Philip Harland has been conducting a very interesting podcast series on Religions of the Ancient Mediterranean (feed). He has been successively going through the stages of Christianity and treated the history and theology and sources. By now he has reached the 5th section of the series which went off on a promising start and which intends to tackle the specific issue of the Historical Jesus.Another series on the historical Jesus is a veritable classic from Stanford, The Historical Jesus by Thomas Sheehan (feed), which is very thorough (some 14 hours solely on this subject). More in passing Dale Martin's course Introduction to New Testament History and Literature at Yale (feed). Martin tells in this course he also teaches a course on the Historical Jesus and we hope this one will one day be podcast as well.
More on Religions of the Ancient Mediterranean:
New Testament, history and literature,
Da Vinci Code,
Early Christianity podcasts.
3 comments:
"Historical Jesus"?!?
Just using this contra-historical oxymoron (demonstrated by the eminent late Oxford historian, James Parkes, The Conflict of the Church and the Synagogue) exposes your Christian-blinkered agenda--dependent upon 4th-century, gentile, Hellenist sources.
While scholars debate the provenance of the original accounts upon which the earliest extant (4th century, even fragments are post-135 C.E.), Roman gentile, Hellenist-redacted versions were based, there is not one fragment, not even one letter of the NT that derives DIRECTLY from the 1st-century Pharisee Jews who followed the Pharisee Ribi Yehoshua.
Historians like Parkes, et al., have demonstrated incontestably that 4th-century Roman Christianity was the 180° polar antithesis of 1st-century Judaism of ALL Pharisee Ribis. The earliest (post-135 C.E.) true Christians were viciously antinomian (ANTI-Torah), claiming to supersede and displace Torah, Judaism and ("spiritual) Israel and Jews. In soberest terms, ORIGINAL Christianity was anti-Torah from the start while DSS (viz., 4Q MMT) and ALL other Judaic documentation PROVE that ALL 1st-century Pharisees were PRO-Torah.
There is a mountain of historical Judaic information Christians have refused to deal with, at: www.netzarim.co.il (see, especially, their History Museum pages beginning with "30-99 C.E.").
Original Christianity = ANTI-Torah. Ribi Yehoshua and his Netzarim, like all other Pharisees, were PRO-Torah. Intractable contradiction.
Building a Roman image from Hellenist hearsay accounts, decades after the death of the 1st-century Pharisee Ribi, and after a forcible ouster, by Hellenist Roman gentiles, of his original Jewish followers (135 C.E., documented by Eusebius), based on writings of a Hellenist Jew excised as an apostate by the original Jewish followers (documented by Eusebius) is circular reasoning through gentile-Roman Hellenist lenses.
What the historical Pharisee Ribi taught is found not in the hearsay accounts of post-135 C.E. Hellenist Romans but, rather, in the Judaic descriptions of Pharisees and Pharisee Ribis of the period... in Dead Sea Scroll 4Q MMT (see Prof. Elisha Qimron), inter alia.
The question is, now that you've been informed, will you follow the authentic historical Pharisee Ribi? Or continue following the post-135 C.E. Roman-redacted antithesis—an idol?
Loved Martin's series of lectures on the New Testament & would instantly download anything he might come out with on the Historical Jesus. I'm currently listening to the Sheehan Historical Jesus & it's a bit of a slog. He spends a lot of time discussing method & sources, etc. and takes a long time to actually get to any discussion about Jesus. I did, however, enjoy some of his comments on Daniel, in particular, and how early writings influenced the apocalyptic interpretation of Jesus as Messiah.
Interesting, I had the same experience when I reran the Sheehan series. It is worth sitting it out until the end though
Anne
Post a Comment