Toto

Which of Wright's books are scholarly and which are apologetics aimed at a lay audience?

Layman

I can hardly be accused from fleeing from a debate I never joined. I thrashed you on the topic at issue-whether the Letter to the Hebrews attested a HJ. That I didn't have the time or interest for yet another diatribe about when Christians expected the end of the world is hardly compelling.

Layman

Wright's "Who was Jesus?", "The Challenge of Discovering Jesus", "The Meal Jesus Gave Us", "The Millineum Myth", and his "___ For Everyone" series are all targetted at the layperson. Of these I think "Who was Jesus" could be described as apologetics, in that he specifically responds to some of the more sensationalistic theories about Jesus (such as Spong). The others I do not see as such. "The Meal Jesus Gave Us" and the "For Everyone" Series seem to be part of his Churchly duties of explaining church concepts and teachings to the lay audience. "The Challenge" and "The Millineum Myth" are kind of "correctives" that are aimed more at challenging some idea popularized in the conservative Christian community than apologetics work.

On the Scholar side, his Christian Origins series is scholarly and aimed at a scholarly audience. As is his "What Did Saint Paul Really Say," though this is a thinner work and perhaps more of a dual audience book.

Vinnie

"""""""""""""As for Wright, well if you read his apologetic-style books targeted at a lay audience, it seems hardly surprising that he says isn't unbiased high-quality scholarship. Yet the criticism that has been levelled at his scholarly works in this thread, by people that have not read them, is quite amusing."""""""""""""

Does Wright believe or not believe what he wrote? Or does he purposefully mislead his audience because they wouldn't understand his views which they might think are heresy?

Vinnie

NOGO

First I must aplogize you do debate. What I meant to say is that you are very selective in the topics you choose to debate.

Your memory seems to fail you, Layman. You were debating someone else about Hebrew 27-28 and you did not trash anyone.

"diatribe". Surely this is a personal perception not reflected in anything I wrote. I challenge to you to post anything that I wrote which fits your characterization.

The fact is you did take part in the debate and was going nowhere.

Layman

Yes, I am. I vigorously defend my original posts here. I do not take up every issue that arises or is thrown at me.

luvluv

Toto:

Speaking of mind reading and putting words in people's mouths...

I started this thread for no such thing. I was merely interested in how many JMers had read what is probably the best defense for the conservative orthodox position. No more, no less.

Vorkosigan

That's the worst defense of the conservative orthodox position. I think that's been pretty much established.

Vorkosigan

Tercel

I can't quote him because I don't own his books. And I'm not making a trip to the library just for you.

He certainly engages in deliberate simplification. I'd say that to some extent this results in a degree of distortion of his exact beliefs. It's like telling someone who doesn't know about decimal points that the value of Pi is 3 because you can't be bothered explaining the whole idea of decimal numbers to them.

Vinnie

But in the case of pi the rounding is negligable and doesn't change anything unless it is somehow in the construction of something that requires exact dimensions.

Wright made the statements I quoted. If he doesn't believe them he shouldn't have said them. If he believes them to be significantly different than his audience will understand, he is a bad author and misleads (whether this is malicious or not).

Vinnie