Christian Origins from a Cuban

Cosmic Temple View video lecture by John Walton here

Based upon the content of Gary Habermas & Michael Licona’s book “The Case for the Resurrection of Jesus”, the Resurrection Quiz Game online is designed to test your knowledge of the content with 80 multiple choice questions on 8 different levels. If you think you have mastered this information, this might be a good place to find out just how much you remember – or a good way to keep your skills sharpened.

Still haven’t read The Case for the Resurrection? Pick one up here.
Take the QUIZ GAME here.

What is Justice? from The Justice Conference on Vimeo.

One of my favorite professors, Larry Hurtado, recounts a clarifying point regarding Bousset’s 1913 work Kyrios Christos on his blog and I repost here for my record.

I’m teaching a segment of our masters core course this semester, my bit focusing on the emergence of “Jesus-devotion” in earliest Christianity, and in discussions with the class and with others over recent years, Wilhelm Bousset’s classic work, Kyrios Christos (ET, Nashville: Abingdon, 1970; German 1913, 1921) naturally comes up. (2013 will mark the centenary of the original edition of this work, and might make a good occasion for fuller analysis than I can give here.)

One of the clarifying/correcting points I’ve repeatedly made in recent years about Bousset’s work is that he actually supported a very early and explosively quick emergence of the worship of Jesus (in his terms, the “Kyrios-cult”). The crucial evidence he correctly cited is the letters of Paul, which show that he took for granted the treatment of the risen Jesus as rightful co-recipient of Christian worship. Paul doesn’t spend any time explaining or advocating Jesus-devotion; he presumes that his readers already practice it.

So, as Bousset further judged, this level of Jesus-devotion must have characterized the form of early Christian circles into which Paul was introduced after what he described as a divine revelation that re-oriented him dramatically from opponent to adherent and proponent of Jesus and early Christian faith. In chronological terms, this means that this “Kyrios-cult” must have “erupted” (Bousset’s term) within the very first months or few years at most, for Paul’s “conversion” is by wide agreement dated within 1-3 years after Jesus’ execution.

Although Bousset stoutly insisted that this level of Jesus-devotion was not practiced in the “Primitive Palestinian Community” (e.g., the Jerusalem church), he fully granted that it erupted early and suddenly, and rightly observed that Paul was by no means the inventor of it. So, in contrast to some other scholars (e.g., my ocassional sparring partners Professor Dunn and Professor Casey), Bousset was a proponent of an “early high christology” view.

In an article published over 30 years ago, I laid out several major problems in Bousset’s work: Larry W. Hurtado, “New Testament Christology: A Critique of Bousset’s Influence,” Theological Studies 40 (1979): 306-17. I contended (and maintain) that these problems required a full and fresh attempt to address the history-of-religions questions about Jesus-devotion. In my 2003 book, Lord Jesus Christ: Devotion to Jesus in Earliest Christianity (Eerdmans), I have offered my own attempt to do so.

On the issue in focus here, I think he erred in distinguishing so sharply in this matter between his “Primitive Palestinian Community” and his “Gentile Christian Primitive Community” (for reasons, see my article and other publications). Especially in Lord Jesus Christ, I’ve given reasons for judging that the Jesus-devotion reflected in Paul’s letters was likely shared by Jewish believers in Roman Palestine as well as Paul’s converts in various cities.

But, though Bousset is now subject to valid criticism on a number of crucial matters, he can’t be rightly portrayed as aligned with those who allege an incremental growth toward the worship of Jesus across several decades or more. On at least the question of whether this “high” level of Jesus-devotion arose early and suddenly or late and incrementally, Bousset was emphatically of the view that it appeared early and explosively quickly.

A student, Miriam McSpadden, in the House of Learning at Solid Rock has inquired about the ending of Mark’s gospel. We will be reading this BBR article by Robert Stein and some other articles to let you know what we come up with in the coming days.

If you would like to read the article with us then you can download and send me your thoughts on the issue to be included in our post.

Here is the abstract for the article.

With the recognition that Mark 16:8 is the most authentic ending of the second Gospel, debate has raged over whether this is the Evangelist’s intended ending or whether his intended ending was lost. In the first part of the 20th century, the predominant view was that the original ending had been lost, but in the latter part of the century this was replaced by the view that 16:8 was Mark’s intended ending, and numerous attempts were made to explain how 16:8 serves as a fitting ending for the Gospel. The present article seeks to demonstrate that 16:8 is not the Evangelist’s intended ending. The two main arguments given are that Mark 14:28 and 16:7 are Markan insertions that point to a postresurrection meeting of Jesus and the disciples in Galilee and that it is very unlikely that the Evangelist would have left this prophecy unfulfilled by ending abruptly with 16:8. This would be the only unfulfilled prophecy of Jesus in Mark except for the prophecy concerning his parousia. The second argument is that in contrast to modern reader-response interpretations of 16:1–8, the emphasis of these verses is not about the disciples and their failures but on Jesus Christ, the Son of God (1:1), and the key verses are 16:6–7 and not 16:8.

Key Words: Ending of Mark, NT textual criticism, gavr as an ending of a book, Mark 14:28, Mark 16:1–8

Check the site for this great new book!

download notes from house of learning for Canon

Licona vs. Puckett (2012) from Mike Licona on Vimeo.

William Lane Craig points to three factors that make for a sound argument.

1. The premises must be true.
2. The conclusion must follow from the premises by the rules of logic.
3. The premises must be more plausible than their negations.

Just got word that Keener’s massive volume, Miracles will be coming out for Kindle sometime right after the new year.

I prefer to have this hefty volume in a digital edition for searching and clicking on KEENER footnotes.

“For Christians Jesus was the miracle working Son of God. For later, hostile Jews he was a magician. Josephus stands in the middle: for him Jesus was a wise man and a performer of extraordinary deeds.”

Geza Vermes, Professor of Jewish studies, Oxford