CADRE Comments

Please see here for part 2 of Round Two, where I assess Bishop Spong’s appeal to silence in the Pauline epistles, as positive "evidence" for Iscariot and his treachery having been invented no earlier than 70CE (with GosMark). When Bishop Spong turns to Matt 19:28 and Luke 22:28-30, we get a somewhat more interesting result. This is some of the hypothetically reconstructed “Q” material: material which visibly enters the texts of Matt and Luke 10 to 15 or 20 years after GosMark’s composition on Bishop Spong’s accepted dating schedule. (I don’t mean to sound derogatory of Q theories per se, by the way. I really don’t have any problem with the existence of an early sayings source not used in GosMark, or GosJohn either, for whatever reason. I have a problem with the slipshod double-standarding ways in which Q theories are sometimes used in the field. Bishop Spong wants us to be suspiciously impressed when various details “appear to have entered the Christian story”, but then to i...

Please see here for part 1 of Round Two, where I assess Bishop Spong’s first appeal to silence in Q source, as positive "evidence" for Iscariot and his treachery having been invented no earlier than 70CE (with GosMark). Going back to the Pauline corpus, after briefly touching on it for his first round of evidence, Bishop Spong notes that the one place where St. Paul gives a brief narrative of the Last Supper (1 Cor 11:23-24), Paul only mentions “betrayal”--not who betrayed Jesus. This is quite true. In fact, Paul mentions no names at all there other than Jesus, including the names of any other apostles. Moreover, the form is that of a kerygma, which is primarily aimed at transmitting doctrine in an easy-to-memorize fashion, thus containing minimal amounts of historical information. An excellent example of this would be the accounts of Christ’s death provided in the Apostle’s and Nicean Creeds: crucified under Pontius Pilate. Period. (The last and most theologically ...

Introductory note from Jason Pratt: see here for the previous entry; and see here for the first entry of the series. (It explains what I'm doing, and how, and contains the Johannine prologue.) The Body and the Blood (the night before the end...) When the hour had come (to celebrate the seder service, tell the Disciple and Scholar and Follower), He reclined (at the table to eat--this is after the 'normal' feast of the night), and the apostles with Him (except for Judas, who has already left). And He said to them: "I have truly, deeply desired to eat this Passover with you--before I suffer. "For I am telling you: I never shall eat it again, till this is fulfilled in the kingdom of God!" And when He had taken bread (bitter and unleavened by sin yet striped by sin, some of which will be hidden to be recovered later), having blessed and given thanks, He broke and gave to them, saying (in a new response to the traditional question "What is this bread?"...