Quote of the Day

"If scholars believed Jesus existed, why are Jesus books in the mythology section of the library?"

- anon internet scholar

More Conspiracy as History

The pre-existent Mandaean spirit of Augustine, Nicea 325 (per Murdock)

Via James McGrath, Muertos’s Blog has a post  Herding Cats: How And Why Conspiracy Theorists Are Wrong About Experts and Academicians where he examines the phenomenon of conspiracy theorists masquerading as experts. He touches on the work of my personal favourite conspiracy theorist on Christians origins,  Acharya S/D.M Murdock.

On a personal note, I really do wonder how Murdock deals with the fact that she is knowingly selling a book containing fatal errors. I have previously reviewed some of her book focusing on historical errors and her response was to brand it "irrelevant opinion" and made up "crap." More recently I addressed this matter of "opinion" in Conspiracy as History? where I  demonstrated numerous historical impossibilities from a single sentence of her book.

Larry Hurtado reviews McGrath, "The Only True God"

For those interested in the question of early Christology and Jesus devotion, Larry Hurtado has reviewed The Only True God: Early Christian Monotheism in Its Jewish Context by fellow biblioblogger James F. McGrath. The review can be found on the essays, etc page of Hurtado's blog here.

Ehrman's Forthcoming Book

Bart Ehrman has a forthcoming volume provocatively titled Forged: Writing in the Name of God--Why the Bible's Authors Are Not Who We Think They Are.I would assume the subject matter of the book is the issue of attribution and pseudepigraphy in the New Testament corpus (in addition to repeating his discussions on non-canonical texts, early Christian diversity and textual variants as he seems to do in all his popular books.)  And yes, you are right, Ehrman has already touched the topic in some detail in Jesus Interrupted (chapter four).

HT: Tim Henderson//Earliest Christianity

The Invisible Tentacles of the Catholic Church

Earlier this year Dan Barker of the Freedom from Religion Foundation debated ancient historian Dr Chris Forbes on the historicity of Jesus. Within this debate, Barker found it necessary to appeal to a conspiracy theory regarding fraud by early Christians to invent a Jesus figure.

I thought the plot stopped there but apparently it is much deeper than any of us could have known. The Daily Show and Jason Jones investigates the conspiracy of the United States Post Office, Mother Teresa, the Catholic Church and Dan Barker. It is amazing and well worth watching.

The Problem of Evil Explained (Video)

This is a 3 minute extract from The Invention of Lying (2009) highlighting the question of the problem of evil in no uncertain terms. Be warned - it contains explicit language and blasphemy against "the man in the sky".

 

On a relevant note, I am reading Problem Of Evil: Selected Readings Ed. Michael L. Peterson in addition to everything on history and the Gospel of John.

Why I don't vote in Mid-term Elections

Because I am not an American.