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Just try to stop me I'm getting worse as I get older. And it's all Personal Opinion, you know, and not a single endorsement by the Authorities.
Doesn't the Dictum "Well, why don't you tell the experts? Don't tell us!" apply to me? It does! But, you listen. I doubt they would.
But thanks much for your post.
I did in fact listen. Though it would take alot of time to sort through it all, I did find it interesting and I can see that you have more than a little information about what is written in the Bible.
So basically you have a bunch of various texts, counted in hundreds, of various length and from various historical periods, that were censored and either accepted or tossed out and formed A Bible. That was further reviewed and changed more. And so on. It's a still going process.
I'm persuaded that Harold Bloom was at least on the right track in The Book of J, at least as identifying the authors of the Pentateuch. He gets a little off-base with arguments such as J was a woman in the court of Solomon, for instance, but on the whole it remains a persuasive argument for the various, distinct voices scholars discern.
OTOH, I'm a fan of the King James Version for the beauty of the language (and of course, as some televangelist once said, written in the original English), and this one, my current favorite rendering of the Bible.
I never learned about it in sunday school either, even though it is a large and active branch of academics.
In fact I have only read bits or Ehrman or someone like him. Yes, the line of inquiry began with Schweitzer, I suppose and there have been all sorts of studies and a succession of 'At last - I have discovered the Real Jesus" books.
The reason I did it without the experts ( ) is because they all seem to assume that the gospel record is reliable - give or take some eyewitness slips of memory and a bit of invention. All that is needed is to get a wonderful idea of what Jesus was Really doing, then select and interpret bits of Gospel that fit.
In fact they seemed to fall into the same trap as Gospel apologists.
I began by trying to reconcile the gospels and found they didn't fit at all. So I hived off the obvious contradictions until I got the basic story they all more or less agreed on - and there was one. What came out of thirty years of study (we crackpots always say "I have been working on my theory for Thirty years" ) was first detection of a Christian Cover -up of an original Jewish messiah. Which I am still going with. It also made it clear that there was a plot to get Jesus off the tree alive. (I can explain that if need be).
But there were still problems. Why would Jesus quote poetry at the moment of death? Why would the Synoptics not even mention the spear and leg -breaking? Come to that, why don't they mention Lazarus?
Lazarus fits wonderfully into the conspiracy as faked miracle resurrection, which Arimathea (who was also Lazarus) in turn used to resurrect Jesus. And it could be "Explained" that the synoptic version left it out because it looked fishy.
But that didn't feel right. Surely they'd revise to make it look less fishy! I had to conclude that John invented it, the spear and leg -breaking (in order to find a prophecy) and the whole Conspiracy unravelled. It could still be true and it would be a great story if it was, but I am forced to conclude that it is an inadvertent result of the four rewriting the basic story and 'weaving together' the conflicting bits make it look like a conspiracy (unless one is a denialist Gospel apologist - but their debunking of a Plot never works very well).
So the result is a Christian cover up - and you can see this in John's shifting about of the events of Holy week, because he certainly saw the significance of that. The synoptics covered it up in another way - they deleted (of course I mean the original the three used) Jesus arriving at Bethany Midday, supper, anointing, and having the donkey and procession and Palm leaves all made ready for the next morning, as per John. Having Jesus arrive midday and go straight to the temple on a miraculously predicted donkey and move the Temple cleansing to another day covered it up well enough.
Now Ehrmann, Farrel Till and the others may argue some of this or maybe not. And maybe they argue that the resurrection appearances are mis-remembered or fiddled or need Interpretation. And maybe they simply realize, as I did eventually, that there never were any appearances of the risen Jesus - until He popped into Peter's head and he told the downcast others "Jesus isn't dead - he's alive -in heaven", and the others all brightened up and said: "By my head and the gold of the temple, of course! And you can bet he'll'' be coming back to sort those buggers for killing him!"
That explained why Mark had no Resurrection, and yet how the disciples believed there was one, even if Jesus had to be dead in the flesh that Paul couldn't care less about.
I don't want to go on about how simple block invention of material explained so many of the problems that the Authorities and Experts seem to skip over or shrug off if they don't fit their particular Real Jesus theory.
I just say, that this is the theory of everything as far as NT goes. It is the Big Picture and it all fits like a glove, is backed up by internal evidence and makes predictions which all pan out.
And if they don't, I'm sure I can explain that away. somehow.
Last edited by TRANSPONDER; 05-11-2017 at 06:06 AM..
Reason: make that appearances...yes..that's beter....
I'm persuaded that Harold Bloom was at least on the right track in The Book of J, at least as identifying the authors of the Pentateuch. He gets a little off-base with arguments such as J was a woman in the court of Solomon, for instance, but on the whole it remains a persuasive argument for the various, distinct voices scholars discern.
OTOH, I'm a fan of the King James Version for the beauty of the language (and of course, as some televangelist once said, written in the original English), and this one, my current favorite rendering of the Bible.
Thanks. I am quite weak on the OT, though I have a general idea, but the detailed criticism with the detection of various layers of thought - YHWH one God amongst many, then the strongest god out of many, and then the Only god and the others didn't exist - is the expertise of others. Jacob Finkelstein's work on the origins of Israel and the 'Collapse' of the 11th c explained the other half of the Exodus that we suspected might be false, and the dating of the Merneptah stele, the Armana letters and clues like the Timnah potsherds showing when and how much Egypt owned canaan sorta knocked the Conquest - story on the head. Though nobody else seems to have picked up that a Ramesses II or third Exodus pharaoh -date conflicts with the mention of he Philistines -Ex 13.17 - who didn't exist until later.
In fact the Merneptah stele and Armana letters pretty much exclude all the other Exodus Pharaohs suggested from Akhenaten to Hatshepsut, and the Philistines ref- debunks the whole story. The Mernephtah 'Israel' stele had Israel existing before the Exodus happened, which had to be after the Philistines existed, which was some time after the Mernepah stele and its reference to Israel (as part of the Canaan campaign) did.
That is of course the clue to the probable situation. After the collapse of the 11th c and the influx of the Sea peoples, after the Hittite empire and the Canaanite states vanished (though Phoenecia survived (1) and Egypt survived - just -by fighting off the invasion and settling the Peleset in Gaza where they became the Phiistines (and the debased Helladic III style pots in Philistine graves proves the connection) The Amorite hill tribes had already begun to set up occupation in the plain: Ammon, Moab and Edom, and the Hebrews.
So when we read back to the stories of all the other nations being debased or slave descendants of Hebrew ancestors, or selling out their rights to be either God's chosen or anything but the slaves and servants of Israel, we can see that not as history, but as propaganda issued during the wars with Moab and Edom.
But, like I say, I don't know much about the OT - I'm a Gospel - redaction criticism specialist.
(1) I have a theory.....that the Phoenecians survived because they were a trading empire and they could re -establish their Canaanite -base from their colonies in Africa and Spain.
Last edited by TRANSPONDER; 05-11-2017 at 06:17 AM..
But, like I say, I don't know much about the OT - I'm a Gospel - redaction criticism specialist..
...and it's time we had that book off you my dear old wart.
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I'm getting worse as i get older. And it's all Personal Opinion, you know, and not a single endorsement by the Authorities.
) was first detection of a Christian Cover -up of an original Jewish messiah. Which I am still going with. It also made it clear that there was a plot to get Jesus off the tree alive. (I can explain that if need be).
that the synoptic version left it out because it looked fishy.
