by Kermit Zarley I am sometimes asked, “Does Tom (N.T.) Wright believe Jesus is God?” Or I am told that he does not. I’m also asked the same question about Jimmy (J.D.G.) Dunn. Wright and Dunn are Brits. I know both… Read More ›
New Testament scholarship
“Historians Have to Make Things Up” says Thucydides.
Why the four gospels and the accounts in Acts may not be quite what they seem. Peter Enns (American Evangelical biblical scholar and theologian) explains why: Over at Mere Student, John Oliff posted on the Greek historian Thucydides’s (c.460-c.395 BC) take on the… Read More ›
A case of Gospel inflation
A Christian minister asked a really interesting question on Twitter: he notes ‘that Jesus is portrayed as referring to God as Father roughly 170 times while the OT does only about 11’. What are we to make of this, he asks?… Read More ›
Jesus remembered: ‘ideological tinkering must have gone on from the start’
Dale C. Allison Jr writes: ‘Some of my divinity students, who find themselves threatened by the discourse of the quest [for the historical Jesus], the chief categories of which derive not from Christian theology but from the modern study of… Read More ›
How Jesus became a god. Two Yale professors describe the historical process
Earlier I posted about an academic work I am reading by two of America’s leading biblical scholars entitled: King and Messiah as Son of God, Divine, Human, and Angelic Messianic Figures in Biblical and Related Literature by Adela Yarbro Collins and John J. Collins… Read More ›
Historical Jesus studies and the illusion of consensus
A sobering (if arguably unnecessarily skeptical) assessment of the state of Jesus studies in academia.
What Bible scholars really think about John’s gospel you will probably never hear from your pastor/minister/priest
It is a curious fact that what scholars think of the historical value of John’s gospel is a million miles from what the man in the pew thinks: J.D.G. Dunn, The Evidence for Jesus. Philadelphia, PA: Westminster Press ,1985, pp. 31-32…. Read More ›
The Qur’anic Jesus – Abdal Hakim Murad
A talk regarding Islamic perspectives on Jesus, and historical and contemporary debates about his nature and role. The talk also highlights the possibility of a shared Christological dialogue between the Abrahamic faiths. Dr Timothy Winter, also known as Shaykh Abdal… Read More ›
What did Jesus actually say?
Christians have always assumed that the words attributed to Jesus in the Gospel of John were really spoken by him (in Aramaic of course, not English). Leading and highly respected reference works (authored mainly by Christian scholars) have for a… Read More ›
Feature Article: Christology Revisited
I have drunk quite deeply from the well of New Testament studies on the subject of Christology. A fairly consistent picture emerges from the great players in the field. Perhaps one of the most prolific and highly regarded scholars is… Read More ›
Why it is ‘virtually impossible’ to believe that the apostle Peter was the author of 2 Peter
The Second Letter of Peter in the New Testament is not actually by the apostle Peter as New Testament scholars have long realised. Despite its claim to be an eyewitness to the life of Jesus it is a forgery. Christians… Read More ›
Was Jesus a religious man?
‘We are so accustomed, and rightly, to make Jesus the object of religion that we become apt to forget that in our earliest records he is portrayed not as the object of religion, but as a religious man.’ These words… Read More ›
Was John the Son of Zebedee Capable of Writing a Gospel? (No!)
QUESTION: You mention in your book Forgeries and Counter Forgeries that John most likely did not write the Gospel attributed to him as he almost certainly could not write in Greek. I seem to remember you writing that the Greek of that… Read More ›
Eyewitnesses and the Gospels
QUESTION One of the major points of your work (if I understand correctly) is that the contents of the New Testament are at a vast remove in time, place, and source from any eyewitness account of Jesus’ life. But when… Read More ›
Those New Testament scholars who like to have their cake and eat it too..
A number of eminent New Testament scholars appear to make the same theological move: they practice rigorous adherence to the historical critical method which casts doubt on the historical accuracy of numerous articles of the Christian faith (for example the complete… Read More ›
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