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The Case for a Proto-Gospel

My new book, The Case for a Proto-Gospel: recovering the common written source behind Mark and John, should be going to press sometime in December and be available shortly thereafter. There’s an Amazon link to the book in the right sidebar (somewhere else in Mobile displays).

Barrie Wilson,  Professor Emeritus and Senior Scholar, Religious Studies, York University, Toronto, had this to say about the book.

Gary Greenberg is a superb intellectual detective, following up on tantalizing clues in ancient texts to uncover sources and insights that others have missed. In this latest work, Gary traces similarities between the Gospel of John and the earlier Gospel of Mark. In so doing, he makes a remarkable discovery — lurking behind both gospels is an earlier document that each has used, independently of the other. Here is a new source document that sheds important light on the crucial decades following Jesus’ death.


Carefully crafted, well written, based on historical and literary analysis, Gary’s book enhances our understanding not only of the Gospels of John and Mark but the process whereby the gospels themselves came to be.

ASOR and SBL Conferences

I spent the week before Thanksgiving in San Diego at the overlapping conferences of the American Schools of Oriental Research (ASOR) and the Society of Biblical Literature (SBL). I presented a paper at ASOR titled Enoch and Sothis: Is there a connection between Genesis chronology and Egyptian King-lists? I also attended several interesting panels at SBL. One intriguing presentation came from Mark Goodacre, who demonstrated some places where Matthew’s underlying Greek matched that in John or Mark in similar stories. I also enjoyed some book panels One focused on Paula Fredriksen’s new book When Chrisians Were Jews: The first generation. Another focused on Joel Marcus’s new book John the Baptist in History and Theolgy.

I’m not sure about this but it seemed that the traditional SBL book sellers’ exhibition was somewhat smaller than usual. There were ten aisles but four of them were only half aisles. I think past exhibit halls had more aisles, almost all full. I’d have to check past program guides to see how many exhibitors there were.

I’m doing the October Biblical Studies Carnival round-up

I’ve been tasked with doing the October Biblical Studies Carnival round-up, due to be published here on or about November 1st. If you have any recommended posts you think I should know about or biblioblog sites I should check in on, perhaps you can mention them in the comments section or use my site link to send me an email.

My next book. The Case for a Proto-gospel

If you look at the right-hand sidebar, you should find a notice about my next book, “The Case for a Proto-gospel: Recovering the common written source behind Mark and John.” (Mobile browsers might find it further down on the blog.) It’s being published by Peter Lang in their “Studies in Biblical Literature” series. It’s a peer-reviewed and lengthy academic study arguing for the existence of a now-lost written biography of Jesus that preceded the gospels and contained almost all of the major incidents in Jesus’ adult life. I argue that Mark, John, and Luke all knew this text and made use of it. Matthew had it second-hand through Mark. More significantly, I argue that John hated this earlier biography and composed his gospel as a rewritten correction, and, as a result, John’s gospel functions as a major crtique of Mark’s gospel.

It’s not due out until later this year and, unfortunately, as with most lengthy academic studies, it won’t be cheap. You might try to get your library to order a copy or get it through an inter-library loan. While still a few months away from release, it has a pre-order presence on Amazon. Clicking the link in the side bar should take you to the Amazon page, which provides a slightly more detailed description of the contents and features a blurb from Barrie Wilson, Professor Emeritus and Senior Scholar of Religious Studies, York University.

Some light posting over the summer

I did some traveling in July and have more travel scheduled for August and early September, so posting has been and will remain light for the balance of the summer. I’ve also been busy with my writing. I have a book coming out from Peter Lang publishers on the Gospels (details soon) due out around November, and I have been working on Volume II of Genesis Chronology and Egyptian King-lists, which deals with the parallels between Egypt’s predynastic mythical chronology and the earliest portions of the Genesis chronology. If Genesis chronology intrigues you, make sure you pick up Volume I, dealing with Egypt’s dynastic era.

The Eucharist Problem: John vs. Paul

I’m pleased to report that Bible and Interpretation just published an article by me titled The Eucharist Problem: John versus Paul. It argues that John, writing about a half-century after Paul, preserved a pre-Pauline form of the Eucharist teaching and that Paul’s revelation is a radical reinterpretation and explanation of what Jesus must have meant when he delivered the version preserved by John.

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