DaninGraniteCity

Why isn't there a New Testament and Archaeology sticky in this forum?

spin

Would you like to do some research and provide one?

What are you interested in regarding nt and archaeology?


spin

DaninGraniteCity

No, I can't do the research.

I'm interested in seeing a table of references to good books about New Testament archaeology, like the Hebrew Bible archaeology sticky.

Rick Sumner

The study of the NT is decidedly less directly linked to archaeology than the study of the OT (Crossan and Reed be damned).

The archaeological evidence simply isn't there, and what is there is more often than not the product of wishful thinking ("Jesus boat" indeed).

Regards,
Rick Sumner

DaninGraniteCity

Do Crossan and Reed do New Testament archaeology?

spin

Whereas the Hebrew literature is quite localized in the places the Hebrew bible oozes with. The text implies historical contexts in the locations that can be verified or falsified. This is not true with the nt. How can one for example determine, if there was a Jesus, whether he walked from Jericho to Jerusalem or not? or whether there was an epiphany on tyop of the mountain?

Crossan and Reed are nt text scholars.

The major problem with the notion of nt and archaeology is that the nt is strictly literature based and there is little connection between the text and any specific locations for archaeological research. People have excavated in Jerusalem, they've tried to find a Nazareth of Jesus time without too much success. Bethlehem, well, what can one expect from this tale? Besides the fact that nothing in the two Bethlehem stories agree, it seems that there have been a few mistranslations in the text which represent later ideas of both the text and what early xians believed. What that is tangible in the nt narrative do you think can be pinned down through archaeology?

I'm not trying to be pushy here, but I haven't seen too much solid material on nt archaeology, a few articles about the existence of this place or that, what the place was like in the first century, mainly in learned journals. I was fishing for some specific idea that someone might have been able to help you with.


spin

DaninGraniteCity

I was just inquisitive about the abscence of a New Testament archaeology sticky at this forum. It just seemed pretty bare to my eye, ya' know? But I suppose IIDB is excused from this abscence if the New Testament archaeology is pretty much absent in science.

On a side note, it gets me how Discovery channel will do programs about Jesus but it's more or less a program about first century Palestinian archaeology with assertions after the piece about the technology or culture of Palestine that this is what Jesus would have done on Thursday afternoons.

spin

Gotcha now.

Yeah, I like the Jesus would have dones, where he would have walked, how he would have picked his nose outside the temple before going in, where he would have taken a slash.

Not archaeology, but there is an interesting book which is more a big work of what can be gained from the literary sources about what we can know of the city of Jerusalem at the, umm, time of Jesus, called "Jerusalem in the time of Jesus", by J.Jeremias, SCM. Tells what can be found about social structure, classes, jobs, commerce, the temple, the priesthood, etc.


spin

Chris Weimer

History would be much better suited than archaeology, since the history of the NT is a little skewed.

Celsus

Meyers and Strange have a book Archaeology, the Rabbis and Early Christianity, which is on NT archaeology, and where they've been pleading to deaf ears about the importance of archaeology to studies on the NT (it's been out since 1981). A shorter survey can be found in John Bartlett's Archaeology and Biblical Interpretation with Freyne's "Archaeology and the Historical Jesus", which is surprisingly not gut-wrenchingly bad. I know fuck all about this period though, so don't ask.

Joel

Edited to add: Peter's new improved exhaustive fantastic reading list can be found here, and you can find the archaeology section by clicking the link in the contents.