For those interested in the topic of Jesus research, and for those wanting to get a grip on it, it looks like Michael Barber’s new series on criteria for authenticity is going to be worth keeping an eye on. In an introductory post he runs through the old Bultmannian chestnut of early Christian prophets creating [...]
(This post is one of a series exploring the Scripture texts dealing with same-sex sexual activity. Earlier posts are listed at the end of this article.)
And so we come to Romans, which has increasingly become the key text in the ongoing quarrel. I think there are two reasons for this. The primary one is that [...]
Although he deals with “solution to plight” later in the series , (which I think is an important emphasis) I’d personally like to argue that this was not only derived from his commissioning experience, but an earlier and perhaps quite primitive mirror-version of his later theology underlies his persecution, and is not entirely unrelated either to the apostolic preaching, or the transmission of the Jesus tradition. … Paul knew the general story of Jesus; he knew Jesus had been viewed by Paul’s Pharisaic peers and the Jewish elders as a Law-breaker - “soft” on Sabbath and the purity regulations, to be sure - even finally condemned as “unrighteous” according to the highest Jewish court.
What makes me wonder this is Chris Tilling’s eight petal tulip and the questions that make him critical of it:
In order to make people feel guilty, we invent ways of convincing people that they are sinners. We have to make a problem for them, for Jesus to be a real solution. But is that really [...]
Various blogs are noting the death of Krister Stendahl. There are comparatively few books that come to be seen as discipline-altering and influential decades after their publication. There are even fewer articles /lectures, but his “Paul and the Introspective Conscience of the West” is one of them – possibly the most significant. What would Pauline [...]
The blogabout boxing match on 1 Corinthians 9:27 continues. To the blogs referenced in yesterday’s post, you can now add (at least) David Ker now lingering in Better Bibles, ElShaddai Edwards, and that most perspicacious and pugnacious pugilist John Hobbins.
I repeat yesterday’s defensive block first. Despite everything everyone else is saying, I always called my [...]
The conversation about 1 Corinthians 9:27 seems to be growing. See TC, Nathan (and again) and my previous post. Now the pugilistic Peter Kirk has stepped into the ring, and I need to exchange a few punches with him. He’s aided by John Hobbins, who doesn’t like my suggestion, but has only said so in [...]
Nathan is posting regularly on his learning of Greek. I’m sure that’s going to be helpful to all sorts of other people. Most recently he’s been getting down to it with the BAGD – the big boys’ lexicon. His particular examination raises some questions in my mind. The verses he is looking at are interesting [...]
It has always seemed obvious to me that whenever anyone says “the obvious meaning of this text / word is …” they are about to say something that is far from obvious to everyone else. This thought was prompted (again) by Andrew’s post on I Corinthians 6:9-10 and the words malakoi and arsenokoitai. I would [...]
John Hobbins has encouraged me to comment on his responses to a Bible meme he really doesn’t like. His three responses are here, here and here, getting progressively more focussed onto the relationship between the covenants and their respective scriptural testimonies. He blames Peter Kirk for what he calls an “appallingly superficial” meme. If he [...]
