The Cranky Chronologist

Search This Blog

Rethinking the Dates of the New Testament

on December 12, 2021

Get link
Facebook
X
Pinterest
Email
Other Apps

Coming Spring 2022, from Baker Publishing.

Get link
Facebook
X
Pinterest
Email
Other Apps

Comments

Progress and Decline

Following up on my post about responsibility and goodwill, I feel compelled to write on what will perhaps seem to many an outdated idea, namely that collectivities of persons can go through progress and decline. "Progress" has a very simple meaning for Lonergan: genuine insights, good judgments, and responsible decisions build one upon another, such that society is organized and technology is created so as to objectively improve conditions for as many people as possible. Decline is the opposite: oversight, bad judgment, and irresponsible decisions compound each other such that society becomes fragmented, technology that could alleviate suffering is not developed, etc. The grand scheme of history has seen a general trend towards technological progress, and I would argue also intellectual, social, and moral progress as well. Once we had barely mastered the wheel, now we can send people to the moon. Once we thought that the sun went around the world and was perhaps a personal ...

Putting the "Myth" in Mythicism

Once again, someone with only very little knowledge on the subject has posted a blog post loudly declaring that there is good reason to doubt that Jesus existed. Once again, the reasons given are without an exception logical fallacies. Let us consider. Here is the link: http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2014/08/30/did-the-historical-jesus-exist-a-growing-number-of-scholars-dont-think-so/ Here are the five reasons the author gives, and the fallacies involved. 1) "No first century secular evidence whatsoever exists to support the actuality of Yeshua ben Yosef." This is of course an argument from silence, and thus only compelling insofar as one should expect there to be something other than silence. In point of fact, given that Christianity in the first century is quite marginal, it is hardly surprising that those outside the movement take little notice of the movement. Moreover, given the paucity of evidence from the ancient world few silences are unexpected. 2) "The e...

Ebola and Parallelomania

Okay, the title is a bait and switch. This post isn't actually about Ebola. It does however use the current fears surrounding Ebola as an instructive lesson for New Testament scholars. The other day, I came across a news story that a patient was being treated in a Brampton, Ontario, hospital for Ebola-like symptoms. Now, Brampton, Ontario, is about a half-hour drive from my home, so I was understandably a bit concerned by the news. Then I read the story, and noted its emphasis upon the "like" in "Ebola-like." What was going on is that the patient had recently returned to Canada from a country affected by Ebola and had symptoms that looked like Ebola, but also looked like other, more common diseases, such as malaria. The hospital was playing it safe and quarantining the patient and sending out blood for testing, but it probably wasn't Ebola. The lesson: formal similarity is insufficient to establish substantive identity. This is exactly the same lesson th...

Powered by Blogger

Rethinking the Dates of the New Testament

Comments

Post a Comment