In the Bible, Jesus sometimes appears explicitly to deny that he is divine. Texts include, “Why do you call me good? No one is good but God alone (Mark 10:18), and “The son can do nothing of his own accord,… Read More ›
New Testament scholarship
Searing confessions of top New Testament scholar Dr Dale C. Allison
This is a no holes barred academic discussion of the Quest for the historical Jesus by one of the leading historians in the field Dr Dale C. Allison. Allison is Richard J. Dearborn Professor of New Testament at Princeton Theological… Read More ›
Why the commandment in Matthew 28:19 is likely to be unhistorical, according to a top Christian NT scholar
Raymond E Brown SS (1928 – 1998) was an American Catholic priest, and one of the most prominent biblical scholars of the 20th century.
Is Paul at Odds with Matthew? By Dr Bart Ehrman
Published in Christianity in Antiquity (CIA): The Bart Ehrman Blog In yesterday’s post I indicated that I really very much wish that we could have some of the writings produced by Paul’s opponents in Galatia. They believed that in order to be… Read More ›
The Achilles heel of the New Testament
The risen Jesus in Luke 24 explains to the disciples on the road to Emmaus that the sufferings of the Messiah are all foretold in the Old Testament (24: 26-7), and this motif is repeated in Acts (Acts 3:18; 17:3;… Read More ›
Does Tom Wright Believe Jesus Is God?
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 ›
“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 ›
