The Secular Frontier

This essay is a general overview of synagogue life shaping the Jesus story. Runesson writes: These Jewish institutions, which were ubiquitous in the ancient Mediterranean world and, importantly, can be reconstructed based on sources both beyond and w ... Read Article

Rollens’ essay builds on the last one I talked about from Kloppenborg that examines the notion of the scribe in constructing the Jesus tradition.  She notes this argument only really pertains to the Q document, as the Gospels and Acts reflect a mor ... Read Article

John Kloppenborg is one of the foremost experts on the "Q" source, the material common to Matthew and Luke that does not come from Mark. In this essay he tries to get beyond the notion of Jesus as the great genius to the idea that the gospel writings eme ... Read Article

The passage I would like to highlight in Whitlock's essay is: Historical Jesus scholarship must value multiple pieces without synthesis. We are not obligated to provide a complete, unified picture of Jesus. Mitzi Smith and Yung Suk Kim in Toward Decen ... Read Article

This chapter was an occasion for me to reflect on Chartism and unjust death. Crossley notes for the Chartist interpretation of Jesus: Jesus’s death was regularly understood as an example of the unjust end that always awaits the benevolent reformer, ... Read Article

A couple of passages stood out to me in this essay. Firstly, characterizing Augustine's thoughts on time: In that latter masterwork, time emerged as the great divide between humans—intrinsically time-bound and, thus, caught up in confounding proble ... Read Article

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bleNU4mAJqg&t ... Read Article

Religious dispositions are not so much viewed as one’s subjective set of beliefs for the faithful but rather the way they experience the world, like how the world might appear/present itself to a schizophrenic in a conspiracy saturated way.  The re ... Read Article

One of the great underreported sins of New Testament scholarship is the problem that, unless we're told by the writers, there is no way to tell whether specific interpretive units like the lord's supper or the empty tomb have their origins as historical m ... Read Article

Some things mythicists point to is the lack of detail about Jesus in Paul, and Mark as allegorical literature. This, though, needs to be qualified in a way that favors historicity, not mythicism. Paul says he resolved to know nothing among you but Chris ... Read Article

Keith gives an interesting example of how even if we consider something to be true of Jesus, there is so much that we still don't know. He writes: If I could indict atomistic approaches to the historical Jesus for one thing, it would be that their at ... Read Article

Bond stresses the difficulty in trying to distill historical information about Jesus from the gospels. She writes: Thus the many chreiai in the Gospels are not primarily repositories of oral tradition, but fundamentally literary creations, crafted to ... Read Article

One of the interesting things about this essay is some of the anti-Jewish overtones in the gospels may stem from literary need born out of the attempt to present universal saving by Jesus. Reinhartz writes: (1) Although the Four Gospels vary with res ... Read Article

Blogging my way through the anthology, Moxnes has the first essay. One tidbit I'd like to highlight is how Jesus challenges societal norms. Moxnes writes: Jesus is calling young men to follow him and leave the patriarchal household and their father ... Read Article

My new Philosophy for Kids book is out today. Please pick up a copy! ... Read Article

I just got my copy with a whopping 32 essays in it so I will be blogging about the volume for a while. (2) The Next Quest For The Historical Jesus: Reception History by Halvor Moxnes (3) The Next Quest For The Historical Jesus: Beyond The Jewish ... Read Article

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0qTwBn4vh1o If you're intellectually impatient like me, just start watching at 47:00 when they start to stretch out their hands to cast a magic spell. That the faith community is backing Trump is wonderful. If Trump ... Read Article

"In Leibniz's sense, a ratio sufficiens, a sufficient reason, isn't at all a ground capable of supporting a being so that it doesn't straightaway fall into nothing. A sufficient reason is one that reaches and offers to beings that which puts them in the ... Read Article

Previous Posts in this Series: (1/4) Christianity, A Question of Reasoning: The Continental/Analytic Philosophy Divide (Part 2 of 4) Christianity, A Question of Reasoning: The Continental/Analytic Philosophy Divide (Part 3/4, AFTERWORD) Christian ... Read Article

It's now more mainstream to acknowledge that the NT writers were rewriting OT scripture to flesh out the biography of Jesus, and so we have Mark create his crucifixion narrative out of Psalms and Isaiah since Paul doesn't record any details. Matthew prese ... Read Article

Trump is polling well with conservative Christians but is really trying to overcome the problem that conservative Christians often stay at home on election day. ... Read Article

FOR THE SHORT INDEX OF MY PHILOSOPHY POSTS, SEE: The Joy of Philosophy (Postscript and Poetry) Heraclius: “physis kryptesthai philei” (Being/The Nature of things loves to hide) Hegel, in his inaugural address, Heidelberg, 1816, says “The ... Read Article

I've been talking about how Paul introduced the Lord's Supper into the Jesus movement tradition as miming Jesus did alone in prison that represented a ritual meal for future Christians. The importance of Paul having this vision is it solidifies the idea ... Read Article

For the first post in this series, see HERE For the second post in this series, see HERE (Appendix) Christianity, A Question of Reasoning: The Christ Myth Theory and the Lord’s Supper (1/2) Does Literary Imitation Suggest Christ Never Existed? ... Read Article

For my previous post see HERE! For the Afterword in this series CLICK HERE (Appendix) Christianity, A Question of Reasoning: The Christ Myth Theory and the Lord’s Supper (1/2) Does Literary Imitation Suggest Christ Never Existed? Does Litera ... Read Article