I’m on a break from blogging right now, but I just wanted to share my new short kiosk article on Religion and Brainwashing is out today. See https://infidels.org/kiosk/article/religion-as-undue-influence/

We are also featuring Price’s new book: https://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ISBN=1634312384/interinfid-20/

From reading the prevue Price seems to be fleshing out Fitzgerald’s thesis of many Christianities birthed one rather than one Jesus birthed many. See here at 50:35 for a few minutes:

Relating this to where I left off blogging, I think Tabor’s wrong where he posits a fundamental divide between Paul and James. I certainly agree with his main thesis/idea that we are finding stuff that disagrees with a penal substitution reading of the cross in the bloodless Didache and the epistle of James. But, where there is major continuity is if we read Tabor’s insights into the Didache and Epistle of James into the cross, which leaves us with a Moral Influence cross rather than a Penal Substitution one. I outline this in my three library articles:

1. Critique of Penal Substitution https://infidels.org/library/modern/a-critique-of-the-penal-substitution-interpretation-of-the-cross-of-christ/
2. Mythicism and Penal Substitution https://infidels.org/library/modern/jesus-mythicism/
3. Gospel of John https://infidels.org/library/modern/john-macdonald-justified-lie/

Why I don’t find Fitzgerald’s model probable is it doesn’t explain why the Jerusalem church of Peter and James received the authority it did. Paul wasn’t simply free to preach whatever he wanted about Jesus, but needed their approval. This makes more sense, following Tabor, if there was a caliphate for Jesus’s brother James leading the Jerusalem church.

BACK TO BRAKTIME, LOL