Jeffrey Gibson

He's not??? Have you read his book?

Jeffrey

Toto

I got about half way though the book, then had a flood in my apartment and have lost track of it, but I keep meaning to get back to it.

I do not recall that Jay relies on a textual analysis of the gospels. He talks about his own ethnic background, his wife, the evolution of story lines in film, etc. It's quite fascinating, and not standard NT fare. Some of it seems outlandlish until he explains himself, after which it might still be outlandish, but at least you know where he's coming from.

Antipope Innocent II

You may not be able to tell a book by its cover (though I do like Picasso), but you can sometimes tell a bit about it from the author’s website. In this case I went to Jay’s site a few months ago and found the following statements:

Actually, in the Gospel of John the woman who anoints Jesus’ feet is Mary of Bethany. I’m guessing Jay has some reason for conflating them, after all Gregory the Great did, but most scholars agree that they are two separate people. Kooky theorists like “Margaret Starbird” – one of the people Dan Brown used in his “research” for his woeful The Da Vinci Code – like to conflate them. That seems to be largely so they can add the bits in the gospels about Mary of Bethany to pad out Mary Magdalene’s rather thin resume.

The Gospel of John also makes the point that Mary anointed Jesus with spikenard, not oil (John 12:1-8). So in the first sentence of his blurb we already have two errors or, at least, an error and a highly dubious conflation. We aren’t off to a great start.

If she had (i) been a male, (ii) been a priest, (iii) used oil and (iv) anointed his head and not his feet, then this would be equivalent to the anointing of the kings of Israel. But it seems a woman anointing someone’s feet with something that isn’t oil is close enough for Jay. Near enough is good enough in the world of pseudo scholarship after all. Books like Holy Blood Holy Grail and Chariots of the Gods use this tried and true “methodology” all the time and look where it got their authors.

Sure it does. So long as you completely ignore the fact that this anointing is nothing like the anointing of Jewish kings, that’s a perfectly reasonable assumption to make.

A number of women have the task of cleaning his body, since that’s a role for Jewish women close to the deceased when anyone dies. Does this mean they were all priestesses?

Yes – an episode that ends with the rather unedifying detail that she will be “made male” to overcome her awful handicap of being a woman. That’s a detail that the more feminist Magdalene Obsessives like “Starbird” either gingerly skip over or totally ignore.

Hell, we’re conflating her with another Mary entirely and turning her into a priestess into the bargain, so why the heck not? Naturally that also requires us to ignore the fact that the woman at the well (John 4: 13-30) is a Samaritan. So we have Mary from Magdala in Galliee who is somehow also Mary from Bethany in Judea and somehow from Samaria as well. She sure gets around.

We’re back in Dan Brown territory again, though it’s the kooky “Margaret Starbird” and the zany Ufologists Picknett and Prince who first popularised this crap about “companion” meaning “wife”. We can’t let little things like the fact that koinonos actually doesn’t mean “wife” get in the way of a good story after all.

Actually, it’s several late texts that indicate these things. The earliest texts simply mention her as one of a number of women devoted to Jesus and make no mention of any jealousy.

It’s grammatically possible to read that it’s Mary who’s “the Beloved Disciple” if you read John’s gospel in English. Unfortunately for Jay, it was written in Greek. And in Greek that interpretation is grammatically impossible. But, again, we can’t let niggling little nitpicks like that spoil things, now can we?

So, no Toto I haven’t read his book. And after reading that collection of errors, leaps of logic, wild misinterpretations and general non sequiturs I’m pretty certain I have no intention of doing so. His recent revelations about Mary performing a mime play and this being the source of the gospels accounts simply confirms that this is a book I won’t be wasting my time or money on.

mountainman

Michael Grant: Jesus (or via: amazon.co.uk)

Here is an extract of a review from a christian apologist ..

And then in summary ....



I have ordered a copy of the book today.

If the Ancient Historian Academic tradition
is to be given a voice in this off-topic thread
then we may as well start with Michael Grant.



Best wishes,


Pete Brown

Malachi151

I've read works of Burton Mack, and his works are very good and he's certainly a respected scholar for good reason. Nevertheless, smart and well informed people still hold stupid or indefensible opinions.

I simply have no respect for degrees in fields related to theology or religious studies, its that simple.

I've seen too many people with too many letters after their names say too many really stupid things and to strongly believe in total nonsense.

The only thing that someone with a degree and background in this field can do, IMO, is original research to find and come up with new texts and new evidence.

I don't need someone else to interpret the evidence for me, I'll do that on my own thanks.

There are way too many cranks with PhDs in all of the social sciences, liberal arts, and theology fields. Having a PhD in any of that really doesn't amount to crap in my book. There are very smart and informative people in these field, but there are also a ton of idiots, a disproportionate amount IMO when compared to the hard sciences.

Just tonight on NPR they were talking about a man from New Orleans with a PhD in philosophy from some big name school, who is now a minister, who believes in Bible numerology and went on for a minute talking about how the numerology of the Bible shows us the mathematical and "architectural" prowess of the creator, etc.

Look at the whole "Tomb of Jesus" debacle on the Discovery Channel a while back. There we had RESPECTED Bible scholar Dr. James Tabor, certainly one of the top names in Biblical studies, who chairs a department at a major university, spouting total and complete rubbish on national TV.

I could have sat on TV and refuted his nonsense claims, so could half the people here, and he is considered a "critical" scholar.

The fact of the matter is that the pool of data that there is to analyze, understand, and comment on in this field is relatively small.

When you compare Biblical studies, especially New Testament studies, to a field like Biology or Chemistry or Engineering, etc., we are talking about a tiny, TINY, fraction of the material that you need to know in order to understand everything that there is to know about the subject.

There is a small finite number of scriptural texts to take into consideration.

There are a relatively small finite number of 2-4th century documents to take into consideration.

There are a small number of deutrocanonical texts to evaluate.

There are a small number of extraneous pieces of evidence to consider.

And basically, all of this same evidence has been poured over time and time again and commented on by hundreds or thousands of people and there is only so much to say about it.

Aside from coming up with new evidence, we have what we have and it doesn't take too much to go over what we have.

Its not rocket science, its not quantum mechanics, its reading old books and looking at a few simple facts.

Call me a science snob if you want, but really I see a total deficiency of analytical thought and scientific process in the fields related to Biblical and religious studies, imagine that... And yes, I'm also talking about the critical scholars.

This is a field rife with nonsense, period.

Antipope Innocent II

If you're encouraged by that review by some random fundie, you're going to be disappointed to find, when you read Grant's book, that he has no time for any Mythicist theories:

This sceptical way of thinking reached its culmination in the argument that Jesus as a human being never existed at all and is a myth .... But above all, if we apply to the New Testament, as we should, the same sort of criteria as we should apply to other ancient writings containing historical material, we can no more reject Jesus' existence than we can reject the existence of a mass of pagan personages whose reality as historical figures is never questioned. Certainly, there are all those discrepancies between one Gospel and another. But we do not deny that an event ever took place just because some pagan historians such as, for example, Livy and Polybius, happen to have described it in differing terms .... To sum up, modern critical methods fail to support the Christ myth theory. It has 'again and again been answered and annihilated by first rank scholars.' In recent years, 'no serous scholar has ventured to postulate the non historicity of Jesus' or at any rate very few, and they have not succeeded in disposing of the much stronger, indeed very abundant, evidence to the contrary.
Michael Grant, Jesus: An Historian's Review of the Gospels (or via: amazon.co.uk)

Malachi151

Another great example of a so-called scholar who is clueless, or who is simply intentionally misrepresenting the facts.

The problem isn't with the contradictions between the various Gospels, the problem lies in the specific narrative elements and the obvious scriptural basis for the narrative elements.

Saying "the Gospels are history just like other histories" is total bunk.

The Gospels are not written in the format of any other ancient history.

Other ancient historical texts aren't all copied from a single source.

Other ancient historical texts are not filled in every single scene with supernatural and symbolic events.

Other ancient historical texts don't build their narratives off of the Iliad and insert lines from the Iliad as the the core elements of the key scenes, and if they did, they would certainly be dismissed as mythology.

Once again, the so-called scholars are proven to be worthless, if not out right deceptive.

Antipope Innocent II

Poor Michael Grant! Or sneaky Michael Grant! Or something.

How is that a problem for what Grant is saying?

It's a good thing he didn't say that.

Sure. So? Grant is simply saying they can be used as sources of historical information.

Neither are the gospels and other NT texts.

No. And?

Or analysed carefully by historians, aware that this is the case?

"Proven"? :huh:

PhilosopherJay

Hi Antipope Innocent,

Mime plays did have dialogue. They were not silent performances.

Unlike classical Greek theatre, the actors did not wear masks, contemporary and political subjects were portrayed and women could act in them. In fact, women in mime plays apparently became extremely popular and influential, not unlike the Twentieth century Hollywood star system in motion pictures. The Romans built a number of theaters throughout Judea. It is quite likely that mime plays were performed in them.

Warmly,

Philosopher Jay

youngalexander

Grant states who these 'first rank scholars' are no doubt? Perhaps you could pass on the list. I should very much like to read their accounts.