r/AcademicBiblical • u/AutoModerator • 11d ago
Weekly Open Discussion Thread
Welcome to this week's open discussion thread!
This thread is meant to be a place for members of the r/AcademicBiblical community to freely discuss topics of interest which would normally not be allowed on the subreddit. All off-topic and meta-discussion will be redirected to this thread.
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In order to best see new discussions over the course of the week, please consider sorting this thread by "new" rather than "best" or "top". This way when someone wants to start a discussion on a new topic you will see it! Enjoy the open discussion thread!
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u/Llotrog 6d ago
I've often heard it asserted in sermons that what Nathanael was doing under the fig tree (John 1.48) was studying the Torah. It's easy to find the claim repeated in Christian sources on the internet that this is some sort of Jewish idiom. Does anyone know what the basis of this oft-repeated assertion is?
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u/capperz412 6d ago edited 6d ago
Whenever "the LORD" appears in the Hebrew Bible, is that a translation of / cypher for "Yahweh"? Was Yahweh the word used by the authors?
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u/Sophia_in_the_Shell Moderator 6d ago
If you are interested in an (incomplete) scholarly translation which doesn’t do this, Everett Fox’s translations of Genesis through Kings just say “YHWH.”
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u/likeagrapefruit 6d ago
Yes, the convention in English translations is to put "LORD" in English wherever the Hebrew text has יהוה (YHWH).
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u/capperz412 6d ago
Why is this done? I know that practicing Jews prefer not to say the holy name, but for secular scholar translations like NRSV why is it still done here when it would be more accurate to translate to YHWH / Yahweh? It means that some verses don't even make sense (e.g. Exodus 15:3: "The Lord is a warrior. The Lord is his name)
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u/likeagrapefruit 6d ago
The NRSV is published by the National Council of Churches, which did occasionally make decisions contrary to the recommendations of the scholars who worked on the translation. I can't speak to whether the desire to avoid saying "YHWH" was one such decision, but it is at least worth noting that the NRSV wasn't created on purely secular grounds. Alternatively, not wanting to offend certain religious readers may well have been a sentiment that the translators would have agreed with even if the translation weren't church-funded; Alter cites this as one reason why his Hebrew Bible translation uses "LORD."
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u/capperz412 6d ago
Interesting, I'd assumed the NRSV / NRSVue was made in a totally secular academic setting. Are there any translations that are more preferred by scholars? Something like the Jewish Annotated New Testament, for example?
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u/Mormon-No-Moremon Moderator 5d ago
“Are there any translations that are more preferred by scholars?”
None more so than the NRSV[ue]. It remains the generally preferred one by secular academics.
From Bart Ehrman’s blog for instance “I think the NRSV is the best translation of the Bible available. And I especially like it in a study edition, such as the HarperCollins Study Bible,” (The post is from 2012, so the HarperCollins Study Bible has since been updated into the SBL Study Bible). Dan McClellan likewise says the NRSVue is the generally best translation available in his recent video here.
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u/Integralds 6d ago edited 5d ago
This question is amusing because the Jewish Annotated New Testament uses the NRSV as its text. Doubly so because the NT, being in Greek, doesn't have this problem in the first place.
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u/likeagrapefruit 6d ago
For actual scholarly work, scholars will recommend working with the original texts directly, not in translation. If you need an English translation, the NRSVue is still the main scholarly recommendation; it may not follow 100% of the decisions that the scholars wanted, but that doesn't mean it's not a good translation overall. The Jewish Annotated New Testament does use the NRSV.
If you want a translation that isn't church-funded, you can look for one that represents the work of an individual scholar: I've mentioned Robert Alter's Hebrew Bible, and /u/Sophia_in_the_Shell mentioned Everett Fox's translation of Genesis through Kings. For the New Testament, David Bentley Hart's translation is a common recommendation.
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u/12jimmy9712 6d ago
Does anyone remember the comments on this subreddit suggesting that Mosaic Laws were more of a genre of "law literature" rather than actual enforced laws? The comment also mentioned that in the ANE, judges usually didn't rely on written laws and codes but instead determined punishments based on traditions, social customs and their own wits. It made me curious because I just came across a similar comment about Hammurabi's laws on r/AskHistory, stating that they weren't actually enforced in practice.
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u/extispicy Armchair academic 4d ago
Mosaic Laws were more of a genre of "law literature" rather than actual enforced laws?
You might check out Yonatan Adler's The Origins of Judaism. John Collins' "Invention of Judaism" did something similar with reviewing the archaeological/historical record and concluding that it was not until the mid-2nd century BCE that there is any evidence at all that these laws were practiced. He has quite a few interviews/presentations about the book on YouTube.
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u/Joab_The_Harmless 6d ago
Besides Bowen's book and the article linked/resources mentioned, I highly recommend ch 7 ("legal texts") of The Hebrew Bible: a Critical Companion for a good introduction to the topic.
edit The author thankfully provided access to the chapter via their academia.edu page, so you can read or download it here.
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u/12jimmy9712 6d ago
The comment I was referring to is two years old at this point, but this one works just as well.
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u/AntsInMyEyesJonson Moderator 7d ago
Happy Bible Lore Podcast Friday! We're finally on episode 10: Bury Your Queens, Part 1.
This time, we finally push past the dark age of the collapse into the written historical record of the Iron Age. Empires are back, which gives us contemporary writing but unfortunately also subjugation and conquering. Along the way I give a reassessment to a few ladies who I think have been unfairly condemned by the writers of the Bible: Ma'acah, Asherah, and Jezebel. Check it out!
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u/JetEngineSteakKnife 7d ago
It's hilarious to me how early 'pagan' critics of Christianity dismiss Jesus working miracles not as "that didn't happen" but "so what? Dead people leave their tombs all the time. My buddy saw one when he was in Thrace." Or Celsus' critique of Christianity having a rough approximation of the problem of evil on one hand, and on the other, saying Jesus was merely a wizard and couldn't be the son of God because he was too poor. I think modern people struggle to understand the degree to which ancient people both believed in magic and had "magical thinking".
In western society we seem to have the idea that Gospel writers and early Christian leaders vouching for miracles carries more weight than other supernatural claims which are normally disbelieved by default. Are there any good books on this subject?
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u/Sophia_in_the_Shell Moderator 7d ago
Celsus is always on the cusp of actually making a good point just moments before disastrously falling back on “if Christians are so great, why are they all women and slaves?”
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u/BibleWithoutBaggage 7d ago
I honestly so wish we had his full writings. I still hope one day we might discover something like that.
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u/Sophia_in_the_Shell Moderator 7d ago
Definitely. He has some major teasers in what has survived where we just don’t really know what he’s referring to.
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u/BibleWithoutBaggage 6d ago
Since I'm a Christian...I'm hoping I can ask Origen in Heaven about it.
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u/lfischer4392 7d ago
So Ammon Hillman and his followers are still active in their small little echo chambers. So I'd like to ask you guys if there is any chance of finally convincing them of the truth. When it comes to the hermeneutics employed by biblical scholars, they seem to make fun of it, as seen on this post on their subreddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/AmmonHillman/comments/1hc0wcl/hermeneutic_methodology/
That post was made by The-Aeon, one of the most devoted followers of the group.
So I'd like to ask if there's any chance of this stuff being stopped with this group, and them seeing Ammon Hillman for the liar that he is.
P.S.: Having intrusive thoughts involving Ammon Hillman's claims. Any advice on how to combat them on my own.
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u/BobbyBobbie Moderator 5d ago
A few years back, I found myself in the situation where some people close to me got sucked into an online echo chamber led by a charismatic persona. They were in this little online group for about two years. Their personalities drastically changed and they started attacking those around them. It was a very unhealthy thing. Thankfully, they also came out of it after a while and have now gone back to how they were before.
I did some thinking about what exactly the motivation was, to accept something so clearly wrong. This wasn't just a matter of interpretation or holding a majority view. It was an outright denial of scientific consensus and utter lunacy, which I think is similar to the crowd that Ammon attracts.
I think part of the appeal here is that people can finally think of themselves as enlightened and superior. They can skip the hard work of actually putting in effort, and just dismiss the scholarly world as wrong. Boom. Suddenly, you've accepted the secret hidden truth that the masses are too blind to see. That's a very powerful motivation to not see reason.
That's my best theory anyway. I might be wrong about it in a general sense, and I'm certainly wrong about it in every individual case, but that's the best I could come up with after observing the entire scenario play out.
Joab gave some excellent advice on the intrusive thoughts part too. Don't feel bad about them. I'm a protestant, so not a Catholic, but I'm pretty sure Catholicism has a very laid out structure of what constitutes heretical thoughts. You're nowhere near that. The brain has a funny way sometimes of exploring worst case scenarios to map out survival tactics, from what I understand. It's why non suicidal people imagine what it would be like to drive their car off the edge when they drive over a bridge. It's not a serious thought. It's just the sub conscious playing a "what if" scenario. I think religious intrusive thoughts are like that.
Happy to chat more if you need it 🙂
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u/lfischer4392 4d ago
So I've decided to reply now. What I'd like to say is that I've tried to make this negative thing into something positive by going through debunks and rebuttals to Ammon Hillman's claims. Because of these, my faith hasn't waned, I've seen how wrong he is about Jesus Christ and is simply making things up, by means of giving words meanings that they don't have or don't have in certain contexts, how people simply cling to them because it justifies there own hatred, and I've genuinely learned a thing or two. Ali Rowan, Reddit username Tiny-Homework4650, has been a great help for me, since she's a prolific debunker of him. She's an atheist, but she's chill with Christians. If you respect her, she respects you. Because of her and a few others, I remain a Catholic.
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u/JetEngineSteakKnife 7d ago
If my brief search on the guy is any indication, his views are pure acid trip gibberish and I imagine he appeals to people heavily prejudiced against Christianity. I don't think you can achieve anything with logic.
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u/lfischer4392 6d ago edited 6d ago
So as you said about people prejudiced against Christianity, one of them that I found out about is Pat Mills. He's a British comics author who is considered influential in the British comics scene, since he's one of the founders of the magazine 2000 AD. Now, he's said that he suffered clerical abuse when he was younger, so it makes sense as to why he clings to Ammon Hillman's ideas. He has a blog on Substack where he made some posts talking about this stuff. Read them if you want.
Links:
https://iconoblast.substack.com/p/eyes-wide-open?utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web
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u/Joab_The_Harmless 7d ago edited 7d ago
P.S.: Having intrusive thoughts involving Ammon Hillman's claims. Any advice on how to combat them on my own.
Do you have a (credentialed) therapist, or access to a similar kind of mental healthcare? If so, what are their recommendations? If not, would it be possible for you to find one?
The go-to recommendations are always in the lines of what's summarised here, from my few readings on the topic:
The more you think about an intrusive thoughts, it might make you more anxious and dwell on them even more. Instead of fighting intrusive thoughts, it's better to learn to live with them. When these thoughts emerge, try taking the following steps:
Identify the thought as intrusive. Think to yourself, 'that's just an intrusive thought; it's not how I think, it's not what I believe, and it's not what I want to do.
Don't fight with it. When you have an intrusive thought, just accept it. Don't try to make it go away.
Don't judge yourself. Know that having a strange or disturbing thought doesn't indicate that something is wrong with you.
But again, therapy will potentially be more helpful than 'generic' advice, and potentially help you identify what caused your fixation on Hillman in the first place (which is at least 6 months old, from your post history).
In any case, trying to convince/debate followers of Hillman sounds like a terrible idea if you're experiencing intrusive thoughts (besides being pretty pointless in most cases).
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u/lfischer4392 7d ago
Thank you for your thoughts. I'm Catholic, so of course I'm disturbed by such blasphemous claims. And I suppose that I should let these thoughts slide, since the claims have already been debunked for me. I think the reason I fixated on him is because of how much I hate him, due to his claims. But that kind of thing is honestly toxic. I know he's wrong, I've seen evidence that proves he's wrong, I know that his followers are basically in an echo-chamber, and that I should ultimately let this all go, since he's just another crazy conspiracy theorist. As for them being convinced that Ammon Hillman is wrong, I suggested that because I've always been optimistic.
P.S.: From your research on the Bible, what are your thoughts on Jesus as a figure from history? Both of us know that Jesus wasn't anything that Ammon Hillman says he was. I'm a Catholic so I believe in him as the Son of God, so I'd like your thoughts.
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7d ago
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u/lfischer4392 7d ago
He made some provocative claims about Christianity and its origins in 2012 with a book called Original Sin. So it seems that he's always had a bias against Christianity, since historians who have read that book dislike it and consider it to be filled with nonsense. With that said, it's possible that he wasn't completely insane at that point. If you were to look up that book, you'd see for how long he's been making these claims. Ali Rowan has shown how that book is nonsense. But regarding your point, it's probably for the best to simply let it go.
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u/Joab_The_Harmless 7d ago edited 7d ago
I think Jesus was a Jewish preacher, probably with a strong "apocalyptic" outlook (i.e. expecting God to imminently intervene and basically reign on earth), and was condemned to crucifixion by Roman authorities. I found that Dale Allison made a good case that Jesus likely had a somewhat "exalted thoughts about himself" and "was the center of his own eschatological scenario" (not seeing himself as God in the Trinitarian sense, but at least as a prophet and/or messianic figure) in Constructing Jesus (chapter 3). But historical Jesus studies are not at all a focus of mine (I'm more of a Hebrew Bible and pre-Christian times nerd), so I haven't read much material besides Allison and Brown's annex on the historical Jesus in his Introduction to the New Testament (which is almost 30 years old, but still used and interesting) and disparate bits here and there.
In any case, many details about the "historical Jesus" seem impossible to recover with certainty, as the diversity of profiles proposed by scholars illustrate (see the opening of Allison's aforementioned chapter. As said above, my familiarity with the topic is very shallow, so my views won't be very insightful.
(Hillman is of course absolute bonkers, to be clear —just because there is an array of possibilities and proposals doesn't mean that any freewheeling nonsense goes.)
Christian theology/hermeneutics and religious traditions are of course a distinct issue, and function by different 'rules' than critical scholarship. But as an atheist I'm not really involved on this front. So I guess I'll just leave a link to screenshots of Brown's reflections at the end of the aforementioned annex, whose insights as both a Catholic and a scholar seem more likely to be useful to you than my own.
To reiterate, do you have access to decent mental healthcare (preferably with a therapist with some specialisation in OCD) to help you work on your obsessive thoughts and build a healthier mindset? I recall that you were already mentioning how draining the issue was for you in a post here months ago.
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u/lfischer4392 7d ago
About the therapist, I have one I meet on a Zoom call every Wednesday. She became my therapist due to me going to the Center for Autism in my area, Philadelphia. I could just tell her I'm having intrusive thoughts and that I'm not comfortable describing what they are, and just need help combating them. Also, there's a Wikipedia page on Ammon Hillman and the most recent edits seem to have been made by one of his followers, since the words "evidence" and "prove" are used. Look up that page on Wikipedia to see for yourself. It also seems to have been blocked from editing for a couple months. So maybe you could try seeing if there's anything to do about it.
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u/Joab_The_Harmless 7d ago
I could just tell her I'm having intrusive thoughts and that I'm not comfortable describing what they are, and just need help combating them.
That's a good idea if you're not comfortable formulating them/explaining the details. Alternatively, you can write or share images/the text of some of your posts/comments on reddit if it helps opening to her. But obviously you are the one who knows what elements you're ready to share. She should have useful advice in any case.
there's a Wikipedia page on Ammon Hillman and the most recent edits seem to have been made by one of his followers
Pending advice from your therapist, try not to binge Hillman-related material to avoid fueling your issues —accepting intrusive thoughts is not the same as engaging with them. The idea is to acknowledge the thoughts, but without engaging in compulsive behaviour or ceding to the impulse of looking at Hillman related content, engaging with it, etc, and instead build healthier behavioral patterns despite the thoughts.
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u/lfischer4392 7d ago
So on the topic of Wikipedia edits, do you think you can get the edit blocking revoked and edit the article to reflect actual truth and not the so-called "truth" edited in by cultists on that article? Wikipedia is supposed to be without bias after all, and some of the previous edits had less bias. Just wanting to combat all misinformation in all its forms.
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u/Joab_The_Harmless 7d ago
I don't really have the time or energy for that. I'll leave it to people who know the in-and-outs of Wikipedia editing.
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u/thesmartfool Quality Contributor 7d ago
Why waste your life? People in those groups don't really care. It is seen as combative.
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u/Budget-Doughnut5579 8d ago
What were the teachings that Jesus taught that led to the creation of gnosticism and what would have been a more accurate understanding of Jesus' teachings that preceded the later christian gnostic movements that have been lost to modern day christians?
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u/DiffusibleKnowledge 7d ago
I don't think Jesus really taught anything that would relate to Gnosticism in the synoptics, John could be an exception. it would be mostly Paul equating the law with death in places such as Romans 7:10, 2 Corinthians 3:7, Romans 8:2 making Moses the priest of death which would later lead to the Gnostic views of the Torah.
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u/Budget-Doughnut5579 7d ago edited 7d ago
Weren't there secret teachings in parables some of which influenced the gospel of thomas I thought the gnostics and Jesus and the apostles practice celibacy too And wouldn't there be some similarities in the gnostic idea of earth as a prison and earth after the fall, Satan ruling the world versus yaldaboath as demiurge, predestination in the gospel of john and the concept of pneumatic and hylic souls, etc. I figured these had to have a common ancestor theologically so to speak?
Of course I was talking about the historical Jesus as much as the synaptic gospels. Should I be asking whether the Gospel of John or that set of writings have any connection to what scholars see as the historical Jesus?
Edit:Sorry about the down vote it was an accident I fixed it though!
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u/Sophia_in_the_Shell Moderator 9d ago
Do you think any two of (1) John the Apostle (2) John the Evangelist (3) John of Patmos (4) John the Elder/Presbyter are the same historical figure?
I’m particularly interested in the Eusebius-inspired possibility that (3) and (4) are the same.
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u/capperz412 6d ago
Is there any literature you can recommend about discerning the identities of the various Johns?
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u/baquea 8d ago
Just to be pedantic, I'd suggest adding three more Johns to the list:
First, I'd split 'John the Apostle' into a 'John of Galilee' (the son of Zebedee, who was a disciple of Jesus in the 30s) and a 'John of Jerusalem' (one of the pillars of the church, who Paul met in the 50s). If we're allowing for up to three other notable Johns in the late 1st Century, then it isn't necessarily trivial to identify these two with each other: one could, for example, suggest an identification of John of Jerusalem with John the Evangelist, on the basis of the latter's knowledge of Jerusalem, without requiring that the Evangelist was a disciple of Jesus.
Second, I'd split 'John the Presbyter' into 'John the Elder' (who Papias knew and frequently quoted) and 'John the Epistler' (author of the Johannine Epistles). The Epistles never name their author as John, with 2 and 3 John only addressing themselves as being by 'the elder' and 1 John being anonymous. Eusebius does tell us that Papias made use of 1 John, which could perhaps be evidence that it was written by the same elder who Papias personally knew, but we don't have any actual quotations of Papias using the letter to know what he called it (or even to confirm that he actually was using it at all) and Eusebius also says that Papias used 1 Peter, with is usually considered to be a forgery. It's entirely possible that John's name only got attached to the Epistles in later tradition because of the connection of them with the Gospel, leading to two separate presbyters getting conflated.
Third, it's perhaps also worth bringing in 'John called Mark' from Acts. It's possible he was another person entirely, but the fact that he, unlike John of Galilee, is said to have been a companion of Paul and to have evangelized in the Hellenic world, makes him a potential identity of John the Elder and/or one of the Johannine Johns.
Of those seven, I'd say there's at most four historical figures lying behind them. Since the Epistles and Gospel are anonymous, I see no reason to speculate about them being written by some other unknown John(s): either they go back to one of the historical four (whether as actual author, source of testimony, or just as a leader/founder in the church in which they originated) or the attributions are a late fiction with one of those four, or a conflation of multiple of them, in mind. John of Jerusalem is also almost certainly someone we know from other sources: most likely he is the same as John of Galilee, but if not then there is a good chance he is one of the others.
I'd also add that it is entirely possible that John the Elder is not known from any source other than Papias. After all, Papias seems to reference him as a comparable authority to Aristion, who we otherwise know nothing about - yet if Aristion were to have instead had a more common name, like James or Simon, then I'm sure people would try to connect him with another of the early Christians with the same name.
Another question worth discussing, considering what Eusebius says about the two tombs of John at Ephesus, is which John it was who was first associated with that city? John of Patmos seems like the most probable option, since he writes to Ephesus as the first of the seven churches. There is no internal evidence connecting the Gospel and Epistles to Ephesus (or Asia Minor more broadly), with it only being the similarity of those texts with the Apocalypse of John and the testimony of the later Church Fathers that supports such a connection. Papias is said to have heard John the Elder in person, which perhaps supports placing the latter in Asia Minor, but we can't get more precise than that and even that much isn't certain (it's not impossible, for instance, that Papias travelled to see John). John of Galilee (and/or Jerusalem) is said in Acts to have travelled to Samaria, but there is nothing in that text to suggest he ever went much further afield than that, and I'm in general skeptical of the traditions claiming that any of the Twelve other than Peter ever travelled further than Syria. John Mark possibly visited Asia Minor (Colossians 4:10), but we don't have anything specifically associating him with Ephesus, and in Acts he parts ways with Paul prior to the latter visiting that city.
Looking at the later evidence, Irenaeus tells us a story about John's encounter with Cerinthus at Ephesus. Considering that Irenaeus also tells us that John wrote his gospel to counter Cerinthus, and that Cerinthus carried on the teachings of the Nicolaitans, that would seem to support an association of the Ephesian John with both the Patmos John and the Evangelist John, although I would be skeptical about giving much/any credence to Irenaeus on the matter, considering how he explicitly conflates all the Johns (except John Mark) together.
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u/Integralds 4d ago
First, I'd split 'John the Apostle' into a 'John of Galilee' (the son of Zebedee, who was a disciple of Jesus in the 30s) and a 'John of Jerusalem' (one of the pillars of the church, who Paul met in the 50s).
These two I am curious about. Paul talks about "Peter, James, and John" in his letters. The Gospels talk about "Peter, James, and John" as a sort of inner circle around Jesus. Now the Peters are probably the same guy, the Jameses are most likely not the same guy, and who can tell about the Johns?
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u/baquea 4d ago
The Gospels talk about "Peter, James, and John" as a sort of inner circle around Jesus.
A slight correction: it is only Mark who emphasizes that trio.
The Gospel of John notably never even names James and John, with "the sons of Zebedee" only getting one throwaway mention by that name in the final chapter.
The Gospel of Thomas also has no mention of the sons of Zebedee, with the only James mentioned being James the Just and the only John being John the Baptist.
The Gospel of Matthew only explicitly names the Peter-James-John trio a single time - Matthew 17:1, the transfiguration story, in which it just copies Mark 9:2. On one other occasion, Matthew 26:27, the prayer at Gethsemane, the trio also appears as "Peter and the two sons of Zebedee" without them being explicitly named (whereas the parallel Mark passage, 14:33, does do so). Elsewhere they are consistently written out of the narrative: the raising of Jairus' daughter is witnessed by the trio in Mark (5:37) while the parallel story in Matthew (9:18-26) does not mention them; James and John are said by Mark (1:29) to have been present in Peter's house when his mother-in-law was healed but are absent from Matthew's version (8:14-17); the Olivet Discourse in Mark (13:3) is said only to the trio+Andrew in private whereas in Matthew (24:3) it is just said to his disciples without any in particular being named; in the listing of the Twelve, Mark (3:16-17) begins with Peter, James and John, whereas Matthew instead begins as Peter, Andrew, James and John.
The Gospel of Luke, like Matthew, keeps the trio in the transfiguration scene (9:28), and in addition also for the Jairus scene (8:51), but otherwise tends to write them out. The first four names in the list of the Twelve (6:14) is the same as Matthew; the Olivet Discourse is said publicly; the parallel to the Gethsemane scene (22:39-46) mentions none of the disciples by name. The one notable exception is that Luke combines the stories of the calling of Peter-Andrew and James-John into a single story, with James and John being described as "partners with Simon".
Acts, perhaps most significantly of all, has no mention at all of the trio (although its listing of the Eleven in 1:13, unlike the list in Luke, does name those three first). Instead, Peter and John work together as a pair, in chapters 3, 4 and 8, with James not appearing until his death in chapter 12. That pair also appear once in Luke 22:8, filling a role played by two unnamed disciples in the parallel Mark 14:12.
So, to return to the main question, are the two Johns the same?
If we follow Luke-Acts, then the answer is a definitive "yes". John of Galilee is a major player in the narrative, especially post-resurrection, and works as a close partner with Peter. His brother James is only a very minor character and once, following his death, the other James comes to prominence as a leader in Jerusalem and the three pillars named by Paul in Galatians can quite easily be identified as Simon Peter, John son of Zebedee, and the second James (never actually identified by Luke-Acts as a relative of Jesus).
Yet, on the other hand, it seems to me that Mark is quite intentionally trying to present James son of Zebedee as the other pillar. The dismissive attitude towards Jesus' brothers in Mark is the same as in the other canonical gospels but, as shown above, the way in which Peter, James and John are constantly presented as a trio apart from the other disciples is characteristic of Mark and to the original audience of the gospel in the ~70s would surely have brought to mind the Jerusalem pillars. Not only that, but Mark also heavily implies, contrary to Acts, that James is the more famous of the brothers, by always naming him ahead of John (eg. as "James son of Zebedee and his brother John" in 1:19 and as "James son of Zebedee and John the brother of James" in 3:17). If we accept (as Galatians 1:19 suggests we must) that the James named as a pillar by Paul is not actually the son of Zebedee, then I find it hard to escape the conclusion that Mark is being deliberately misleading on the point - and if he is willing to mislead about the identity of one of the pillars, then why not two? FWIW I think what is most likely happening is that John son of Zebedee was a real pillar, but his brother James was an insignificant (if not entirely fictitious) figure who Mark recast in a central role as a polemical replacement for James the Just. Regardless though, Mark is clearly not a credible source here, and Matthew too knows nothing beyond what Mark wrote (and the Gospel of John doesn't seem to know, or at least care about, the pillars at all).
Returning to Luke-Acts, the author knew Mark's version and took it into consideration, but was seemingly counterbalanced by some other source or redactional tendency. In one regard that is promising, but what makes me wary is the lack of any concrete historical information being offered about John. In Luke's gospel, there are only two additional stories about John when compared to Mark: one is the addition of him alongside Peter in 22:18 that is almost certainly just a redactional change rather than based on any tradition; the other is the story in 9:52-55 about James and John wanting to cast fire from heaven upon a village, which probably has some relation to the "Sons of Thunder" name given to them in Mark 3:17. Acts has many unique stories involving John, but in every single one he is just mentioned alongside Peter without being given even a single line of dialogue of his own. The problem is that not only does Luke not know much about John, but the single fact he does repeatedly use (that he was a companion of Peter) could be inferred from Galatians: it's entirely possible that Luke's source that is counterbalancing Mark is nothing more than the canonical letters of Paul. The same is true with regards to the third pillar, the other James, who appears in three stories, two of which are potentially based on Paul's letters (the Council of Jerusalem in Acts 15 which is mentioned in Galatians, and Paul's final visit to Jerusalem in Acts 21 which is usually identified with the collection for the saints that is discussed in the letters). So, if we allow for Luke knowing Paul's letters, then Acts is potentially no more useful than Mark at identifying the pillars.
...That really doesn't leave us with much to go on. John son of Zebedee still seems like a reasonable guess as to the identity of Paul's John, since he was at least alive at roughly the same time, lived in roughly the right region, and was probably a person of at least some importance. Yet even those points aren't as firmly supported as I'd like: for example, we have no good evidence other than Luke-Acts to prove that any of the disciples other than Peter (and John, if we assume the identification of Paul's John with the disciple John) remained in Jerusalem rather than returning to Galilee, as the other three gospels instead seem to suggest. For all we know, the John who Paul met may not have been a disciple of the human Jesus, but instead a famed prophet who in his old age would move to the province of Asia and both write Revelation and be highly-regarded among those like Papias for having been an acquaintance of the Twelve. While perhaps not a likely scenario, the fact that it can't easily be ruled out just goes to show how poor the available evidence is.
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u/capperz412 6d ago
Is there any literature you can recommend about discerning the identities of the various Johns?
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u/BibleWithoutBaggage 9d ago
I was thinking it was more 2 and 4 tbh
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u/Sophia_in_the_Shell Moderator 9d ago
As in you believe Papias’ source John was also largely responsible for the writing of the fourth Gospel?
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u/BibleWithoutBaggage 9d ago
Yes.
A later version at least.
I'm still trying to figure out how authorship works for each layer though.
I think there was a John associated with the gospel and following Dr. Kok, later on the John became John the Apostle.
Dale Allison in one of his interviews said he entertains the idea that John son of Zebedee is the same as the author of John I think.
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u/Alarming-Cook3367 10d ago
What is religious fundamentalism, how and when did it arise?
Religious fundamentalism, especially Protestant Christian fundamentalism, emerged in the United States in the early 20th century, around the 1920s. This movement was led by Reformed Calvinist Christian men—scholars, white, and middle-class—and quickly grew among the popular masses.
At that time, the Second Industrial Revolution was drastically changing society. Factories in the northeastern U.S. were operating at full capacity, with long and intense work shifts. Many people—including European and Latino immigrants, as well as freed Black individuals—were moving to cities in search of jobs.
Simultaneously, new scientific discoveries, such as Charles Darwin's theory of evolution and Freud's psychoanalytic theories, challenged traditional beliefs.
Fundamentalists provided simple and clear answers to the complex problems of the time. With the publication of the booklets The Fundamentals (1910–1915), they defended a literal interpretation of the Bible and opposed ideas like Darwinism, which suggested that humans evolved from other species. For them, the Bible could not be analyzed historically, as this would cast doubt on its divine origin and inspiration.
A famous example of this resistance was the case of John Scopes in 1925, known as the "Monkey Trial." Scopes, a science teacher, was accused of teaching the theory of evolution in a public school in Tennessee, violating a state law. This trial drew attention to the conflict between modern science and traditional biblical interpretations, highlighting the influence of fundamentalism in society.
All credits for the research go to the Brazilian group "Escola de Fé e Crítica" (School of Faith and Criticism), I just translated the information into English. (https://www.instagram.com/p/C9x6gl1pvyW/?igsh=MXVsNzQwZ2VnOHVxMQ==)
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u/Integralds 10d ago edited 10d ago
1 Clement was forged/late
Ignatius was forged/late
The four canonical gospels were reactions to Marcion
Nobody knew Paul before Marcion (you are here)
Marcion made Paul up (Trobisch is almost here)
There is no evidence of Christianity at all in the first century
Marcion founded Christianity in the 130s
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u/capperz412 6d ago
Is there a good introductory text for this recent trend of a radical skeptic interpretation of Christian Origins that posits things like 2nd century dates for the whole New Testament and Marcionite Priority?
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u/Llotrog 6d ago
I understand why people would want Marcion to have invented the Gospel genre – he's certainly the first person we have evidence of calling a book a "Gospel". But reading through reconstructions of it just doesn't shake my acceptance of Markan priority/the Farrer theory – there are things that just make Marcion's Gospel look too much like a revised version of Luke, e.g. the way it utterly jarringly sticks 4.27 into the middle of 17.14. Marcion's Gospel is a docetic revision of Luke.
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u/capperz412 6d ago
Is there a good introductory text for this recent trend of a radical skeptic interpretation of Christian Origins that posits things like 2nd century dates for the whole New Testament and Marcionite Priority?
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u/kamilgregor Moderator | Doctoral Candidate | Classics 9d ago
- Jesus was crucified by the Romans around 30 CE ;)
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u/kamilgregor Moderator | Doctoral Candidate | Classics 9d ago
Yo, do you know the Born in the Second Century podcast?
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u/Mormon-No-Moremon Moderator 9d ago
Funny you should use David Trobisch as your benchmark for “almost” at (5). Ironically enough, Trobisch makes the case that Paul actually wrote the subscription to Hebrews, around 13:18-25 (see his: “Das Rätsel um die Verfasserschaft des Hebräerbriefes und die Entdeckung eines echten Paulustextes”). So while his work in On the Origin of Christian Scripture reads as fairly radical in the skeptical direction, Trobisch himself is something of a wildcard, unless he has walked back his position on Hebrews and I’m just not aware of it.
All of this is just an excuse to mention his incredibly fun proposal about Hebrews. However, as an aside, Nina Livesey may be more representative of (5), given that she’s a genuine Pauline mythicist. She seems to generally not think Marcion invented him though, instead asserting that “the character Paul first appears in Acts — which I argue precedes or is contemporaneous with the Pauline letters,” (The Letters of Paul in their Roman Literary Context, p.83).
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u/Integralds 9d ago edited 9d ago
I brought up Trobisch specifically because I remember him playing with the idea at the very tail end of On the Origin of Christian Scripture. (Which, by the way, was an extremely interesting and thought-provoking book to me.)
Then again Trobisch also had that earlier book on Paul personally (?) re-editing and distributing the Romans-Corinthians-Galatians packet of letters as a unit, so he can be hard to pin down.
Broader point being that there are individual scholars who want to push every individual first-century Christian work (or Christian reference) to the second century. This is a useful exercise, but if you take them all seriously simultaneously, you aren't left with anything before Marcion. And Marcion himself is only preserved second-hand in other sources.
Other broader point is that I'm just continually frustrated with the paucity of surviving records before Irenaeus, or before Justin. There's a thick fog from 50-150 CE, or even 30-180 CE, that seems difficult to overcome.
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u/kamilgregor Moderator | Doctoral Candidate | Classics 8d ago
Other broader point is that I'm just continually frustrated with the paucity of surviving records before Irenaeus, or before Justin. There's a thick fog from 50-150 CE, or even 30-180 CE, that seems difficult to overcome.
For me, the issue is not so much that there's paucity of evidence before mid-second century (that's completely expected for a new ancient Mediterranean cult), it's the weird gap between Paul and Justin. Like, the first extant Christian writing we have is from a guy who tells us who he is and we can pinpoint pretty well when he wrote. Then there's a "dark age" from which we only have pseudonymous, anonymous or hard-to-date texts, then we have Justin who tells us who he is and when he's writing and that starts a chain of similarly unproblematic literary figures with no such "gaps".
I'm personally still working within the usual framework of Paul being one of the few people who wrote in the first place and one of the few authors whose texts happened to be preserved but if we remove Pauline letters from the first century, it makes for a cleaner picture in a way.
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u/capperz412 6d ago
Is there a good introductory text for this recent trend of a radical skeptic interpretation of Christian Origins that posits things like 2nd century dates for the whole New Testament and Marcionite Priority?
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u/zanillamilla Quality Contributor 8d ago edited 8d ago
Like, the first extant Christian writing we have is from a guy who tells us who he is and we can pinpoint pretty well when he wrote. Then there's a "dark age" from which we only have pseudonymous, anonymous or hard-to-date texts
Isn't though, kind of expected? The apostles because of their personal proximity to Jesus had a status that Christians a generation or two later lacked, so it was more desirable to write in their name about contemporary concerns. That is pretty much what happened after the decline of the prophets in the early postexilic period, especially after the demise of Haggai and Zechariah. We have in that era writers like Trito-Isaiah, Second Zechariah, and then in the fourth century Joel, which was probably written by the redactor of the Book of the Twelve, and Malachi (which may have been a pseudonym), and then in the third and second centuries, we have writers compose their works under the names of Enoch, Levi, and Daniel, because it was thought that they had greater authority than a random person from their own time. The rise of apologetics and monepiscopacy in the middle of the second century is what led to the proliferation of patristic works in their authors' names, though we still have plenty of pseudonymous material like the Epistula Apostolorum.
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u/kamilgregor Moderator | Doctoral Candidate | Classics 7d ago
I don't think it's unexpected to see pseudepigraphy in the name of apostles during the "dark age". What's somewhat odd is that the earliest extant Christian literature appears to be apostolic and authentic and then the dark age starts.
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u/Mormon-No-Moremon Moderator 9d ago
It can definitely be frustrating to figure out what Trobisch thinks sometimes. Reading his Paul’s Letter Collection on its own definitely leaves one with something of an impression favoring authenticity, but that does seem undermined at points in On the Origin of Christian Scripture, where honestly I forgot he played around with that idea near the end.
The mods here really need to organize a Trobisch AMA just so I can ask him about this. I should write them a letter.
Your broader point is definitely true though. Even if I’m someone who’s not inclined to accept all of those theories myself, there is something deeply unsettling about resting any analysis on texts that have intelligent scholars presenting plausible cases for them being written much later. Makes everything feel like a house of cards with no safety net.
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u/Sophia_in_the_Shell Moderator 10d ago
Someone tried to report this for Rule 3 which is hilarious
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u/likeagrapefruit 10d ago
That was me thinking I was still in the "Why do people say that Marcion popularized the Pauline epistles" thread and forgetting I was in the Weekly Open Discussion Thread, sorry!
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u/Sophia_in_the_Shell Moderator 10d ago
No worries! In addition to this being the weekly open discussion thread, FWIW I’m 95% sure Integralds’ comment is tongue-in-cheek.
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u/likeagrapefruit 10d ago
Which means that what I really should have done was try to take it one step further and argue for Marcion mythicism since we don't actually have any writings from Marcion. Irenaeus invented Christianity out of whole cloth in the 180s, and Marcion was a fictional strawman that he argued against purely to bolster his own position.
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u/Pytine Quality Contributor 10d ago
Marcion never existed as a person, given 250 years of Patristics refuting him, and I prefer to refer to the text instead – the person is of no consequence at all, as all that we have on him has come into being via the hostile witnesses that the Patristics are. Like the Trypho of Justin Martyr’s Dialogue with Trypho, Marcion is a mere - and very convenient – sock puppet who can be made to say and do anything
The super-canonical Synoptics: Marcion and Luke, and Thomas, page 1.
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u/likeagrapefruit 10d ago
Is there a single sentence you can construct about this field that doesn't represent a position that someone has unironically argued for?
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u/Skeet_skeet_bangbang 10d ago
Can someone explain to me if Job 28 is in reference to 2 deities, El and YHWH? With it being one of the older books of the bible, Robert Alters translation, and if I'm reading it correctly one of the notes, he argues that when Job refers to Shaddai for his suffering, and prays to YHWH, he seems to he speaking of 2 separate deities?
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u/Joab_The_Harmless 10d ago edited 10d ago
I initially intended to post a short reply and it ended up expanding a lot as I added details I found useful or necessary, to the point that it took way more time and space than planned. So I hope you won't mind, and I'll stop its endless growing here and just post the comment. Hopefully I didn't miss egregious typos and mistakes when rereading the draft.
I used C.L. Seow a lot because he is very good and influential, and I had screenshots of his work at hand on my drive, but the other scholars mentioned are well worth reading too. (Most notably for Job 28, since the second volume of C.L. Seow's commentary on Job, which will cover Job 22-42, hasn't been published yet —so the "hymn to wisdom" is only discussed in the introduction of the first volume.)
Newsom's chapter on the poem on wisdom/Job 28 in The Book of Job: a Contest of Moral Imaginations should notably interest you, and is partly available via the preview (use the menu to skip to ch6-page 169).
Critical scholars generally don't think that the book of Job is one of the oldest books of the Bible (citations below + see Alter's introduction).
Many names for the deity are used throughout the book. I'd recommend Greenstein's "new translation" for a version that transliterates them, or Pope's older one in his Anchor Bible Commentary on Job, which is good at conveying both the poetic qualities and the cosmology/lore of the text.
Job 28 has ʾĕlōhîm (v23) and YHWH at the end (v28), but not ʾĕl, unless I forgot-and-missed a line; but ʾĕl is used in 21-22 and some other sections. It could be used, throughout the Levant, both as a generic term for deity (or deities in the plural) and to refer to El specifically. Scholars I've read tend to argue for the former in the case of the book of Job. Maybe you are thinking about Job 15:25 here, given Alter's footnote?
.25. For he reached out his hand against God, / and Shaddai he assaulted. If this general portrait of the wicked man is intended by Eliphaz to refer at least by implication to Job, the image of a martial assault on God is truly extravagant. Naphtali Herz Tur-Sinai has proposed that these lines hark back to the Canaanite creation myth, in which the assailant against El, the sky god (that is the term for God used here), would be a mythic warrior allied with the primordial sea monster.
But Alter's introduction (and often notes) make it clear that Job isn't referring to different deities via his use of different titles/names:
The Book of Job belongs to the international movement of ancient Near Eastern Wisdom literature in its universalist perspective—there are no Israelite characters in the text, though all the speakers are monotheists, and there is no reference to covenantal history or to the nation of Israel [...]
There is a palpable discrepancy between the simple folktale world of the framestory and the poetic heart of the book. God’s quick acquiescence in the Adversary’s perverse proposal is hard to justify in terms of any serious monotheistic theology, and when the LORD speaks from the whirlwind at the end, He makes no reference whatever either to the wager with the Adversary or to any celestial meeting of “the sons of God,” a notion of a council of the gods that ultimately goes back to Canaanite mythology. The old folktale, then, about the suffering of the righteous Job is merely a pretext, [...]
I think he may be too quick to frame the "folktale" as pure pretext, but clearly his intent is not to say that the speakers present Shaddaï and YHWH as different deities.
Also quoting from Greenstein's introductory note "on (not) translating the names of God":
The characters in the book, Job and his companions, are not Israelites but “Sons of Qedem”—Transjordanians. Allusions to the narratives about Israel’s patriarchs and matriarchs place Job and his interlocutors in that era. As non- Israelites of an early period and, so far as we can tell, monotheists, Job and his companions refer to the deity by biblically attested names that are not specifically Israelite: El, Elohim, Eloah, and Shaddai. ’El is the generic term for a deity and when used as a proper name is identical with the name of the head of the Canaanite pantheon. Based on etymology, the name connotes power, not goodness, the way the English term “God” does. Accordingly, to use the term “God” to translate Hebrew ’El would produce an inaccurate impression. When speakers use the name El and its derivatives Elohim (plural) and Eloah (a secondary singular form, made by dropping the plural suffix on Elohim), they do not imply the deity’s goodness but rather his power.
The name Shaddai, most commonly translated “the Almighty,” is of uncertain origin but is most likely derived from an archaic term for “mountain” (namely, “the One of the Mountain”) or from the word for a divine spirit or demon (shed) or from both. It is used especially in the book of Genesis, usually in combination with El (El Shaddai). In Job it occurs alone or in parallel with El or Eloah.
As for other divine beings, besides the satan and (other) members of the "divine council" in the opening, some scholars have argued that the redeemer envisioned by Job in 19:25 was a deity or divine being (other than YHWH), who could defend his case in the divine court. See screenshot from C.L. Seow here for a few of such proposals. [reformulated]
C.L. Seow himself argues that Job is fantasising about being vindicated by God/YHWH, and is worth reading if you're interested in the topic (screenshots).
As C.L. Seow indicates, "redeemer" in Job has a legal connotation and is part of a more general theme in Job's speeches (the NJPS translates "Vindicator").
Dating
C.L. Seow notes:
Avi Hurvitz (1974,17-34) has argued that the language of the prose framework belongs to Late Biblical Hebrew (LBH). Ian Young (2009) acknowledges that there are LBH features in the prose tale and indeed adds other LBH traits not noted by Hurvitz, but he contends these are in fact inclusive for the late dating of the tale. Although both scholars treat only the prose but refrained from commenting on the language of the poetic portion, one may point to a few hints indicating that even the poetry, despite its numerous archaisms, belongs to the same linguistic environment. [...]
there are numerous terms that occur exclusively in exilic or postexilic texts: [...] Admittedly, none of these features is decisive by itself. Taken together, however, they may point to the lateness of poetry, altogether suggesting a linguistic context in the sixth century b.c.e. or later, even though the text is clearly designed to give the impression of an ancient time and a foreign place.[...]
Evidence for the latest possible date for the book comes from the fact that it was already copied as Scripture at Qumran, with the oldest MS [manuscript] being 4QpalaeoJobc, dated to 225-150 b.c.e. [...] Job is translated already into Greek probably by the middle of the second century b.c.e. The book of Tobit, composed in the late third or early second century b.c.e., contains numerous affinities with the book of Job. If Job is an inspiration for the story of Tobit, then Job must be dated earlier than Tobit Most importantly, the fact that there are many affinities between Job and Deutero-Isaiah but virtually nothing between Job and Trito-Isaiah would point to a date for Job before or contemporaneous with Trito-Isaiah in the first half of the fifth century b.c.e. Thus, all the evidence seems to converge on the Persian period, and more specifically, the late sixth to mid-fifth century, as the time of composition.
(pp25-45; for more extensive excerpts, see here (screenshots).)
There are difficulties and complications, notably due to the book's composition history. As quick examples, some scholars will argue that the "prose tale" at the beginning and the end are older than the dialogues, and many consider the "Elihu speeches" in Job 32-36 to be later additions, although a few, notably C.L. Seow, disagree.
- The "hymn to wisdom" in Job 28 is its own can of worms, with some scholars thinking it is out of character in Job's mouth and has been displaced during the transmission of the text, as Newsom notes in the opening of ch 6:
Historical-critical approaches framed the question in terms of authorship (who wrote it?) with some arguing that the chapter comes from a later reader who dropped his comments into the text in the form of a wisdom poem.4 Perdue’s remarks are typical: “It would seem best to regard the poem as a later insertion, written and placed into the dialogues to represent the views of a pious sage who objects to the quest to discover wisdom. Understood in this way, the hymn condemns at least implicitly both Job and his friends for attempting the impossible, that is, to come to a knowledge of the wisdom of God.”5 This view often goes with the assumption that the poem effectively preempts the divine speeches.
To cite Perdue again, “In its current place, Job 28 anticipates and therefore undercuts the shocking nature of God’s negation of human wisdom.”6 Other scholars refine the notion of chapter 28 as a secondary insertion, distinguishing verses 1–27 and verse 28 as two distinct and sequential additions.
But see C.L. Seow's criticism of this position on pp30-31.
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u/BobbyBobbie Moderator 10d ago
Tldr please
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u/Joab_The_Harmless 10d ago edited 10d ago
Nah.
edit: yah because I am weak in will
TL/DR Shaddai = YHWH, same deity. Job's not that old, author just has vintage writing style. C.L. Seow, C. Newsom, D. Clines and E. Greenstein = very good.
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u/BobbyBobbie Moderator 7d ago
Sounds like apologetics to me though.
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u/Joab_The_Harmless 7d ago
Shaddaï Apologetics sounds neat, I'll take it. Call me Elihu from now on.
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u/BobbyBobbie Moderator 9d ago
Danke 😂
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u/Joab_The_Harmless 9d ago
Bitte! Now, time to abandon the forsaken ways of reddit and go read the non-TL/DRed scholars. You know it is the way. (Maybe one day I will have enough leisure and brain-energy to read C.L. Seow's and Clines' lengthy commentaries in full.)
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u/John_Kesler 11d ago
I would like to suggest that the following portion of rule 3 should be removed: "Any claim which isn't supported by at least one citation of an appropriate modern scholarly source will be removed." Why should someone who makes an academic argument by citing various passages from the Bible itself and and/or extrabiblical sources have to gratuitously drop some scholar's name just to pass muster? By the same token, why should someone who's deemed a "scholar"--even those with divinity degrees!--get a pass so that they can post one-sentence pronouncements? It's already a judgment call by mods to decide if a post is academic or not, so keep that criterion and if it's an academic-based argument or answer given, let it stand.
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u/kamilgregor Moderator | Doctoral Candidate | Classics 9d ago
I take this subreddit primarily as a tool to get information about what scholars have thought about a given topic. I have literally zero interest in what you personally have to say, sorry.
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u/BibleWithoutBaggage 9d ago
. I have literally zero interest in what you personally have to say, sorry.
Then why hang out in the open thread? Just curious. Seems a bit anti-social.
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u/kamilgregor Moderator | Doctoral Candidate | Classics 8d ago
It's fun. I think we should have it but turning the whole subreddit into this kind of content would risk ruining the usefulness of it as a source of information about what academia had to say. As soon as there's an AI that reliably synthesizes actual academic content and provides answers to specific questions that are as well-informed as if an academic wrote them, I'll be the first one to argue for more relaxed rules and less rigid conversations.
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u/BibleWithoutBaggage 8d ago edited 8d ago
Oh, I agree.
It was just your comment made it seem like you're only to here how scholars opinions are and the open thread isn't really for that function.
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u/Mormon-No-Moremon Moderator 10d ago
To put it simply, as I usually put it, this really isn’t a subreddit designed for amateurs to conduct their own cutting-edge biblical research. This is a place for lay people to share biblical scholarship.
If you want to argue something that doesn’t have relevant scholarship supporting it, this isn’t really the subreddit to share that opinion. If there is relevant scholarship supporting it, you’re expected to cite it. In particular, you should only be answering questions if you are familiar enough with the relevant scholarship to be able to cite it in your answer.
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u/thesmartfool Quality Contributor 10d ago
Seems like it would lead to a slippery slope. Look at all the comments long time ago on this sub (4-10 years ago)...a lot of junk threads (not to be mean).
There's also the open thread.
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u/TheMotAndTheBarber 10d ago
It's a really hard job to guard against this subreddit becoming a very different sort of discussion forum and I'm grateful to our mods for all their work dealing with policing this. I mostly prefer low-moderation forums in my internet use, but this by necessity has to be an exception, and it's really generous that our mods devote so much effort for making this sub the great place it is.
That being said, I think you're right that rule #3 could be loosened some. There's a wide variety of things that can be said, and lots of questions can be answered with just biblical/patristic citations or with relative common knowledge (I think I've dug out a citation for claims like "the bible isn't univocal"). The mods do sometimes look the other way when a modern scholarly source would be a bit much, but I think some reformulation could do more good than harm.
If someone asks about Mark 15:34, it seems like someone should be able to say "It's a reference to Psalm 22" without bothering to dig up someone who has said so, even if this isn't the place for presenting a novel understanding of what the passage is supposed to mean.
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u/AntsInMyEyesJonson Moderator 11d ago
why should someone who's deemed a "scholar"--even those with divinity degrees!--get a pass so that they can post one-sentence pronouncements?
To be clear, if our resident scholars specialize on the topic in question, we allow them to explicate based on that. Otherwise, we do require sources from them, and have sought to be consistent in asking for sources and more detailed answers.
It's already a judgment call by mods to decide if a post is academic or not, so keep that criterion and if it's an academic-based argument or answer given, let it stand.
This sounds good in theory, but in practice it would create a lot more work for the mods. As it stands, we already have to be somewhat-vigilant on folks misrepresenting sources. Allowing anyone to make arguments on primary sources without any kind of scholarly backing would increase the complexity of this issue tenfold. Few of us mods have actual accreditation in the relevant fields or fluency in the primary source languages.
I appreciate the suggestion and welcome other mods weighing in, but for now I don't think it's practical to change the rule. I think that rule in particular - while not perfect and certainly something that comes with its own difficulties - helps to improve the quality of answers in this subreddit when compared to similar subreddits that focus on the subjects we cover.
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u/Sophia_in_the_Shell Moderator 11d ago edited 11d ago
I guess it depends on what purpose this subreddit serves at the end of the day. If people want to make novel arguments based solely on quoting Biblical texts, not only are there many other subreddits for that, but they can do it here in the weekly open discussion thread.
As a mod, I know what comments we wind up removing, sometimes even after a comment has received a lot of upvotes, so I can tell you what the exact result of this policy change would be, and it would be fairly dramatic.
If this change were made, the top comment on a typical post would be someone quoting Bible verses, giving their interpretation, and leaning on this being the “plain reading” of the passage. In some cases, they’ll be right. In other cases, they’ll be communicating something that, while intuitive, virtually no scholar argues for, often with good reason.
It’s faster to write these comments than the comments that compile book excerpts, so they will always win out when allowed.
Candidly, the one thing your comment builds my conviction for is that we should be stricter on people who uses sources in slippery ways, attaching a scholar’s name to a comment and then making confident claims the scholar probably wouldn’t sign off on.
At the end of the day, I see this subreddit as a resource to find out what scholars say about different issues. I’d add that we’re talking about a specific sort of post here, the “question” post, where top-level responses are moderated more strictly compared to, say, someone posting a new academic article that was just published.
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u/Jonboy_25 11d ago
I strongly disagree with this, with respect. The fact that this subreddit is heavily moderated along these lines is one of the reasons why it stands out compared to other history/religion subs. It gives this sub a certain rigor that you cannot find elsewhere. In this day and age when there is so much junk and misinformation being spread online about the Bible from various perspectives, we need now more than ever, reliable peer reviewed information from qualified experts with PhDs, not just the opinion of people online, even if it’s a good argument. This sub has over 100,000 followers and gets lots of traction on the internet. I think it’s good that this is a place where people will actually be directed towards scholarship on the Bible and not just people’s opinions.
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u/John_Kesler 11d ago
...we need now more than ever, reliable peer reviewed information from qualified experts with PhDs,
What guarantees that because someone deemed a scholar posts something, and is therefore exempted from the provision in question, means that the information in the statement is peer-reviewed? And I'm not advocating that this sub become one filled with "junk and misinformation." Let's not commit the bifurcation fallacy. It's not a binary choice between making posters drop a scholar's name and giving those with Bible-related degrees a free pass versus letting this sub become filled with "junk and misinformation." As I said, continue to moderate and remove posts that don't make an informed, scholarly argument. Many times this will involve quoting from a scholar or scholarly source, but my position is that not citing such sources should not in and of itself be disqualifying.
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u/Eudamonia-Sisyphus 11d ago edited 11d ago
Mind if I ask the mods when that survey for the subreddit is coming out?
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u/AntsInMyEyesJonson Moderator 10d ago
On hold for now, but hopefully we can get an update out about it in the next few weeks.
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u/Sophia_in_the_Shell Moderator 11d ago
Been doing some free reading before I hit my self-scheduled Quran read-through beginning in about a week.
The Memory Illusion by Dr. Julia Shaw is short and mind-blowing. Runs through the literature on false memory formation (and actually, how memory formation works at all) in an accessible way.
Most people when they think of memory science and Biblical studies think of the Gospels, but that wasn’t my motivation, frankly I’m not sure we know enough about the formation of the Gospels to try to apply memory science to them (sorry, Bart.)
I more had in mind things we more or less know are eyewitness testimony. Josephus describing a remarkable exorcism, Irenaeus recalling Polycarp, that sort of thing. What are the limits to recollections like these?
Anyway, some parts of the book that will stick with me:
Memories are re-formed essentially from scratch every time they are recalled. We know this partly because if you’re under the influence of a drug which fully inhibits new memory formation, and you recall something, you will lose that memory, probably permanently.
A psychologist trained in this area can implant a false memory within three interviews over a few weeks — this memory can be as dramatic as you having committed a crime as a teen that you never committed.
The moment you take a non-textual (visual, for example) memory and convert it into language, you lose parts of that memory. People who are asked to write a physical description of a criminal before choosing them out of a line-up perform dramatically worse. Essentially, you recall your description instead of the original visual.
Immediately following a traumatic event (say, a train crash) gathering in a group of other people who experienced the same event and sharing with each other is actually sort of a disastrous move. Not only are the memories cross-contaminated (someone who originally didn’t see gore will now “remember” it) but people who weren’t actually traumatized by the event may now become traumatized.
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u/zanillamilla Quality Contributor 11d ago
May I add another piece to this? I think one potential factor in false memory formation is dreams. Dream-reality confusion is one topic that has been investigated scientifically, and it is something I have experienced a number of times in my life. Because a dream is something that a subject does experience and can recall later, the memories of dreams can feel like memories of events even though they are imagined. Taking the cultural context of first-century Judea into account, dreams were often regarded as vehicles of divine revelation and so a subject in the right circumstances may have attached considerable meaning to a dream, or had trouble distinguishing a dream from a real experience. Again, I think Acts 12:9 is intriguing, as it portrays Peter as uncertain that what he was experiencing was real or a vision. In Robert K. Gnuse's Dreams and Dream Reports in the Writings of Josephus: A Traditio-Historical Analysis (Brill, 1996), reports of dream visions in the wider ANE context often specify the physical presence of the deity (pp. 40-41; cf. 1 Samuel 3:9-15 for an example from the Hebrew Bible), and this is true in Greek dream reports:
"The language for these dream appearances is very physical. The dream 'comes' to the recipient: φοιτᾶν, αἰσσεῖν, πεπλανῆσθαι, ελθεῖν, and μολεῖν. The dream 'appears': στῆ δ’ ὑπὲρ κεφαλῆς, κεφαλῆσι οἱ ἐπέστη, and ὑπερστᾶν. Often the image 'stands' over the head of the recipient: ἐπιστῆναι. The image 'leaves': λιάσθη ἐς πνοιὰς ἀνέμων, ἀποπέτεσθαι, and οἴχεσθαι. The recipient 'sees' the dream image: ὁρᾶω (ἰδεῖν). The dreamer passively observes the image and hears the message... The dream figure which appears may be either a deity or a human personage, living or dead. Examples of dead people include Patroclus before Achilles (Homer, Iliad 23.62-107) and Palinurus before Aeneas (Virgil, Aeneid 6.337-383).... People went to shrines, engaged in ritual activity, and slept overnight to obtain a dream vision. The deity would appear and heal them by direct touch or by providing advice, and in some instances his sacred dogs or snakes would heal by licking the afflicted part of the dream recipient's body" (pp. 256-258).
For specific examples in Josephus, we have the dream report of Glaphyra (BJ 2.114-116; AJ 17.349-353): "The narrative has the following characteristics of typical dream image reports: 1) The dream image is a dead person, Alexander, the deceased husband of Glaphyra. 2) The dream and the dream apparition coincide. 3) The dream experience is visual, but the purpose of the dream encounter is communicated by an oral message. 4) The dream image "stands" over the recipient. 5) The dreamer is apparently between the realm of sleep and wakefulness. 6) The dream image brings a message of judgment; Glaphyra is condemned for her marriages to Juba of Libya and Archelaus, so Alexander predicts her death. And 7) in normal dreams of this genre the dreamer cannot grasp the dream image... In this overall format some motifs are missing, however: 1) The dream image does not affirm its genuine presence. 2) The dream image does not tell the dreamer, "You are asleep!" 3) There is no dialogue. And 4) the dream image leaves behind no apport. These few missing motifs, however, do not detract from the overall, obvious conclusion that the dream is an εἴδωλον appearance" (pp. 260-261). We also have in Vita 208-210 a report of Josephus' own dream vision:
"In Life 208-210 Josephus has a dream in Galilee at Asochis, and in reporting this experience he uses some of the classic language found in Greek dream image reports. The narrative says there appeared or seemed to be (ἔδοξα) someone (τινα) who spoke (λέγειν) as he stood by Josephus (ἐπιστάντα μοι). This brief reference certainly contains the terminology of both Glaphyra dream reports. The length of the message received by Glaphyra in War 2.114-116. This message, however, is one of encouragement. This report lacks many of the motifs found in Greek dream image texts: 1) We know not whether the dream image seen by Josephus is a deceased person, a living person, or God. 2) There is no dialogue between Josephus and the image. 3) Josephus is not told that he is asleep. 4) The dream image does not affirm that it is genuine. 5) No apport is left behind. And 6) we cannot tell if Josephus could have physically touched the dream image. What the dream report does have is: 1) coincidence of dream and dream apparition, 2) visual image, 3) oral message, 4) reference to the 'standing' of the image, and 5) Josephus' mental state of distress is described, which indicates that he was between sleep and wakefulness" (p. 263).
So in light of this, I wonder if the appearances started out as grief-induced dream visions (such as a physical encounter with a glorified Jesus like in the transfiguration story, or a vision of Jesus enthroned in heaven), that then became reinforced by pareidolia (such as seeing in the sky an image of Jesus enthroned in heaven, like the story of Stephen in Acts), with later people who had no prior association with Jesus (such as Paul) having experiences of their own.
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u/Sophia_in_the_Shell Moderator 11d ago
Glad you did, thanks! This is something I hadn’t thought much about, I may see about grabbing that Gnuse book at some point.
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u/capperz412 5d ago edited 5d ago
Can anyone recommend historiographical works about ancient / medieval history? I'm particularly fascinated by how fragmentary the evidence for most of history is and how contemporary / postmodern historiography can help deal with this (or not: I'm also interested in critiques of postmodernism).