The videos from the conference of last October are now finished and uploaded. Thanks go to Shaun for making these possible, and to Will for recording the event! Among the topics are videos on how Zeitgeist gets it wrong and the unfortunate story of how flawed Bible...
Historical Jesus
Review of Prof. Maurice Casey’s Scholarly Critique of the Work of Jesus Mythicists
I blogged a short time ago to alert readers about this book. Maurice Casey was a New Testament scholar and Aramaic specialist. He was also nowhere close to being a "Bible believer" - the sort of people that Jesus mythicists love to mock. It's Casey doing the mocking...
From Jesus Mythicism to Paul Mythicism
Robert Price is one of the few (very few) credentialed scholars who doesn't think Jesus existed. His work (and work put forth by others in the same vein) has been debunked by scholars ranging from the evangelical variety to atheists. I've blogged about that before....
Jacobovici and Wilson’s Lost Gospel: Lengthy Review by Richard Bauckham
Well-known New Testament scholar Richard Bauckham recently completed his lengthy review of the latest "Jesus revisionism" book by Jacobovici and Wilson that I've blogged about previously. Bauckham published his review in seven online installments, but the entire...
Did Jesus Exist?
This impending article from BAR popped into my reader this morning: Lawrence Mykytiuk, "Did Jesus Exist? Searching for Evidence Beyond the Bible," Biblical Archaeology Review (January/February 2015) It's an excellent survey of the ancient non-biblical material that...
New Jesus Revisionist Hokum Book Getting Trashed by Scholars
By now most readers will have heard about the new book by Simcha Jacobivici (not a typo) and his academic co-author Dr. Barrie Wilson. In short, it's an embarrassment. And that's saying something given what Simcha (whom I and others have affectionately nick-named...
The Barely Historical Jesus: Thoughts on Jesus Mythicism from a Disinterested New Testament Scholar
Hat tip to Prof. James McGrath for this. Jesus mythicism, for the uninitiated, is the belief that Jesus never existed -- that he is an imaginary creation derived from a handful of ancient Near Eastern and Mediterranean mythological figures. This post by R. Joseph...
Jesus as a Figure in History: Book Review
In today's RBL (Review of Biblical Literature) email I found a review on this worthwhile title by Mark Allan Powell: Jesus as a Figure in History, Second Edition: How Modern Historians View the Man from Galilee I have the older edition of this work and it's quite good...
Reza Aslan’s Book About Jesus: More Out-Dated, Long-Refuted Scholarship
New Testament scholar Craig Evans recently wrote this pointed, detailed review of Reza Aslan's book, Zealot. The review spans several pages, so make sure to click through at the bottom of the first page.Evans has a long scholarly publishing resume and is known and...
Larry Hurtado on Bart Ehrman’s Book, How Jesus Became God
Larry Hurtado has a thoughtful, even-handed review of Ehrman's book here. This subject area is one of Hurtado's areas of expertise, his criticisms, though irenic in tone, are telling. My only addition would be toward the end. Ehrman seems completely unaware of OT...
Review of Bart Ehrman’s Latest Book, How Jesus Became God
Dr. Andreas Kostenberger just posted his review of Ehrman's most recent work, How Jesus Became God: The Exaltation of a Jewish Preacher from Galilee. The review is more of an overview of problems he sees with Ehrman's thinking. He leaves analysis of those problems to...
New Book Critiquing Jesus Mythicism
Another bad day for the Zeitgeist crowd. Prof. Larry Hurtado (Emeritus, University of Edinburgh) alerted his blog readers to a new book by Prof. Maurice Casey (Emeritus, Nottingham University). The title is Jesus: Evidence and Argument or Mythicist Myths? Hurtado...
Joseph Atwill’s Josephus Code
I've blogged this subject over at my Naked Bible blog, but it also belongs here at Paleobabble. What follows is borrowed from that post and appended with reviews and updates. Joseph Atwill, self-proclaimed (and credential-less) biblical scholar has recently busied...
Josephus Code Follies
I've gotten a half dozen emails about the new (it's not really new) Joseph Atwill book and "Covert Christianity" PR launch (er . . . conference). The big media event is really about Atwill's rehashing of his material in a 2006 book called Caesar's Messiah. It was...
Review of Reza Aslan’s Book About Jesus
By now many of you will have heard about the controversial new book by Reza Aslan on Jesus (Zealot: The Life and Times of Jesus of Nazareth). The book has generated controversy since Aslan is a Muslim and inflated his credentials for writing the book on a recent Fox...