Paul Clark

Author of The Omega Course

Notes on Chapter 21

PAGE
Book		LOC
Kindle		CHAPTER 21
1273372Going back to the early church, it was (wrongly) believed that the four gospels were eyewitness accounts: Barton, John: A History of the Bible: The Book and Its Faiths, Penguin Random House, London 2020, p. 241.
1273374But then people started to see them as holy scripture…and therefore without error: Barton, op cit, pp. 243, 259-60.
1273377these contradictions are put there to remind us not to get hooked on the surface meaning, but to…read between the lines and find the true, spiritual meaning: Barton, op cit, pp. 339-350
1273379But with the printing press and the Reformation, it became more common to take the Bible literally: This is an oversimplification – see Barton op cit pp. 398-408 for a more nuanced discussion.
1283380their heads spinning round and round, trying to prove that in fact there are no contradictions in the Bible at all: Barton op cit pp. 10-11; Stark, Thom, The Human Faces of God, What Scripture Reveals When It Gets God Wrong (And Why Inerrancy Tries to Hide It) (Kindle Edition), WIPF & Stock, 2011, Loc 694-747.
1283385 (Spinoza) if the Bible says this is what happened, then THE BIBLE IS WRONG. Intellectual earthquake: Barton: A History of the Bible, p. 412.
1283387the historical-critical approach to the Bible was born: Barton op cit, pp.418ff
1283406There’s Christian humanists all the way back to the Renaissance: Armstrong, Karen: A History of God, Vintage, London 1993, p. 315.
1283411Matthew and Luke often take a story from Mark and expand on it: Sheehan, Thomas: The First Coming: How the Kingdom of God Became Christianity, Crucible, Wellingborough 1988, p. 74.
1283414Christian Hermann Weisse: Neill, Stephen and Wright, Tom: The Interpretation of the New Testament 1861-1986, Second Edition. Oxford University Press, Oxford 1988, pp. 118-120.
1293417these Scholars thought the Gospels had distorted Jesus’ message: Sheehan: The First Coming, pp. 18-22.
1293419Basically, he believed Jesus was a liberal Protestant humanist just like him: Sheehan op cit, pp. 14-6; Neill & Wright The Interpretation of the New Testament 1861-1986, pp. 140-6.
1293419if you go looking for the historical Jesus, you end up finding your own reflection: Rowland, Christopher: Christian Origins, SPCK, London 1985, p. 123.
1293421his son was part of the bomb plot that nearly killed Hitler: Rothfels, Hans: The German Opposition to Hitler: An Appraisal, Henry Regnery Company, Chicago 1962, p. 97.
1293424(Schweitzer) said Jesus was no mild-mannered liberal: Neill & Wright: The Interpretation of the New Testament 1861-1986, p. 209; Rowland: Christian Origins, pp. 123-4; Sanders, EP: The Historical Figure of Jesus, Penguin Books, London 1995, p. 175.
1293430Bultmann and his colleagues invented a new technique which they called ‘form criticism’: Sheehan: The First Coming, pp. 18-22, pp. 18-22.
1293432They used the same metaphor of the pearl necklace that Dominic used: Sanders: The Historical Figure of Jesus, pp. 58-63; Neill & Wright: The Interpretation of the New Testament 1861-1986, p. 254.
1293435if you have an oral tradition for 20 to 30 years, it becomes unreliable: Neill & Wright: op cit pp. 265-6.
1293442We cannot know very much about the historical Jesus: Neill & Wright: op cit, pp. 265-9.
1303444according to Bultmann…It’s the Christ of faith that matters, not the historical person of Jesus: Neill & Wright: op cit, pp. 237-251; Sanders: The Historical Figure of Jesus, p. 175; Sheehan: The First Coming, p. 22. Bultmann himself saw the mythical nature of the New Testament as an impediment in our rationalist age. He believed that while Jesus himself believed in the imminence of the end of the world, the Christian message is simply that we should always behave as if the end is nigh, even though it isn’t.
1313514progress accelerated in the following decades: Sheehan: op cit, pp. 21-27; Neill & Wright: The Interpretation of the New Testament 1861-1986, pp. 379ff; Romer, John: Testament: The Bible and History, Michael O’Mara Books, London 1988, p. 141, Rowland: Christian Origins, pp. 323-4.
1323528they developed techniques for examining the pericopes to test just how authentic they were: Vermes, Geza: The Authentic Gospel of Jesus, Penguin, London 2004, pp. 370-397.
1323534Next add those bits…that are compatible with the embarrassing bits and are also compatible with the ideas of the early church or contemporary Jewish thought: Ehrman, Bart: How Jesus became God: the exaltation of a Jewish preacher from Galilee (Kindle Edition), HarperOne, 2014, Loc.1467.
1323544be very wary of anything that smacks of typology: Brettler, Marc Zvi: The Creation of History in Ancient Israel, Routledge, London 1995; pp. 48-61, Sanders: The Historical Figure of Jesus, pp. 83-5.
1333546Be very wary of anything that’s presented as the fulfilment of prophecy: Sanders op cit, p. 88; Barton: A History of the Bible, p. 253.
1333548The virgin birth: Küng, Hans: On Being a Christian. Collins, London 1977, pp. 453-7. For a slightly different view, see Elisha ben Abuya’s Non-Apologist blog. Click here for a link (accessed October 2020 – please note that this page is no longer available and access is via a web archive).
1333556Jesus is descended from David – this is put in Matthew and Luke to fulfil several prophecies: Sanders: The Historical Figure of Jesus, pp. 80-90.
1333561The three wise men: Lane Fox, The Unauthorised Version, p. 204; Neill & Wright, The Interpretation of the New Testament 1861-1986, pp. 36-8.
1373692Why do Christians keep banging on about the death of Jesus? Dominic’s third talk is based on Gumbel, Nicky: Questions of Life: A Practical Introduction to the Christian Faith, Cook Ministry Resources, Colorado 1996, pp. 43-55.
1393736Bee imagined God speaking to the Archangel Gabriel. I drew on three sources for this analogy:  Russell, Bertrand: A Free Man’s Worship and Other Essays, Allen & Unwin, London 1976, pp. 9-10; Dawkins, Richard: The God Delusion, Bantam Press, London 2006, pp. 252-3 and a newspaper article that Dawkins wrote some years ago that I have been unable to track down.
1393746There was no evidence that Jesus had thought of himself (as the Redeemer). The doctrine had only arisen after his death: Armstrong, Karen: A History of God, Vintage, London 1993, p. 353; Sheehan: The First Coming, pp. 197-199.
1413782Having sex first is like going into a greengrocer’s and taking a bite out of an apple without buying it: Gumbel: Questions of Life, pp. 236-7.
1423809Matthew 27:25 and anti-Semitism in the New Testament: Goodman, Martin: Rome & Jerusalem: The Clash of Ancient Civilisations. Allen Lane, London 2007, pp. 526-530, pp. 578-585; Vermes: The Authentic Gospel of Jesus, p. xii.

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