I'm beginning to accumulate an unwieldy quantity of historical Jesuses. Less useful in that I've moved to a primary narrative that leaves Jesus out altogether. Even so, in the absence of an actual, historical Jesus, we may still create a number of literary Jesuses, each distinct and beloved, and required for generational continuity of the Church ( Read more... )

I'm enjoying the Marvin Vining book, Jesus the Wicked Priest, but not because I agree with his conclusions. In fact, the more I read, the further removed I become from agreement. He's another armchair archaeologist, so I feel a certain kinship with him. This despite the fact that the guy has to go through some mesmerizing gyrations to tie his pet ( Read more... )

The latest issue of BAR revisits the much hyped Gospel of Judas, and has some unkind words for National Geographic and their media-heavy release of the original material. The biggest complaint was that they picked the wrong scholars who didn't understand Gnostic cultures and misinterpreted key passages of the text. Most significantly, NatlGeo ( Read more... )

I mentioned Dungan's Constantine's Bible the other day before I had finished reading it. I fear that I made it sound like a lame book, and I'm glad I didn't let my waning enthusiasm sour me on it before I was done.

( An optimist is never pleasantly surprised. )

Yes, another book. David Dungan's Constantine's Bible has an amazing reach, starting from the beginnings of civilization, through the development of Greek philosophy and its distribution through the ancient East. Only a third of the way through, but I'm pretty sure I know how this one ends.

( Overview of book topic )

According to Benny Shanon, a professor of cognitive psychology at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, psychedelic drugs formed an integral part of the religious rites of Israelites in biblical times.

Writing in the Time and Mind journal of philosophy, he says concoctions based on the bark of the acacia tree, frequently mentioned in the Old Testament ( Read more... )

The Rodney Stark book had a set of maps that easily decomposed into a chart of data that I have proudly appropriated as the basis for a much larger database. Admittedly, it was in the search for much of this data that I discovered Stark's book, so he saved me a lot of time. I like the idea of using mathematical models to deduce information and to ( Read more... )

First, two biographies on the emperor Constantine. Constantine the Great: The Man and his Times, by Michael Grant, and the ingeniously named Constantine the Great, by John Holland Smith. These are followed by a review of Cities of God: The Real Story of How Christianity Became an Urban Movement and Conquered Rome, by Rodney Stark

( Constantine )

This whole Constantine series has been riddled with errors, and the more I re-read them, the more problems I find. In this first one, I totally trash the Roman Emperors portion of the quiz.

1. Big C was the last Tetrarch of the Roman Empire
In a sense, he was never really an official Tetrarch, having usurped his position as Augustus, but he was ( Read more... )

Probably the most difficult aspect of studying the origins of Christianity is that there is so much history to plow through. If you pick just one place, you can spend lifetimes exploring the peoples and families that had just been there over the centuries ( Read more... )