Bible, Myth, and History – Page 7 – Gary Greenberg's blog on biblical studies

June 2020 Biblical Studies Carnival

Catch up in the June 2020 Biblical Studies Carnival roundup of some of the interesting bible-oriented posts you may have missed. Just don’t think you arrived at the wrong place when you take a fast look at the header. This month’s host, Jim West.

Interested in hosting a future carnival. Jim posts the following message from Phil Long, the carnival organizer.

Here are the upcoming hosts. No hosts for October 2020 (Due November 1) and after. I am willing to take a later month if someone wants August. July 2020 (Due August 1) – Bob MacDonald @drmacdonald
August 2020 (Due September 1) – Phillip Long, Reading Acts @plong42
September 2020 (Due October 1) – Brent Niedergall’s blog. https://niedergall.com @BrentNiedergall
Are you new to blogging? Are you a lapsed biblioblogger? James McGrath has some encouraging words for you.
Would you like to see your posts included in a future carnival? Start by writing a quality academic post, perhaps a book review. Then send the link to the upcoming host. It is entirely their decision to include your post in their carnival, but you can at least nominate yourself for inclusion. Sometimes you have to toot your own horn.
If you have questions about what writing a carnival involves, contact me via email, plong42@gmail.com or twitter DM @plong42. I would be happy to answer any questions.

About that Nazareth inscription?

A 2000-year old tablet, written in Greek and thought to come from Nazareth based on a cryptic message accompanying it, announced the Roman emperor’s warnings against grave robbing. Housed in the Louvre since the 1930s, scholars have debated whether tit could be connected to Jesus. A new study suggests that the tablet has no connection to Nazareth.

The Case for a Proto-Gospel and the Paralytic on the Mat

Mark 2 and John 5 both have stories about Jesus healing a paralytic lying on a mat that seem to share some common features. Yet the details of the respective stories are so different that many (most?) scholars question whether the two stories share a common literary heritage. The consensus seems to be that they two accounts are unrelated and evolved from different sources. In The Case for a Proto-Gospel I argue otherwise.

Upcoming Interview

I’ll be recording an interview tomorrow night with Aeon Byte Gnostic Radio, for later broadcast. Once it’s on-line I’ll publish a link.

Was Jesus Born in Bethlehem?

Luke and Matthew both place Jesus’ birth in Bethlehem. These are the only references in the New Testament to Bethlehem as Jesus’ place of birth. There are problems with those claims and I’ll come back to them in a moment. First, let’s look at Mark, the first gospel written, and John, the last gospel written.

The Case for a Proto-Gospel and John’s Editorial Techniques

In my previous post on The case for a Proto-Gospel I outlined the theological reasons behind John’s rewriting of Mark’s source document. In this post I will examine some of John’s editorial practices that frequently make it hard to recognize his use of a story appearing in Mark.

A major Johannine practice was to take multiple stories that shared a similar theme or some other common story details and integrating them into a single narrative such that the constituent stories no longer look like the original versions.

The Case for a Proto-Gospel and John’s Theological Biases

While it is almost universally recognized that Matthew and Luke used Mark as their prime source of information for their respective gospels, it is also well recognized that Matthew and Luke frequently add to, omit or change details present in Mark’s source story, occasionally in significant ways. This is largely attributed to Matthew and Luke editing Mark to fit their respective theological agendas. Yet, when stories in John appear to intersect with stories in the synoptic gospels, John is rarely accorded the same privilege.

While there is obviously a vast library of writings describing John’s theology and how it might differ from the synoptic gospels, there appears to be almost no effort to apply John’s theological principles to any of the synoptic gospels, using the theology as a filter for examining what changes John would likely have made if he knew the story. While there may be an isolated comparison between a Johannine story and a synoptic story here and there, I believe The Case for a Proto-Gospel presents the first scholarly study to provide a full-scale systemic look at all of John and how his theological principles interact with the synoptic gospel stories.

In this post, I will outline how John’s theological concerns can function as a filter for reading the synoptic gospels, which enables us to identify theological problems that would bother John and require corrections if he were to edit the synoptic story. In the next post, I’ll identify some of the editorial techniques John used to make these corrections. In subsequent posts, I’ll examine various synoptic stories and show how John’s theology and editorial practice come together to transform synoptic stories into Johannine versions that share the same underlying story elements present in the synoptic story but which often looks so different from the synoptic story.

Dead Sea Scrolls and DNA

Hey!! Secret Origins Revealed. Using DNA techniques on fragments of the Dead Sea Scrolls has led to a number of insights about where certain texts may have come from and whether some fragments are related to other fragments. The scrolls were made from animal hides, and, as such, were subject to DNA testing. Some prior theories are proving wrong and others are being supported.

Podcast: Does John know the synoptic gospels?

An interesting discussion between Mark Goodacre and Chris Keith about John’s interaction with the synoptic gospels. Both are well-respected scholars and they raise questions about the current consensus that John did not know the synoptic gospels. As a predicate (or follow-up) you may want to look at my article at the Bible and Interpretation site, Is John a Synoptic Gospel?

And, of course, if you want the full story, check out my new book, The Case for a Proto-Gospel: Recovering the Common Written Source behind Mark and John