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Displaying 1 - 14 of 14 results
Profiles in Scholarly Courage
Early days of New Testament criticism
More than two centuries ago, it occurred to a few European intellectuals that Jesus as a figure of history may have been quite different from Jesus as portrayed in the Gospels. With the awareness of that potential difference, the scholarly quest for the Jesus of history began. At that time and in...
Bible Review, October 1994
Yes, Virginia, There Is a Q
Eta Linnemann’s article on the Q hypothesisa takes Burton Mack and me to task not only for our scholarship, but also for what she takes to be our attack on traditional Christian beliefs. It’s a clever exercise in apologetics. However, this...
Bible Review, October 1995
Q
The lost gospel
The Lost Gospel. The very concept provokes a flood of questions. If it is lost, how do we know it ever existed? How do we know what was in it? Who lost it? And how was it lost? Perhaps most intriguing of all: Will it ever be found? A new book...
Bible Review, October 1993
The Favored One
How Mary became the Mother of God
Five million Christian pilgrims travel each year to the grotto of Lourdes in southwestern France, where the Virgin Mary is said to have appeared to a peasant girl in 1858. The map of Rome is spotted with churches dedicated to the Queen of...
Bible Review, June 2001
The Christian Apocrypha
Preserved in art
Gazing in adoration at the newborn Jesus, three shepherds join Joseph and Mary in the manger in an early-15th-century painting of The Nativity, attributed to the Netherlandish artist Robert Campin. Outside the rustic shed appear two...
Bible Review, June 1997
The Gospel of Thomas
Does it contain authentic sayings of Jesus?
Scholars have long theorized that collections of Jesus’ sayings circulated in the decades following his death and that therefore they would be among the earliest witnesses to his message. Modern critical scholars have even been able to...
Bible Review, April 1990
“How Can This Be?”
Picturing the word made flesh
Imagine you are a medieval artist assigned to paint the Annunciation—the very moment when Mary first hears the news that she has...
Bible Review, December 2002
The Fall and Rise of Simon Magus
How the Worst Man in Christendom Saved the Church
Simon Magus is arguably the worst of the bad guys in the history of the church.1 One of the major sins, simony, the act of buying an ecclesiastical office, is named for this magician who clashed with the apostle Peter. It gets worse. In the...
Bible Review, Fall 2005
Dealing with the Devil
How Adam and Eve Fared After the Fall
Adam and Eve’s disobedience in the Garden of Eden serves as the foundation for Western theologies of the way we are: sinful and guilty. As the New England Primer of 1683 succinctly states: “In Adam’s fall, We sinned all.” For their sin, Adam and Eve are expelled from the Garden in Genesis 3.
Bible Review, June 2004
The Search Begins: The Fathers of Historical Jesus Scholarship
During the Enlightenment, the historian’s job changed dramatically. It was no longer enough simply to chronicle events reported in earlier, authoritative texts. Tradition and authority had become suspect, as investigation and reason became the...
Bible Review, Summer 2005
What Did Jesus Really Say?
About 40 scholars, all specialists in the study of the historical Jesus, are seated around a table. They have just completed their discussion of a saying attributed to Jesus in the Gospels. The time has come for each to vote on a simple but...
Bible Review, October 1989
The Genesis of Genesis
Is the Creation Story Babylonian?
On December 3, 1872, George Smith, a former bank-note engraver turned Assyriologist, stunned the Western world by announcing that he had discovered a Babylonian story of a great Flood resembling the well-known account of the Deluge in the...
Bible Review, Anniversary Issue
Thecla: The Apostle Who Defied Women’s Destiny
Who was Thecla? Little known today, especially in Protestant churches, Thecla of Iconium enjoyed fame perhaps second only to Mary, mother of Jesus, in the early Christian era. Thecla’s anonymity is all the more remarkable because women were...
Bible Review, December 2004
Jesus Lives!
Looking Back on 20 Years of Jesus Scholarship
Thirty years ago, the historical Jesus was dead. By 1975, it was clear that scholars had very little to say about him. If students were assigned anything to read on the subject, it was usually Gunther Bornkamm’s Jesus of Nazareth from...
Bible Review, Summer 2005