CADRE Comments

Due to being busy on other projects, and also fighting off a nasty round of spring allergies, I didn't do an Easter series on the Cadre this year; and besides Joe was taking point on that this time. So I'll just put up a post for handy links to the first two parts of an ongoing series I've previously been working on, and call it a season. {g} Let me clarify and stress that the point of this series, is NOT to argue (directly anyway) for the historical resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth in any religiously Christian sense -- although, since I have somehow been mistaken by some fans of Richard Carrier in thinking I don't believe in the bodily resurrection of Jesus, I'll also clarify here that I do, with full trinitarian Christian theological meaning. (They were referencing a discussion I was having with Keith Parsons where I was taking the side of bodily resurrection vs a mass hallucination theory, not referencing this series; but eh, fans of Richard Carrier, in my ex...

PART 1: A SEPULCHRAL NO GosMark's author sheerly invented the empty tomb of Jesus of Nazareth! {/clickbait} This has long been an article of faith for fringe sceptical theories; the most recent wave of which was kicked off back in the 90s by Burton Mack popularizing the theory during the heydey of the Jesus Seminar. Ideas that Mark invented the empty tomb tend to be associated with developmental theories of John Dominic Crossan as well, although he actually argues (somewhat notoriously in how he goes about it and what he tries to make of it) that someone else invented the empty tomb tradition much earlier than Mark did! (For sake of expediency I'm using "Mark" as a shorthand for "the author", without intending an assumption of author identity. More on this qualification soon.) JDC essentially argues that Mark borrowed written material, much later also found in GosPeter. The actual argument for pre-Markan written tomb material (even from Cross...

The Jesus Project was started in 2007 as a forum for skeptical biblical scholars, both professional and amateur, to conduct a 'scientific' investigation of the historicity of the Jesus traditions in the New Testament. Their sessions resulted in an edited volume, Sources of the Jesus Tradition , published last year. In this post I want to take a closer look at an essay by classicist Justin Meggitt called 'Popular Mythology in the Early Empire and the Multiplicity of Jesus Traditions', which provides an alternative, skeptical model of the transmission of Jesus traditions in early Christianity. As Meggitt puts it: When the popular cultural contexts within which stories about Jesus were first told or retold are taken into account, it becomes apparent that they are likely to be characterized by far more creativity, improvisation, idiosyncrasy, and inconsistency than has hitherto been assumed by most New Testament scholars. Far from being careful and cautious in their hand...

The contents page for this series can be found here. The previous entry, Chapter 57, can be found here. If the reader arriving at the site for Easter Day wants a quick overview of why all the things I've been talking about for +700 pages matter, please see my Easter Sermon from last year 2010 ( "Why It All Matters" -- don't panic, it's only five minutes' reading tops. {g}) This book has been my testimony, for why I believe what I do. Despite its length, and its frequent complexity, it comes down to this: why am I a Christian? The thrust of my argument throughout my book, has pointed toward the conclusion that I should expect God to act in our history in certain ways. I have tried to allow for a potentially wide range of variables in how those actions will someday be (or have already been) carried out. I have even tried not to hang the story entirely on the timeframe in which I think the story actually was carried out. But I do think the story has been carri...

In the previous post in this series I presented some quotes from Craig Keener's recent book, The Historical Jesus of the Gospels, relevant to some general questions about the nature of the Gospels. In this post I include quotes from Keener on Luke-Acts in particular. I will continue to follow the Q&A format. Why should we think that Luke-Acts is historical and strives to present an accurate account of the beginning of Christianity? Various factors support the thesis that Luke conceives of his project as primarily a history. Unlike a novel, Luke uses sources abundantly in his first volume (usually agreed to be at least Mark and "Q") and presumably in his second volume as well, although we cannot distinguish the sources clearly in Acts. Luke's claim to investigate or have close acquaintance with his information (Lk 1:3) fits historical works, and his occasional use of the first-person plural (e.g., Acts 16:10) emphasizes the involvement considered ideal for a good ...

Note: Part 6 of this series can be found here. It discusses how Dr. Richard Pervo, in his 2006 edition of Dating Acts , very briefly covers his main positive evidence in favor of his theory that the author of Acts used Josephus when referring to the rebellions of Theudas and Judas the Galilean--a very brief coverage that mainly involves mentioning the superficial similarity of topical order while repeatedly insisting that the author of Acts is in (even "embarrassing") error. After which, Dr. P suddenly switches to the position that the author did not make an error but intentionally took the information from Josephus in this topical order. As will be shown in the finale of this series, there are good reasons why he must have felt he had to try something other than error to explain the usage thereby! Since he doesn't spell out those reasons himself, however... Part 7 -- Thoroughly Sniffing The Thesis (Or Huffing It, Maybe) Let’s spell out the implications of Dr. Pervo’s ...

Note: Part 5 of this series can be found here. It discusses how Dr. Richard Pervo, in his 2006 edition of Dating Acts , and in regard to his theory of the author of Acts depending on reference to Josephus, ends up having to having to appeal to argument B not only to make argument A seem more plausible but to answer in a non sequitur fashion an oncoming critique of part of his argument for A--when the reason he explicitly started with A was to help make subsequent arguments for the dating of Acts post-Antiquities, including argument B, seem more plausible! So having spun the reader's head around a few times, he plows onward now to his strongest primary evidence. Part 6 -- Error, Error! (Or, wait, not...??) Having quickly leapt away from trying to explain how the 400 number can even plausibly fit into his theory (answering expected critiques of his argument there by spinning the reader around with circular plausibility appeals to a completely different dating argument which has noth...

Note: Part 4 of this series can be found here. It discusses how Dr. Richard Pervo, in his 2006 edition of Dating Acts , ends up having to imagine a reason for why the author of Acts would intentionally change a rhetorically impressive generalization from Josephus into a sober and realistic number--for a purpose that directly contravenes the author's own enumerations just previously in his own narrative. We'll be getting back to that problem again later... Part 5 -- Circling The Shell Game Around Rather than face this clear problem with his explanation, Dr. Pervo hops over to a completely different argument: Acts 5 shows Luke only knew about one census, namely the one at the time of Judas the Galilean, so Luke had to have been either mistaken or just making things up for the GosLuke prologue, so there, nyah! Or words to that effect; what Dr. Pervo is aiming at, is to strengthen the appearance of his thesis concerning Luke’s source for Acts 5 by appealing to a different argument...

Note: Part 3 of this series can be found here. It discusses how Dr. Richard Pervo, in his 2006 edition of Dating Acts , spends a surprising amount of time and effort trying to sheerly imagine connections between the Lukan and the Josephan references to a rebel Theudas. His attempt does not end well. {lopsided g} Part 4 -- Of Course, There Are Some Differences... “There are, of course, differences between the two accounts,” Dr. Pervo admits (p 157)--having already effectively admitted that one such huge and glaring difference is the terminology used to describe Theudas, despite his attempts to insist on a startling similarity between them. Another such difference is that one account talks about a Theudas rebelling before Judas the Galilean, and one talks about a Theudas rebelling afterward . This is not a small difference! But more on this and its implications for Dr. Pervo’s thesis later. Yet another important difference, one that Dr. Pervo tries to gloss over the implications of,...

Note: Part 2 of this series can be found here. It discusses how Dr. Richard Pervo, in his 2006 edition of Dating Acts , begins his argument for Lukan dependence on Josephus, in regard to the 'Theudas' reference in Acts 5, by hugely begging the question in favor of his own hypothesis. Part 3 -- A Magical Imagination Dr. Pervo retorts against Dr. Bruce’s second point, that Theudas is an unusual name. I consider this his strongest critique of Dr. B (so far as presented in DA on this topic); but Dr. P neglects to mention (as Dr. Bruce himself most likely remembered) that it is an unusual form of a more common set of names for which it might be substituted for purposes of better identification--one such name being Judas, not incidentally. Ironically, we do know of at least one Judas (son of Ezekias) leading a rebellion prior to Judas the Galilean--thanks to Josephus! This leads to Dr. Bruce’s third point, namely that even Jospehus doesn’t bother to name all the rebellions (the “t...

Note: Part 1 of this series can be found here. It introduces the data, the problem, and the solution proposed (among a few other people) by Dr. Richard Pervo, most notably in his 2006 edition of Dating Acts . Recapping the final paragraph from last time... Dr. Pervo’s thesis is that the order of mention by Gamaliel, first Theudas and then Judas the Galilean, suggests (or, for Dr. P, practically demands) that Luke borrowed this information from Josephus, specifically from Book 20 (written very late, indeed the last book of Antiquities completed before Josephus’ death). The main positive evidence in favor of this thesis (unless Dr. P brings out stronger positive evidence where I haven’t been able to read him yet), is that Josephus happens to mention Judas the Galilean after writing about Theudas the (messianic) “magician”; thus, in a trivially sequential way, first Theudas is mentioned, then Judas the Galilean. Whereas, if Luke was really writing with actual living knowledge of conditio...