neilgodfrey

Are you suggesting not to study "context of Christianity" so much as just what's out there in the wider ancient world? I am not sure I understand what you have in mind exactly. Study needs to have some purpose and view to application behind it. Presumably you are suggesting a more general study of the ancient world with a view eventually to applying those studies to a refreshed look at Christian origins? Are the sorts of questions we are tackling in our debates about Christianity's origins (including the historicity of Jesus) likely to benefit even more from studies in the historical and critical methods of classical historians, archaeologists and literature scholars. Methods, including some philosophy of knowedge itself and the methods used to reach it, these seem essential too? Stop treating the biblical topics as a species apart. That's all the so-called "minimalists" are seeking to do. But you are suggesting something else?

Neil Godfrey

http://vridar.wordpress.com

mountainman

I disagree ...

One usually drives around a black hole, not into it.
But your essay assumes that black holes are physical
entities, but they are not such an animal.

"Black holes" exist in theoretical physics. There have been
no experiments performed in or around black holes and, although
they are purported to exist at the center of galaxies, physicists
postulate this only.

IOW, they are "postulated theoretical objects",
just like the "HJ".

Unlike the "HJ" theory, there are many competing scientific
theories which try and explain the fundamental mechanisms
behind the phenomena of gravity, because noone knows
at the moment what gravity actually is (Despite assertions
to the contrary).

It was done hundreds of years ago by a brilliant American author.
His name was Ralph Waldo Emerson. Surely you know the story.



Pete

Roger Pearse

Easily. It's a separate field. I never paid any attention to Christian origins until after I became a Christian. It would be pretty hard to spend any time at all on Christian origins if one was interested in classical Greece, the hellenistic era, or republican Rome.

All the best,

Roger Pearse

Gamera

It all depends on why one is engaging in historical studies. This changes over time. History is never about history, but about what interests us. We constantly construct and reconstruct history based on our needs and interest. There is no history except historiography -- a bunch of texts. And they are meaningful or insignificant as our interest change and as society evolves

In the middle ages, people read a whole lot of texts that we find tedious and uninteresting at best nowaday. Things such as the bestiaries and hagiography. We find Beowulf and Dante interesting because they raise various questions meaningful to us. Bestiaries tend not to. They seem almost incoherent.

Tomorrow this could change. But that's where we are now in our intellectual history.