Just watched a documentary on Amazon called Marketing the Messiah. An interesting look at the development of Christianity, the gospels, the bible, and fitting of narratives in historical terms and context. Would love to see Textcritic do a viewing and provide some thoughts. Text should be able to counter or support the claims made by the scholars in this doc. Can you spare some time Text?
Just watched a documentary on Amazon called Marketing the Messiah. An interesting look at the development of Christianity, the gospels, the bible, and fitting of narratives in historical terms and context. Would love to see Textcritic do a viewing and provide some thoughts. Text should be able to counter or support the claims made by the scholars in this doc. Can you spare some time Text?
Not available in Canada on Prime.
but you can watch it on youtube
Last edited by #-3; 12-29-2021 at 03:23 PM.
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Just watched a documentary on Amazon called Marketing the Messiah. An interesting look at the development of Christianity, the gospels, the bible, and fitting of narratives in historical terms and context. Would love to see Textcritic do a viewing and provide some thoughts. Text should be able to counter or support the claims made by the scholars in this doc. Can you spare some time Text?
I can take a look!
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Dealing with Everything from Dead Sea Scrolls to Red C Trolls
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Originally Posted by woob
"...harem warfare? like all your wives dressup and go paintballing?"
Just watched a documentary on Amazon called Marketing the Messiah. An interesting look at the development of Christianity, the gospels, the bible, and fitting of narratives in historical terms and context. Would love to see Textcritic do a viewing and provide some thoughts. Text should be able to counter or support the claims made by the scholars in this doc. Can you spare some time Text?
This is a solid film, featuring some pretty good scholars like Mark Goodacre and Amy Levine.
I think this show provides a good summary of the consensus of scholarship on the history of Christianity, and of the development and meaning of the New Testament.
I could do without the mythicism, because it is fairly dumb.
In Carrier's public presentations he will tend to hedge his bets quite a bit by claiming a probability of the existence of an historical Jesus at around 30-40%, but that is not what he has written in his one and only academic book, where he laughably suggests the probability to be around 1 in 12,500 or 0.008%. In the book, he gives two probability estimates: one based on his best probability assessment (0.008%) and then an "a fortiori" estimate based on him being maximally charritable to historicity (32%). For some reason he repeats ad nauseam how the "a fortiori" estimate is not reasonable at all and how he needs to be just to get historicity to at least that probability. We can even quantify how much less reasonable he thinks the "a fortiori" estimate is compared to his best estimated—about 4,000 times less reasonable!
Carrier fails because he simply does not understand Second Temple Judaism, and he is unable to read most of the Jewish sources in their original languages. Besides the very clean compatibility of an historical Jesus within first century Palestine, I think that he also does a very poor job of attempting to account for places in the received stories which have been obviously written to counteract the historical reality of an actual individual. Take, for example the birth narratives, which go to extraordinary lengths to place Jesus in Bethlehem, and not his home in Galilee. This sort of myth making makes absolutely no sense outside of an historical perspective, and Carrier's attempts to navigate them are incredibly ad hoc.
There are very good reasons why he currently does not hold an academic position, nor has ever held an academic position of any kind. As for his "wait and see" analogy that he attempts to draw with the fairly recent shift in scholarly consensus regarding the historicity of Moses or the Patriarchs, what we are dealing with in Jesus is simply not even remotely comparable. The reason scholars tend to reject an historical Moses or Abraham have a great deal to do with the distance of the sources themselves from the figures in view. Most of the Old Testament texts are dated to around 700–400 B.C.E., but if Moses existed, it would have been at least 500 years prior to this. The problem is that any historical Moses or Abraham are simply inaccessible. As far as I know most historians will concede that figures like these could plausible have existed, but we have no way of knowing one way or the other on the basis of the sources we have. The situation is actually much different insofar as Jesus is concerned. Scholars are well aware that the sources for the life of Jesus are very poor, but there is certainly enough there to very reasonably posit the high probability of his existence, and to deny it seems more like an agenda-driven screed than actual scholarship.
Anyhow, the film itself is on the whole very good, and I was happy to see how they handled the mythicism question at the end.
__________________
Dealing with Everything from Dead Sea Scrolls to Red C Trolls
Quote:
Originally Posted by woob
"...harem warfare? like all your wives dressup and go paintballing?"
So if there was no Moses then was there no Exodus out of Egypt either, I've heard about that being disputed before.
It is complicated. My personal view is that the much later Israelite myths of a sea-crossing by former slaves in Egypt probably stem from actual events of some kind. We know that Canaanites were frequently enslaved in Egypt, and we also know of instances in which these Semitic people escaped and returned to their homeland. Most scholars read the Exodus narratives as much later attempts to standardize these stories as a means to forge a national identity in the Iron Age kingdoms of Israel and Judah.
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What about something like this here?
Historians and archaeologists don't take any of this stuff seriously. These sorts of productions stem from deeply religiously motivated attempts to salvage scraps of historicity from obvious mythology. The group that made this particular short film is a Christian apologetic organization dedicated to "encourag[ing] you in your walk with God," and to providing "a deeper, more meaningful understanding of the Christian faith."
There is no academic rigour behind this stuff at all.
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Dealing with Everything from Dead Sea Scrolls to Red C Trolls
Quote:
Originally Posted by woob
"...harem warfare? like all your wives dressup and go paintballing?"
Amongst all this doom and gloom, it's nice to hear about a speck of sunshine.
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Americans are becoming less religious. None more than this group[Gen Z women]
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At the same time, Mojica Rodríguez saw how essential women were in keeping the pews filled and the church running. Ultimately, dismayed by the subservient role of women and the church's harsh restrictions on girls, she would leave her faith – and her husband – in her late 20s.
"Women are less inclined to be involved with churches that don’t want us speaking up, that don’t want us to be smart," said Mojica Rodríguez, who went on to earn a master’s degree in divinity. "We’re like the mules of the church – that’s what it feels like."
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"Women do the majority of the work that keeps the church going," said former evangelical Sheila Wray Gregoire, who’s studied Christian marriage in the U.S. and Canada for 17 years. "They’re the ones responsible for getting children out of bed and going to church. They’re the ones staffing the Sunday school, making sure potlucks happen or that people are supported when they have an illness or are having a baby. The church is not going to survive without women."
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“There’s a cultural dissonance with young women being told you can do anything and then being told, well, generally, yes, but when it comes to our place of worship there’s restrictions,” Cox said. “That’s another challenge that these places are wrestling with.”
The mormons just recently caved and are allowing women to wear sleeveless magic garments. Leadership pretty much sense women were fed up and not likely to keep cooperating in the dress code, they're afraid of dwindling numbers already.
I don't know how any self respecting woman would play along with this fantastical nonsense. I guess the LDS is not as horribly oppressive as Islam, that's something.
Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby (head of Church of England*) resigns over the cover-up of what is believed to be the largest case of sexual abuse in the church's history.
Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby (head of Church of England*) resigns over the cover-up of what is believed to be the largest case of sexual abuse in the church's history.
Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby (head of Church of England*) resigns over the cover-up of what is believed to be the largest case of sexual abuse in the church's history.
Hallelujah. Perhaps their is hope for this world, I just never thought it would lie with Gen Z.
Upwards of 20% (or more) of Gen Z is identifying as LGBTQIA+. The Church's record on that, and Combine that with many churches still WAY behind the time on roles of women, it shouldn't be surprising.
I'm doing what I can on both issues, but it really seems like an uphill battle.
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Sheila Wray Gregoire
I've found her podcast and other resources recently, and they are fantastic at undermining the patriarchal harm that still dominates in many churches.
If you're looking for a great follow, Dan McClellan hosts an excellent podcast called Data over Dogma and has solid channels on tiktok/instagram (@maklelan) where he responds to other social media creators, many of these also end up on his YouTube channel.
An example:
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If you're looking for a great follow, Dan McClellan hosts an excellent podcast called Data over Dogma and has solid channels on tiktok/instagram (@maklelan) where he responds to other social media creators, many of these also end up on his YouTube channel.
An example:
Publishing houses couldn't release updated books if God didn't create "revised editions" first.
Gotta bump this thread before Christmas as a reminder how vile superstitious belief can be, although with a bit of an Islam slant. Not sure if I've seen this discussed but in Aug of this year the Taliban in Afghanistan passed a law to become even more oppressive towards women. Tough to imagine that's possible but they did it. Women are no longer allowed to speak or be heard in public, even if you're in your own home and speak loud enough that someone on the street hears you, you're in trouble. Suicide rates among women in that part of the world has been terrible but they've risen even higher since.
Women’s voices are also deemed to be potential instruments of vice and so will not be allowed to be heard in public under the new restrictions. Women must also not be heard singing or reading aloud, even from inside their houses.
“Whenever an adult woman leaves her home out of necessity, she is obliged to conceal her voice, face, and body,” the new laws state.
Gotta bump this thread before Christmas as a reminder how vile superstitious belief can be, although with a bit of an Islam slant. Not sure if I've seen this discussed but in Aug of this year the Taliban in Afghanistan passed a law to become even more oppressive towards women. Tough to imagine that's possible but they did it. Women are no longer allowed to speak or be heard in public, even if you're in your own home and speak loud enough that someone on the street hears you, you're in trouble. Suicide rates among women in that part of the world has been terrible but they've risen even higher since.
Women’s voices are also deemed to be potential instruments of vice and so will not be allowed to be heard in public under the new restrictions. Women must also not be heard singing or reading aloud, even from inside their houses.
“Whenever an adult woman leaves her home out of necessity, she is obliged to conceal her voice, face, and body,” the new laws state.
I think God is a lot like Norm Macdonald. Lots of long meandering jokes with a hell of a punchline, but mostly fumbling around with a "well what the #### did you expect?" air about him. He doesn't mean to #### #### up so badly, it just kinda happens.
