Reading Time: 10 minutes The book of Daniel purports to relate the experiences and visions of its title character, a Hebrew noble and prophet, during the Babylonian Exile in the 6th century BCE. As with myriad other marvelous accounts from antiquity, Daniel’s text explicitly (and implicitly) refers to a number of verified individuals, locations, and events. Despite these convergences between […]
Biblical Exegesis
Posted inReligion
Jesus as the new Moses
Reading Time: 8 minutes Jesus is many things to many people. To the early Christians, authors of the Gospels, he was certainly a construction of sorts. For example, for Matthew, Jesus was written in a way that emulated Moses in order that he appealed to Matthew’s Jewish audience. The use of this formula for a theological agenda strongly calls […]
Posted inReligion
A study in straw: Apologetics, alphabets, and the Torah
Reading Time: 6 minutes The prevailing consensus among modern scholars of the Bible and Semitic philology (the study of structure and history of languages) is that the Torah—or Pentateuch, if Greek is your cuppa—was largely composed or compiled in its present form during the first millennium BCE. This would place it compiled some centuries after the latest period depicted […]
Posted inReligion
Christian apologetics and defending Matthew’s guards
Reading Time: 17 minutes There’s something meta going on when a Christian apologist takes aim at a biblical account of mine with some typical apologetics, claiming I am making stuff up out of whole cloth when I myself accused the Gospel writers (or apologists) of making stuff up out of whole cloth to defend themselves against Jewish accusations 2,000 […]
Posted inBooks, Religion
Part 2 of Us Deconstructing the Resurrection
Reading Time: < 1 minute So here is the second part to the ongoing series with Derek Lambert of MythVision that is unpicking the Resurrection, following my recent book on the subject – The Resurrection: A Critical Examination [UK]: I hope you enjoy this – I’m having a really great time recording them. Stay in touch! Like A Tippling Philosopher […]
Posted inReligion
The Author of the Gospel of John
Reading Time: 7 minutes I recently wrote a piece on whether or not the Gospel writers were eyewitnesses of Jesus and his ministry. The short answer is that they were not. Out of that came the ubiquitous question, in these contexts, of who the author was for the Gospel of John, and to whom he was referring when he […]
Posted inHistory
No, the Gospel Writers Weren’t Eyewitnesses
Reading Time: 7 minutes A recent comment from the resident Catholic troll commenter seemed to show incredulity at the idea that we might believe that the Gospel authors were not eyewitnesses of Jesus and his ministry. Now, obviously, literalists and conservative Christians maintain they are, but this is hardly surprising. The United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, on the […]
Posted inUncategorized
On The Gospel of Mark
Reading Time: 8 minutes In the closing stages of writing my latest book, The Resurrection: A Critical Examination of the Easter Story [UK] (please grab yourself a copy!), I had a few test readers. One was David Austin, down in Australia, who has provided a few guest articles for your delectation. Here is another one from David – thanks muchly to him […]
Posted inUncategorized
My Resurrection Talk and How the Narrative Was Constructed
Reading Time: 6 minutes As you know, I gave a talk on Saturday on the Resurrection and was worried about my “performance” since only last week, on holiday. I lost the use of my legs for a couple of days. It was scary multiple sclerosis stuffed. I put it down to a 48-hour virus – I had a stomach […]
Posted inUncategorized
Paul of Tarsus
Reading Time: 8 minutes In the closing stages of writing my latest book, The Resurrection: A Critical Examination of the Easter Story [UK] (please grab yourself a copy!), I had a few test readers. One was David Austin, down in Australia, who has provided a few guest articles for your delectation. Here is another one – thanks muchly to him (as […]