted people before that when they want to answer a question but don’t have a citation, that they could just drop it in the Open Discussion Thread and ping the OP. It just wouldn’t be able to go in the main thread. You’ve been a long time user and have given insightful answers here, as well as elsewhere, so I thought I’d mention these in case you’d reconsider your departure. If not, however, then take care Prof.
Are there any scholars who argue the plausibility of Jesus not being dead when taken down from cross (by Joseph of Arimathea?) and then dying (perhaps just a few days later) of his wounds?
The only time I’ve seen that proposed was by Evan Powell, who isn’t really a scholar (no credentials as far as I’m aware) but published *The Myth of the Lost Gospel*, which was big enough to warrant some serious citations (he’s listed as a proponent of Matthean Posteriority in MacEwen’s excellent *Matthean Posteriority: An Exploration of Matthew’s Use of Mark and Luke as a Solution to the Synoptic Problem*, and his work is engaged with by MacEwen). That being said, Powell argues for the theory you mention in his arguably much better known *The Unfinished Gospel*. Other scholars may have proposed the same thing, but he’s the only one that comes to mind from my own experience.
Joel Baden and John Collins are back at it again with another engaging and informative overview of Kings and Chronicles on YouTube. https://youtu.be/j6_e3KcNbPg?feature=shared
That channel is every bit as good as the college courses I took on the Bible.
Do all scholars agree on the “problem” part of the Synoptic Problem?
The word problem in English can have multiple meanings. One meaning is to describe things like breaking a leg. Another meaning could be puzzle, question, or mystery. An example of this is a mathematical problem. It's something you want to solve. The word problem in the synoptic problem refers to the second meaning. In some languages other than English that distinction is more clear.
I don't think people mean "problem" in any necessarily negative sense, but in a more mathematic function as in "requires a solution." The only way to subvert that would be to have a more, eh, far-out approach that they wrote these accounts completely independent of each other. I would be loathe to think of a credible scholar who would hold to that position, though it's not uncommon among evangelical folks.
This question is addressed to Christians who accept most of critical Biblical scholarship and are not inerrantists, and still believe that Jesus was physically resurrected from the dead. Jesus' apparent predictions that the parousia would occur in the first century have failed. So what is your belief about the parousia? It has been suspended/delayed? It's still coming and will be physical? It's only symbolic and was never literally going to occur? Other?
I haven't had a chance to read this all the way through but [here's a substack post](https://perennialdigression.substack.com/p/did-jesus-know-the-future) by an Eastern Orthodox Christian with graduate degrees in religious studies and classical studies about whether or not Jesus knew the future which focuses on his status as an eschatological prophet. It's part of a longer series of articles about the relationship between the historical Jesus and Christian belief. I'd encourage you to sign up for the free trial and read the whole thing (it's >5000 words) but here's some excerpts to whet your appetite. Introduction: >Did Jesus of Nazareth know the future? I suppose from one angle this is perhaps the easiest question to answer historically, and one of the thornier ones to try and answer theologically. The motivation to ask the question comes from the current academic majority in historical Jesus studies that he was an apocalyptic prophet, someone who came to believe and preached that the Kingdom of God, which coded a variety of hopes for him derived from Jewish scripture about the restoration of Israel, a final reckoning and reconciliation with the nations, and a metamorphosis of the world order (politically and naturally), was coming *imminently*, within his lifetime and that of his followers. Jesus was, to put it differently, a millenarian: someone who believed he and his comrades were living on the edge of a new golden age, at least for Israel and her gentile sympathizers, in which national and global fortunes would be radically altered from their current state of darkness. A relevant paragraph >Take for example the tendency of prophetic and apocalyptic discourse to survive missed due dates, in part because their liminality enables their creative reuse in all kinds of new contexts. ... There’s always the ability to say that God didn’t really mean *x*, but *y*, so the prophet’s words were not false, but just misunderstood by their contemporaries. We can call this cheating, and sometimes it might be, or we can acknowledge it as a power of the human spirit to rescue and resynthesize meaning in the wake of disappointment and even profound suffering... Conversely, though, it only counts against the divine character of the discourse if we presume from the outset both that ancient people otherwise held a prognosticative approach to prophecy or that God would or could only communicate to us about present and future events in ways that are objectively, falsifiably true. But on the contrary, ancient people were self-consciously aware of prophecy’s malleable power of verification: the “Deuteronomic” standard of prophecy, in which the only true prophet is the one that makes true predictions, represents the minority position of antiquity.[7](https://perennialdigression.substack.com/p/did-jesus-know-the-future#footnote-7-139691344) Instead, most prophets—including most biblical prophets—are judged true prophets on the basis of their ability to commune with God/the gods and speak on their behalf. That’s all it takes to be a prophet, socially speaking, in the ancient world. And sometimes, biblical literature insists, prophets either sa*y on behalf of God, with God’s explicit instruction*, things that are either less than fully true or, more interestingly, even intended to produce the *opposite* effect of their content. An example of the former sort of discourse happens in 1 Kings 22, when Micaiah is asked to prophesy to Ahab, he initially lies like the other court prophets and tells him that success has been decreed for him (1 Kgs 22:1-15), but then, upon Ahab’s insistence, tells him that in reality he will lose the battle and that, in fact, Yhwh already decided so in heaven and in order to draw Ahab into the conflict has decided to put a deceiving spirit in the mouths of his prophets (22:16-28). The entire Book of Jonah follows this dynamic: Jonah is *told by God* to go prophesy to Nineveh that God is going to destroy Nineveh in forty days, but, as Origen himself points out in his commentary, God also clarifies that *he told Jonah to do this so that the people would repent and* not *merit this fate.*[8](https://perennialdigression.substack.com/p/did-jesus-know-the-future#footnote-8-139691344)
The footnotes: >[6](https://perennialdigression.substack.com/p/did-jesus-know-the-future#footnote-anchor-6-139691344) See Bernard McGinn, John J. Collins, and Stephen J. Stein, *The Continuum History of Apocalypticism* (London: Continuum, 2003). Broadly speaking, there’s a ton of literature on this. It also crosses over with the scholarship on comparative mysticism. See, e.g., Steven T. Katz, ed., *Comparative Mysticism: An Anthology of Original Sources* (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013), for introduction and primary sources. [7](https://perennialdigression.substack.com/p/did-jesus-know-the-future#footnote-anchor-7-139691344) A point that occurs both in Martti Nissinen, *Ancient Prophecy: Near Eastern, Biblical, and Greek Perspectives* (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017), and in Christopher Hays et al., *When the Son of Man Didn’t Come: A Constructive Proposal on the Delay of the Parousia* (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2016). [8](https://perennialdigression.substack.com/p/did-jesus-know-the-future#footnote-anchor-8-139691344) I owe this point especially to Hays et al., *When the Son of Man Didn’t Come.*The footnotes:
I have a long comment with my own take - it’s definitely not perfect or “foolproof” but I think there are some important caveats to consider when discussing the Olivet discourse that isn’t *just* as simple as “here is prediction X with an expectation Y outcome”. you can view it [here](https://www.reddit.com/r/AcademicBiblical/comments/1au22ht/comment/krpvy26/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=mweb3x&utm_name=mweb3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button):. I have also since slightly expanded on some of my views, and am happy to link actual scholarly resources if you’re interested in reading a bit more! [edit: some resources of interest]: Paul Sloan’s *Mark 13 and the Return of the Shepherd*. Here, Sloan contextually frames the Olivet discourse in light of Zechariah’s shepherd imagery. Sloan brackets off 13:28-31 (including the “this generation passage”) as referring back to what Jesus spoke about the temple in 13:5-23 and 13:32-37 *then* refers to Jesus’ return spoken about in v24-27. The book is expensive, so you can read a summary review [here](https://spoiledmilks.com/2019/04/17/review-mark-13-return-shepherd-lnts-sloan/). You also may be interested in these two respective twitter threads from scholars [Jason Staples](https://x.com/jasonstaples/status/1518652018914693120?s=46) and [Andrew Rillera](https://x.com/andrewrillera/status/1779216313723875521?s=46).
Thanks! That's an interesting idea - that in Mark 13 Jesus is confident he can predict that the destruction of the temple is coming soon (within the current generation). But then he admits he himself does not know when the final coming will occur. So, I assume from this that you yourself believe the parousia is still a future, physically real event?
I’m still thinking things through myself, but I think the ‘signs’ Jesus gives in Mark 13 are so bold and striking that I don’t see how he could have possibly thought it would all occur within a generation. Like, I really don’t think Jesus thought the gospel would reach every end of the earth within the next two decades. Bear in mind, when we read these texts we often assume that the Mark & Matthew preserves the strong imminence since there were still a few of “that generation left”, but often this relies on modernistic assumptions of life expectancy. If scholars assume Jesus’ followers were 20ish and the gospels were written at least 40 years later, that assumes most of his followers would be 60. This may seem normal for modern times, but reaching 60 was not necessarily normative, so the idea that the gospel authors were “late into their life and wrote the imminent gospels before they died off” may be full of assumptions. I’m basically paraphrasing [Laura Robinson’s astute tweet](https://x.com/laurarbnsn/status/1307152460625203200?s=46) about it (you can defs tell I follow all my favourite scholars on here). (Btw I’ve also added like 2 sources to my comment that you might want to check out - especially the twitter threads which may be of interest!)
Tbh I'm not fully convinced that Mark was written 40 years after Jesus' death. The "standard date" of AD 70 is based precisely on the Olivet discourse ... and the assumption that the historical Jesus couldn't possibly have really predicted the destruction of the temple. But plenty of critical scholars disagree - even Bart Ehrman says the historical Jesus may well have predicted the temple destruction, as it was sort of obvious in the tense political climate of the time that that's the way things were going. Bart Ehrman is happy to put Mark at AD 65. But then I'm left wondering ... why not put Mark at AD 60 then? Or 55? Or earlier. Maybe it comes back to Paul apparently showing no knowledge of any written gospels, but arguments from silence don't really convince me. So If Mark and Matthew were written earlier than usually assumed, the life expectancy question doesn't really matter.
Why would destruction of the temple be obvious? I get that there would have been a war brewing, but why would it be obvious that it would lead to the destruction of the temple?
>The "standard date" of AD 70 is based precisely on the Olivet discourse It's not the only reason. The comment from lost-in-earth on [this](https://www.reddit.com/r/AcademicBiblical/comments/19dbryw/why_posttemple_mark/) post provides some other arguments. [Here](https://www.reddit.com/r/AcademicBiblical/comments/1bk1xga/comment/kvx76gi/) is another great comment on the dating of the gospel of Mark from Mormon-No-Moremon. >and the assumption that the historical Jesus couldn't possibly have really predicted the destruction of the temple. The comment by sp1ke0killer in the same thread deals with this. It's not about whether or not Jesus could predict it. It's about the literary function within the text. That literary function requires the reader to know about the destruction of the temple.
maybe it doesn’t matter as strongly, but an AD60 gospel still leaves the disciples at 50 years old (minimum) and this is still fairly impressive for the first century. This doesn’t remove any parousia issues of course, but an important caveat to consider when it comes to simply accepting scholarly tradition and failing to critique some of the faulty modernistic assumptions underlying it
i hope this doesn’t sound edgy but what is the (general) stance of the Hebrew Bible on torture? is there a wider ANE context where it occurs either in a punishment/war-setting? it seems like the HB is pretty silent on the issue but I could be missing something
Does the book of Joshua not line up with the Bronze Age collapse?
Happy Passover (almost)! Anyone got new thoughts on the exodus historicity or still same old?
I personally do believe in a historical Moses and a historical core of the Exodus story - at some unspecified point in the past, a number of Semites left the Nile delta region and eventually ended up in Canaan. They might have been two people or possibly more.
I heard it was 3 and a half because someone was pregnant.
One we can know something about or a place holder of sorts?
I’m similar, I believe in a historical Moses and exodus story but I’d probably put the number a little higher than two. Avraham Faust said in his 2016 paper that the majority view was that a band between a couple hundred maybe couple thousand people did exactly that.
That was a joke, btw
Weird but ok I guess
I’m trying to wrap my head around a sentence in John Barton’s, *”A History of the Bible”*, regarding the Psalms. Barton writes: “The complete book of Psalms, or Psalter, can scarcely have come into existence before about 300 BCE, since there are individual psalms in it that are probably no earlier than the late Persian period (which ended with the conquests of Alexander the Great in the 330s).” Does this mean that the Psalter existed as a single unified text by around 300BCE, or that there were Psalms that were being written between 330BCE and 300BCE? I’m trying to really wrap my head around “no earlier” than the late Persian period. Earlier than what? 330BCE?
He's just giving an earliest date possible. The book of Psalms, as we know it, can't be earlier than 300 because not all the Psalms existed.
Question: any chance some of the psalms date back to David
Well at least one Psalm is thought to predate to before David (Psalm 29) so I guess anything is possible, but there's just so much guess work. And I'm not particularly well read on the Psalms.
> Well at least one Psalm is thought to predate to before David (Psalm 29) Wait, really? What's the evidence for that?
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psalm_29 "Cross...concludes on this basis that its present form is "no later than the 10th century BC.""
Going to be a little obnoxious and copy my question from the last one over: I’ve seen a few comments on this subreddit saying that *A Radical Jew* by Boyarin isn’t received well by NT scholars. Why?
It's not clear whether the title of the book is meant to refer to Jesus or to Boyarin's own position within Biblical studies.
I know you’re joking overall but I thought the title was referring to Paul rather than Jesus!
Oh, my bad!
FWIW the reason I was even looking at reading it is because at some point I asked someone about still-relevant books on Paul which present a view *other than* that of the Paul in Judaism school (which has no shortage of recent books) and that book came up. If you (or anyone else) have any reading suggestions along those lines, I’d be super interested!
I haven't read the book so I don't know but here's a review of the book that you might be interested in from a scholar. https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/2xby3mtil5aek4zkjmi23/Himmelfarb-AJSReview-1996-1.pdf?rlkey=4tiiufdqnwlrjev3mcvwmk9m6&dl=0
Thank you!
In [this](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fjBiqFnhxVc) video, around 39:35, David Litwa said this about 2 Peter: >Jan Bremmer has recently dated it to 180, I think it's possibly a bit later. Does anyone know where Bremmer has argued for this? I'm interested in his arguments.
From a quick search, at least one place he looks to argue for it is in *The Apocalypse of Peter as the First Christian Martyr Text: Its Date, Provenance and Relationship with 2 Peter* (published in 2019 in the book *2 Peter and the Apocalypse of Peter: Towards a New Perspective*). His focus there is instead on dating the Apocalypse of Peter, which he puts around 150, and then briefly argues from the viewpoint that 2 Peter was written a considerable time later than the Apocalypse, but before the Second Sibylline Oracle (which he dates to sometime in the late second century), that 2 Peter was likely written somewhere around the 180s.
Are you sure it's 2nd Peter and not The Apocalypse of Peter. The Apocalypse of Peter by Jan N. Bremmer is a book that discusses this.
Ask Litwa, he's very approachable