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Old 06-24-2003, 05:49 PM   #1
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Default Gregory Riley - River of God

Is anyone familiar with this book or author?

I caught part of an interview with Gregory Riley this morning on KPCC. He's from Claremont, where Dennis MacDonald teaches. (The interview is on this page for June 24. I didn't hear enough of it to know if it's any good.)

The River of God: A New History of Christian Origins

The reviews on Amazon criticize him for not being new enough. He appears to be a more moderate version of Freke and Gandy.
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Old 06-25-2003, 01:10 AM   #2
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I have a review of his One Jesus, Many Christs here:

http://www.earlychristianwritings.co...ies.html#riley

I have The River of God in my possession but haven't read it yet.

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Old 06-25-2003, 10:26 AM   #3
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Yeah, I've read One Jesus, Many Christs. It was interesting, but not particularly ground-breaking or earth-shattering.

If as the reviews indicate, he claims that modern scholarship places the antecedents to modern Christianity _entirely_ within Judaism, then I'd say he was wrong. Indeed, there are scholars who insist that the _primary_ source of Christian teachings was Judaic (Meyer, Brown & Sanders), as versus the Cynic philosophical source (Crossan and the bulk of the Jesus Seminar), which places primary sources with the Hellenistic antecedents. Both of these approaches assume a priori that Jesus existed and was the source of the initial teachings.

It would be interesting to see which traditions he thinks feed into early Christianity. He is a decent writer, even if he does assume historicity a priori.

Kelly
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