History

Martyrdom as a way of understanding a suffering Messiah?

May 7, 2010

I sometimes find that a particular phrase in something I’m reading can sometimes simply stop me in my tracks and make me ponder. I had that experience recently with a chapter title in Mike Bird‘s generally excellent little book on Jesus’ messianic self-understanding. One of his section headings is “Crucified Messiah, not Crucified Martyr” (p148). [...]

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Early Christian history, postmodernism and imaginary texts

December 30, 2009

There has been a kind of long Christmas rumble going on about doing early Christian history in relation to postmodernism (whatever exactly is meant by that). April DeConick posted a week before Christmas defending the historian’s approach. (The comment thread – especially Christ Chris Weimer’s – is well worth a read too.) James Crossley yesterday [...]

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