(Part 2) Reddit mentions: The best new testament interpretation books

I can't say that I'm familiar with the writings about Romulus, Asclepius, or Hercules; however, the Gospels seem (at least in their final form) to be written and redacted by people who were trying to portray a somewhat historically accurate picture of Jesus of Nazareth. Whether they are wholly or in part actually historically accurate is a totally different question, which I won't delve into here. The genre of the Gospels is sometimes referred to as a subset of Greco-Roman Biography or of Ancient Biography or simply of ancient Lives (βίοι, bioi; vitae) writings.^1



Ancient Biography^2 | Gospels^2
---|---
In ancient biographies, the subject’s name is listed at the very beginning of the text or immediately following the prologue. | All four Gospels mention the name of their subject (Jesus) in or directly after the prologue (though they lack a formal title signaling that they are ancient biographies).
Authors of ancient biographies could present the subject’s words either chronologically or topically. They could also highlight one time period of the subject’s life over and above others (e.g., a particular battle, time in office, death, etc.).| The Gospels aren't too concerned with the chronology of Jesus' life/teaching. Each of the Gospels devotes a considerable amount of attention to Jesus’ death, which aligns with ancient biographers’ tendency to devote more attention to the events or attributes that they believed best portrayed their subject.
Authors of ancient biographies maintained a singular focus on the subject (unlike ancient historiographers, who could offer treatments of several key characters). The individual focused on in the biography was the subject of the verb more than any other character. | Jesus is the subject of the verb in the Gospels far more often than any other individual.
Ancient biographies were typically written in narrative form and typically ranged from 5,000–25,000 words. | The Gospels were written in narrative form and fall within the 5,000–25,000 word count common to ancient biographies.
Ancient biographies were often framed by the birth and death of the individual (although some could start at adulthood) and then filled out with various stories, speeches, or actions from the life of the subject. | Two of the Gospels (Matthew and Luke) open with the narration of Jesus’ birth, while the other two begin in His adult ministry.
Authors of ancient biographies predominantly highlighted specific character traits of their subjects through the inclusion of a subject’s words and deeds, rather than direct analysis or commentary. | The bulk of the narrative is composed of miracle stories, discourses on various topics, sayings, and parables that contribute to the author’s portrayal of Jesus.
Authors of ancient biographies often used a wide variety of both oral and written sources and had greater freedom than historiographers in deciding which information to include or exclude. | The Gospel writers seem to have used a variety of sources in composing their Gospels.
The authors of ancient biographies deployed a range of styles in their writing—from formal to more popular literature—and wrote in both serious and light tones. | The Gospels have a serious tone, and the writers predominantly used a simplistic or popular writing style.
Most ancient biographies cast their subject in a positive light. In some cases the portrayals seem too positive, which makes the characterization seem contrived or stereotypical. | The writers of the four Gospels cast Jesus in a positive light and exhibit the same intentions or purposes for writing as other authors of ancient biographies.

If I understand the Greco-Roman Biography genre correctly, they were normally intended by their authors to be historically factual, but often integrated with ideology (or in the case of the Gospels, theology). The important thing to note is that they didn't pen history or biography in the same way moderns do. They took certain liberties in their telling of the story of someone's life. We wouldn't always see that as a responsible way to do history, but they didn't have the same concept of historiography as us moderns. Furthermore, I'd like to quote at length from Brant Pitre^3 regarding Jesus quotes and gospel/historical Jesus research:

> First, with reference in particular to the sayings of Jesus, it is important to be precise about what I mean when I speak about the "historicity" or "historical plausibility."
> On the one hand, there are some readers of the Gospels who come to them looking for the ipsissima verb Jesu (the "exact words of Jesus"). As contemporary scholarship rightly insists, rarely, if ever, is it possible for us to reconstruct the exact words of Jesus.^4 Indeed, as even a cursory comparison of the sayings of Jesus in a Gospel synopsis shows, on many occasions, the evangelists themselves do not seem bent on giving us anything like the exact words of Jesus.^5 ... On the other hand, it is much more popular in the scholarly realm to come to the Gospels seeking the ipsissima vox Jesu, an expression sometimes used to refer to "the basic message of Jesus" or "the 'kind of thing' he usually or typically said."^6 Although at first glance this may seem like a more helpful formulation, upon further reflection, there are several problems with it. For one thing, "the exact voice of Jesus" (ipsissima vox Jesu) reflects the peculiarly modern preoccupation with exactitude (ipse), and hence smacks both of historical positivism and philosophical foundationalism. Moreover, the emphasis on the exact "voice" (vox) of Jesus is precisely the wrong emphasis. The image of a "voice" lends itself to a focus on how someone sounds (form), rather than what someone says (content), for a "voice" can be completely without substance or meaning... However, for historical research, a case can be made that it is not so much the form of Jesus' teaching that is most important, but the content or substance... Once again, even a quick glance at any Synopsis of the Gospels should show us that a representation of the exact forms of Jesus' sayings does not seem to have been a primary goal of the evangelists.^7 ...
> In this study, I will be pursuing what I would like to refer to as the substantia verb Jesu—i.e., the substance of the words of Jesus. In other words, I am interested in what he said and did and what it might have meant in a first-century Jewish context. Hence, whenever I conclude that a particular saying or action is historical or historically plausible, I am not saying that Jesus said exactly these words (ipsissima verba), nor am I just saying the text "sounds exactly like Jesus" (ipsissima vox). Instead, I am claiming that the basic substance or content of the teaching or action can be reasonably concluded as having originated with him.^8 That is what I mean by historical — no more, and no less.^9


[Edit: I'd like to say that /u/Nadarama and /u/o_kosmos have great points against what I've presented here. I wish I had time to give each the response it deserves, but right now I don't, so I apologize. What I will say is this: the view I've presented is one popular theory among scholars, but is not without its problems. If I understand correctly, its something of a majority view, but I'm open to being corrected on that. Its certainly no "scholarly consensus," if such a thing can be found.]

***

1. See David Aune, Greco-Roman Literature and the New Testament: Selected Forms and Genres (Atlanta: SBL, 1988), 107 and Burridge, R. A. “Gospel: Genre” in Dictionary of Jesus and the Gospels Edited by Joel B. Green, Jeannine K. Brown, and Nicholas Perrin (Downers Grove, IL: IVP Academic, 2013), 335-343.
   
2. Adapted from Edward T. Wright, “Ancient Biography,” ed. John D. Barry et al., The Lexham Bible Dictionary (Bellingham, WA: Lexham Press, 2016).
   
3. Brant Pitre, Jesus and the Last Supper (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2015), 46-47.
   
4. E.g., Geza Vermes, Jesus in His Jewish Context (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2003), 74.
   
5. Emphasis mine
   
6. Meier, A Marginal Jew, 1:174
   
7. Emphasis mine
   
8. Emphasis mine
   
9. See Theissen and Winter, The Quest for the Plausible Jesus (Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 2002), 197-99.

You asked why, not for a deductive argument proving the truth of our answers.


If you have intellectual worries about God, feel free to browse the various categories of responses to questions concerning His existence.


If you have doubts about Jesus, only you can answer those for yourself. We believe that He's divine and approaches us all relationally. Read a Gospel or two (John and Mark are my favorites). Get to know the story and seriously ask yourself if this Christ person, as character, speaks to you in any way.


NT Wright is a pretty well regarded orthodox Christian scholar by both Christians and Non-Christians, so you may want to read some of his work if you have questions to address about the truth of this character. Who Was Jesus? and Simply Jesus may help you.


If you find any of that compelling and wish to dig into some Christian theology of Jesus, a couple excellent books which portray my personal take fairly well are King Jesus Gospel and Start Here.

And, of course, if you wish merely to approach the idea of Christianity in general, C.S. Lewis famously asserted many fundamentals in his classic Mere Christianity.


If you want me to assert the truth Christianity by disproving all other religions, I will not. I believe that religion is, fundamentally, a search for the divine or God. If divine truth exists, I would expect it to be echoed throughout the mythic language of all attempts to know Him (religions). Conversely, I assert the goodness and truth of Jesus Christ, who I see as central, and anything else that matters falls naturally into place.

Well, since I don't know off hand, and therefore can't be very helpful, I'll let Drs. Mounce, Verbrugge, and Archer help you out.

There are a couple words for fear in the Bible.^1

> Old Testament

• yare: This is a verb used 317 times in the Bible in two different senses.
  
  > A. Specifically used in reference to fear after something is done wrong. This is not always fear of God, but it is in Genesis 3:10. (References for places this is translated are here).
  
  > B. Fear as reverence and worship. This is the proper response to God, specifically in regard to keeping His commands. Paralleling this idea with the Hebrew concept of wisdom as "skillful living," we can see that the proper response to God is reverence and worship in keeping His commands. This is particularly enlightening in Proverbs and Ecclesiastes. (References can be seen here).
  
  > C. Dr. Gleason Archer^2 goes more in depth when he speaks of the five general categories of usage.
  
  > 1. The emotion of fear. (References)
  
  > 2. The intellectual anticipation of evil without emphasis upon the emotional reaction. (References)
  
  > 3. Reverence or awe. (References)
  
  > 4. Righteous behavior or piety. (References)
  
  > 5. Formal religious worship. (References)
  
  > In relating fear with God, Dr. Archer says this: "The 'God-fearer' will implement his fear in practical righteousness or piety. Job, as a God fearer, avoids evil (Job 1:1). In Ps. 128:1 the 'fearer' of the Lord walks in His ways. The fearers of the Lord may be those whose particular piety is evidenced by a response to God's message. The 'fearer' of God is contrasted with the wicked (Eccl. 8:13). It is desired that office holders be fearers of God (Neh. 7:2). Blessings are provided for fearers of God: happiness (i.e. 'blessed'; Ps. 112:1), goodness from God (Ps. 31:19), provision of needs (Ps. 34:9), protection (Ps. 33:18-19), overshadowing mercy (i.e. hesed; Ps. 103:11), and a promise of fulfilled desires (Ps. 145:19).
  
  > I think Dr. Mounce sums up the Old Testament "fear of God" by saying: "God appears as the most common object of the verb, and the context determines whether the term is best understood as terror or awe/reverence. The polarity of this term is vividly demonstrated in Jonah 1, where the terror of the sailors (Jon. 1:5; Jon. 1:10) turns to worship after the storm is calmed (v.16). . . . In this sense, fear is a positive queality and something to be pursued in the life of the believer. Ultimately, our fear is to be transformed into worship when its right and proper object is God."
  
  So basically, in the OT, fearing God as fear is connected with His judgment, and fearing God as reverence and worship is connected to His mercy, and they should both be present and cause us to follow His commands.
  
  I'll edit in the New Testament word study later, I'm going to bed for now.

I agree with most of what you're saying, but again... if you've consistently failed to make your way through the Bible year after year due to a certain part of the OT, then that's become a hindrance to the progress of your faith and needs to be addressed.

I really believe that investing the time into supplementing spiritual scripture reading with academic study is worth it's weight in gold as far as understanding the Bible as a whole. The text we used in our class: The New Testament: A Student's Introduction does a great job of explaining the cultural and historical connections and themes between the OT and NT. You can get the 2011 version used for under 20 dollars.

Another thing that's worked really well for me is listening to academically oriented audio on my way to work or at lunch as a supplement to my Bible reading. For me, it helps build a solid conceptual framework I can take with me into the Gospels for more clarity and understanding... plus it's just less dry, it keeps it more interesting and fun. There's the: Open Yale course, Intro to the NT History and Literature which can be downloaded as mp3 of watched on YouTube. Here is a treasure trove list of free audio resources for academic and theological Bible study.

For the New Testament, all of Bart Ehrman's books are good in that they are good overviews of mainstram critical scholarship and he writes in a style that's easy to follow and understand, but which isn't condescending.

Some others I would recommend would be John Dominic Crossan, Geza Vermes and (for a mythicist perspective) Robert M. Price's The Christ-Myth Theory and its Problems and pretty much anything by Richard Carrier.

Also, just to recommend a good website with lots of good links and resources Early Christian Writings is very good.

I've been reading a book lately, Kingdom, Grace, Judgment: Paradox, Outrage, and Vindication in the Parables of Jesus and I highly recommend it. The parables are picked over a lot, but we don't always think about why Jesus used them. At first glance, we might say that he's using these earthy analogies to make heavenly things easier to understand, but the text says the exact opposite: that he's purposely obfuscating, that ONLY those who have ears to hear will understand, that people will see and not perceive. The parables are not just delivering information to their listeners- they are revealing the hearts of the listener.

Not to go all Stanley Fish on you here, but it's as though Jesus is a reader-response critic who is just as concerned with what the parable says about the person who hears it as he is with the subject matter itself.

Other ideas I found interesting: in the parable of the sower, we're told that the seed is the "word of God", and Capon argues that the synoptics can't be unaware of John's ideas about Jesus being the Word of God. So it's Jesus that gets sown in the hearts of all men, and the parable is not just a morality play on whether "the Bible says it, I believe it, that settles it" or not.

Look up the Big Omission. There's a huge chunk that is only found in Mark and Matthew that Luke knows nothing about. That's because there was an "original Mark," that Luke copied from, and a "longer Mark" that Matthew copied from.

Basically, Mark 6:45-8:26 was not part of the original GMark.

We know this not just because Luke didn't copy from it, but because it has a number of bizarre features that don't match the rest of Mark. These include:

1. Ignorance of the geographic of the Holy Land;
   
2. Jesus engages in "magical manipulation" while performing miracles, like groaning and using spit and dirt;
   
3. Duplications of miracles, like the water miracles and the mass feedings; and
   
4. It breaks up the elegant "mirrored" design of original Mark, which has a fascinating "sandwiching and bracketing" framework, which scholars call "chiasms," and the entire Gospel is mirrored around a central event, and events in the first half are mirrored in the last half.
   
   There's a great book called Decoding Mark that I encourage everyone to read: http://www.amazon.com/Decoding-Mark-John-Dart/dp/B003GAN1RA
   
   A quick review: http://michaelturton2.blogspot.ca/2005/02/secret-mark-marks-secrets-decoding.html
   
   

Fuentes is good for some things, like fighting SJW's. He's well-meaning when he defends his Catholic faith, but definitely isn't that competent at it. He's more well-read on political philosophers (he even states this in his earlier vids), so like many, many young Catholics he has a lot to learn about his face on a philosophical and theological standpoint to better understand and defend it. This is not to say that he isn't worth listening to, just to be aware of his strengths and what he needs to work on (of course what's stated above is my own observation; you may think differently).

I haven't read every comment directed to you, but if it hasn't been listed I'd say look at these to become a staple in your "spiritual warfare toolbox":

• Purchase a rosary. I got mine at ruggedrosary.com. Learn how to say the rosary and try to incorporate it every week for a month then daily the next (like a spiritual/praying workout). Get it blessed by your local priest.
  
• Purchase a scapular (various colors means different things). Get it blessed by your local priest.
  
  Books/Lit (if you have the funds):
  
  
• Bible (I suggest the Douay-Rheims or Knox translation)
  
• Baltimore Catechism
  
• The Last Superstition by Ed Feser
  
  Also, read/listen to stories about atheists who turned Catholic:
  
  
• John C. Wright
  
• Leah Libresco
  
• Holly Ordway
  
• Jennifer Fulwiler

This is a great question, and a very relevant one as you are recognizing. The Four Views book already mentioned is probably a great place to start (I haven't read that one specifically, but other "four views" books are great for capturing the different perspectives on a particular issue).

I would also recommend "In God's Time" by Craig Hill. He does a good job of looking at many of the passages often cited by those with a fundamentalist view, and putting them in their proper context (examining genre, cultural context, language issues, etc).

http://www.amazon.com/In-Gods-Time-Bible-Future/dp/0802860907

I'll give you my answers, since they're definitely going to be considerably different, at the very least, from the ones you'll get from anyone else around here.

>Mainly, I'm interested in hearing the Protestant criticisms of Catholicism, and Catholic criticism of Protestantism.

I can't really speak to this one, as I'm not really either of those. There are Catholics that I would deem to be "true Christians" (e.g. Gustavo Gutiérrez, Óscar Romero, John Dominic Crossan) and there are Protestants that I'd refer to as the same (e.g. Jürgen Moltmann, Reinhold Neibhur, Martin Luther King, Jr.). Heck, I'd even call people who don't profess to follow Jesus yet act in a Christlike manner to be "true Christians" (e.g. Mohandas Gandhi, Ernst Bloch, Slavoj Žižek). I'm much less concerned about one's theology than I am about one's praxis.

>How do you view the "lukewarm" Christians mentioned in the Bible?

You're talking about the ekklesia in Laodicea in Revelation 3:15-16, right?:

>I know your works; you are neither cold nor hot. I wish that you were either cold or hot. So, because you are lukewarm, and neither cold nor hot, I am about to spit you out of my mouth.

These are Christians that refuse to take a side. James Cone has a good quote that I tend to go back to for those "Christians" that refuse to take a side:
>"Either God is identified with the oppressed to the point that their experience becomes God's experience, or God is a God of racism."

One could substitute any form of hierarchy for Cone's "racism" in that quote; race for him is an ontological symbol of oppression. For God to be a god of liberation (as Jesus' God was/ is) He/She must have an alignment with the oppressed. He cannot be neutral, for neutrality to injustices privileges the status quo. And just as God must take a side, so must Her/His followers. That's what the lukewarm Christians in Laodicea were doing - refusing to take a side. They were unwilling, perhaps afraid to be "hot," and thus were no better than the "cold" rest of the world. Revelation's God is saddened by Her/His followers refusing to take a stand - lukewarm is equivalent to cold, neutrality is equivalent to oppression, but it is much easier to judge active agents of oppression than its passive agents.

> How do you feel about the divide on social and scientific issues - where it seems Catholics are generally more progressive, and Protestants are generally more conservative?

I don't really have a great answer for the science one. If you believe in a Creator (I don't ), and you believe that that Creator is "good," then you should believe that everything that that Creator endowed you with, including the ability to reason, is likewise "good." Thus, denying scientific discoveries and theories because they go against a literal reading of a 2500+ year-old book is spitting on your Creator's gifts to you.

As far as "social issues" go, it should be noted that the metanarrative of the Bible is inherently a political story, one of liberation. Whether God is guaranteeing a "promised land" to slaves in Egypt or guaranteeing that He/She will bring Her/His people home from exile, the authors are making statements against empires. When Mark opens his Gospel with "The beginning of the good news of Jesus Christ, the Son of God," he's making a direct statement against Caesar Augustus, who was said to be the bringer of evangelion ("good news") and whose full imperial name included the phrase Divi Filius ("Son of the Divine/ Son of God.") The anointed (Christos) son of god that brings the good news was not the Emperor of the known world, but a Jewish peasant bastard from rebellious Galilee. He went on a mission preaching a "Kingdom of God" (as opposed to an "Empire of Rome?") where "the last will be first and the first will be last." He attacked the center of social/political/religious/economic power of Judea, the Temple of Jerusalem, and was promptly executed by Rome with a method saved for political radicals. But then, the scandal! He was resurrected, denying the ultimacy of Rome's power and Rome's ideology, ensuring via promise that the "Kingdom of God" was something that can be achieved.

Liberation is the heart of Jesus' evangelion. Thus, as far as social (and economic. Especially economic!) issues are concerned, the God that Jesus professed will always be on the side of the oppressed, not that of the oppressors, for that would be the demesne of the God that named Caesar "Augustus." I hesitate to even affirm "progressivism" as the Christian God's ideology de jure; it's more radical than that. Jesus completely subverts what the Romans considered to be "reality" by presenting a Kingdom of God free of death (oppression). He revealed society's constructed nature, denied the invalid claims to ultimacy (because nothing man-made can truly be "ultimate"), and presented an alternative. Whereas Empire causes oh so many to fall into non-being, Jesus instilled his followers with the courage to be.
>And lastly, why do you think you've found the most correct version of Christianity?

Most correct? I hesitate to ever claim superlatives, but I am confident that my understanding of Christianity is much closer to Jesus' religious beliefs than the abomination of "mainstream" Christianity is. Why, though? Because I make every effort to read the Gospel with the eyes of a first-century Jewish peasant - Jesus' original followers and original audience. Or, failing that, I read it through the eyes of oppressed classes, after all, they certainly have a hermeneutical privilege. I read the Bible unpolluted by Plato's doctrine of the eternal soul or by the obscenity that is Constantine's in hoc signo vinces. I divorce myself from the assumptions of "nature" that our society makes, just as Jesus himself did. I reject the inherently flawed assumptions about a "just world" and those that affirm the powers-that-be as infallible.

What does that leave me with? Hope. Energization against an unjust world because Christ's gospel screams that there shall be a real, just world that we can bring about. Not just can, but must, for
>"Those who hope in Christ can no longer put up with reality as it is, but begin to suffer under it, to contradict it. Peace with God means conflict with the world, for the goad of the promised future stabs inexorably into the flesh of every unfulfilled present.".

So, am I confident that I've "found the most correct version of Christianity?" No, and I don't think that that's possible. But I have been to the mountaintop, I have seen the Promised Land, and I know the Kingdom of God. Exegesis, coupled with the hermeneutic of the oppressed, offers no reasonable alternative "Christianity" to the gospel of liberation. Sadly, instead of this "bottom-up" model, Christianity has long been co-opted by "top-downers" more interested in either explicitly imposing their will further upon the downtrodden or simply pushing their legitimate grievances aside in favor of otherworldliness. But again, God cannot be neutral, and what use is a God on the side of the powerful? Why let them continue to stack the deck, to stack their team? The only God worth believing in is the God who evens the score, who stands on the side of true (distributive, not retributive) justice, the God who killed all oppression and bought us liberation at Calvary.

So I can't answer this very well, but you should look at Frances Young, a really trustworthy and renowned patristics scholar, who recently examined these issues in a series of lectures, Construing the Cross:

> This book reconsiders ways in which the cross of Christ was construed before "atonement theories" narrowed the categories. The "typology" of Passover is explored as probably the very first way in which Christians came to understand the passion. The use of sacrificial imagery is re-examined. The significance of identifying the cross with the Tree of Life is traced across the centuries into medieval times, along with other surprising links with the Eden narrative. The validity of seeking imaginative insights to grasp what the cross signifies is given theological consideration in a chapter that moves into literary and liturgical reflections and is punctuated with cruciform poems. The overall outcome is a quite paradoxical focus, not on death, but on life.

The N. T. Wright Christian Origins and the Question of God series are all $4.99 each. If you purchased the print copies at some time in the past, they are only $2.99. Whether you love or hate Wright, all four of these are excellent and a great value at a mere $5.

New Testament People God

Jesus Victory of God

Resurrection Son of God

Paul and the Faithfulness of God: Two Book Set, Biggest bang for your buck.

I recommend the Dalai Lama's The Good Heart: A Buddhist Perspective on the Teachings of Jesus, in which he discusses certain verses from the Gospels. 😊

Anachronistic readings define the Quest of the Historical Jesus.

Since the great Albert Schweitzer penned The Quest of the Historical Jesus over a century ago, it's become almost a running joke that all researchers into the question find their own image reflected in Jesus. The Quest really has no existence independently of presentism, because of what Jesus represents, at least to the Western world. In the poetic words of Schweitzer:

>This bias leads it to project back into history what belongs to our own time, the eager struggle of the modern religious spirit with the spirit of Jesus, and seek in history justification and authority for its beginnings. The consequence is that it creates the historical Jesus in its own image... (p 312)

We like to think we've gotten past this to some degree, or at least that we're making real progress, with the oh so Jewish Jesus of the third quest. One can scarcely pick up a volume on the subject without having "JESUS WAS JEWISH!" thrown in your face within the first few pages. Meier, The Present State of the Third Quest, 1999, is thoroughly typical in this regard for a quick and ready example. We've become more aware of the past because Jesus is the most Jewishy Jewish guy there ever was!

All of this is nonsense, of course. The Jewishness of Jesus enjoys a it's current status as much because of post-holocaust guilt as it does historical reconstruction. Not to say that Jesus wasn't Jewish, of course he was. But what role is that assigned in our reconstruction? For example, Crossan describes Jesus as a kind of wandering, cynic-like sage. Except this is always qualified--a Jewish cynic-like sage. But he isn't terribly Jewish in any sense that it's traditionally understood. The qualifier (I pick on Crossan, but he belongs to a long list) is added because of the concerns of the present, not the fruits of his inquiry.

Of course, everyone thinks they have made progress, and those sympathetic to them perhaps a bit, but are quick to quote Schweitzer when answering their opponents.

A really nice discussion of this is found in Arnal's The Symbolic Jesus.

The fundamental problem with the study of the earliest period of Christianity (up until about 120 CE) is that our sources are, in a fundamental sense, sermons presented as narrative. I'm increasingly unsure that they can have a meaning independent of the present. In some sense this is true of all ancient literature, but I mean it in a more pessimistic sense here. I'm increasingly convinced that there are no tools we can bring to bear on the material that can withstand the whim of the exegete.

I'm not even sure if I've said anything worthwhile here, or if I'm just using the medium to ramble idly.

"on David Aune, it is surely the best commentary on Revelation"


You wrote 'best' but you probably meant 'longest' which is different


I like a lot of Aune's content, but Ian Paul has a pretty good takedown of Aune's general hypothesis and methodological assumptions, although I can't really enthusiastically endorse Ian Paul's counter-hypothesis

According to the consensus of scholars today, A Marginal Jew by John P. Meier, is considered to be the best historical account of Jesus to date.

The link I provided is to volume 2 of the series which is the one most focused on Jesus' life. You may be able to find this book through an interlibrary loan.

This was answered over at /r/AcademicBiblical if you'd like to verify my information.

Dude. I'm not a religious person. I'm not trying to convince you that the bible is real. But the existence of Jesus as an actual person is pretty well agreed upon by virtually every historian who has researched the time period. That's not to say they think he committed miracles or any of that stuff, just that there was a person by the name of Jesus of Nazareth at that time period who was renowned enough to be written about by numerous contemporaries.

Here's a book on the topic.

Here's another one.

And another one.

And another one...

There is a shitload of research on the topic. If you actually google'd it, like I recommended, you'd find a mountain of information.

You were wrong about something on the internet. It's not a big deal.

35 years ago, the Jesus Seminar was formed to determine if people could pull out from the gospels things Jesus really said and did, as opposed to simply what the gospels reported.

The results of their work were published in the Acts of Jesus. It's been a while since I read it, but I do believe it mostly relies on the canonical gospels, though I seem to remember maybe something from the Gospel of Peter. And of course, the theoretical lost Gospel of Q (which is pulled from Luke and Matthew. That entire thing is fascinating to dissect, both in terms of how it was posited and how it is derived.)

It is an interesting idea. The methodology can be questioned, but the quest to figure out what might actually have been his words and what was added later is a good one. To tease out the man from the myth.

Whether that is possible, frankly, I don't know. For Jesus to have become the focal point for so many people so quickly indicates that the things he taught had to be something revolutionary. Of course he would be co-opted by people seeking power (I'm looking at you, Paul).

In other words, it is likely that that particular illustration (the man who went off to get the kingship and when he returned, ordered the death of those who didn't want him) likely was not said by Jesus.

Then again, there's no way we can be sure.

He probably did

He probably didn't