Posts tagged as:

History

History and science – the human errors of Jesus and the Bible?

February 24, 2010

The title of this post is, I point out, a question. It arose because I was struck by the openness and honesty of the comment David Couchman left on this post. He said:

On the one hand, I’m very uncomfortable with the kind of conservative position which says ‘if science seems to contradict the Bible, so [...]

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Pluralism, prejudice and power in reading early Christianity

February 2, 2010

Dan Reid has an interesting post on the IVP blog on some of his bête noirs.

Lately I’ve been experiencing moments of speechlessness. Over the years it’s been a recurring condition for me. It’s triggered by comments—sometimes from church folk, no less—who mention that, of course, we now know that there were many Gospels—such as the [...]

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Theology and Biblical Studies: friend or stranger?

January 7, 2010

I spent the first part of this week at a conference on theological education. I hadn’t realised when I signed up (well, was signed up by my diocese) to this just how much it was associated with the Radical Orthodoxy movement, or I might not have been willing to have my arm twisted. However, I [...]

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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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Sometimes history is good

November 9, 2009
Berlin2008_004.jpg

There are very few occasions when you know history is being made even as you watch it happening. For sometime it wasn’t entirely clear what it meant, but 20 years ago today I was glued to the news as the Berlin Wall ceased to divide the world. In some respects it has remained in my [...]

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MacCulloch’s History of Christianity

November 3, 2009
MacCulloch.jpg

I’ve just finished reading Diarmaid MacCulloch’s massive History of Christianity . The TV series based on this begins this Thursday on BBC4. I’m not going to try to review it, since I would guess there is only a small band of people competent enough to do so, but I do want to commend it. If [...]

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Nobody expects the Roman inquisition …

October 26, 2009

… to be the hero.
However, I am currently reading my way slowly through Diarmaid McCulloch’s History of Christianity. When I’ve finished it (sometime in the next decade given the size of it, I shouldn’t wonder) I hope to say more about it. However it is full of fascinating nuggets.
Did you know that the first Christian [...]

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BCE and CE revisited. Honestly, how common is it?

September 30, 2009

Daniel McClellan points to Bob CargilI’s short essay in favour of BCE and CE.
I am one of those who have so far been unpersuaded that BCE and CE provide anything other than a rather deceptive gloss to a fundamentally Christian dating system.
The reason we have our current calendar is due both to a Christian theological [...]

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DeConick’s one-sided suspicions

September 21, 2009

April DeConick continues her argument about methodology. In today’s post she sets out “the 10 ‘commandments’ or ‘operating principles’ for the historical-critical interpretation of ancient texts” as she seeks to practice them.
There are two significant problems with these as they stand. I would see the correctives I’m suggesting as nuancing her principles rather than overthrowing [...]

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America: founded by Anglicans (did you know that?)

August 20, 2009

Lisa Miller of Newsweek thinks that the deliberations of Episcopalians really don’t matter. Personally, I not only rather agree that they’re suffering from delusions of soi-disant prophetic self-importance, but I wish a great many other Anglicans (not least those in Nigeria) could be equally indifferent. However in the course of what was otherwise an entirely [...]

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