The Pokey Finger of God

Philip occupies a rather unusual corner of the canon. On the one hand, he’s one of the first people Jesus recruits[1] and he’s shown recruiting other apostles[2] as well as bringing the early Church to Samaria[3]. On the other hand, he’s very much a bit part: he does not appear as a significant actor in [...]

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Almost immediately after the last post, I realized that a “part two” would be in order.
First off, there’s the whole issue of how the Gospel of John has a totally different take on the whole baptism thing than the synoptics. Obviously, the Gospel of John has a special place for the Baptist, and his role [...]

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In reviewing some historical material, specifically the Prophets of the Old Testament, something new occurred to me. On one level, the Prophets of Ancient Israel and Judah were the real standard bearers for the Yah cult. Some of the kings seemed to like it, perhaps because they imagined that they could somehow politically reunite the [...]

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After I posted my review of Marvin Vining’s Jesus the Wicked Priest, he contacted me to thank me for the review and asked me to send him questions. Heh, heh, heh. So I did. My questions:

You claim that Essenes were the dominant culture and that their leader, the “Teacher of Righteousness,” was also the [...]

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Marvin Vining, Jesus the Wicked Priest. (C) 2008. Published by Bear and Company, Rochester, VT. www.MarvinVining.com
This work is a fascinating reading that combines sources from Dead Sea Scroll materials and Biblical exegesis to produce a surprisingly personal story of conflict between characters in the gospel stories. Vining brings to life a vital, aggressive Jesus, along [...]

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I’m beginning to accumulate an unwieldy quantity of historical Jesuses. Less useful in that I’ve moved to a primary narrative that leaves Jesus out altogether. Even so, in the absence of an actual, historical Jesus, we may still create a number of literary Jesuses, each distinct and beloved, and required for generational continuity of the [...]

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I’m enjoying the Marvin Vining book, Jesus the Wicked Priest, but not because I agree with his conclusions. In fact, the more I read, the further removed I become from agreement. He’s another armchair archaeologist, so I feel a certain kinship with him. This despite the fact that the guy has to go through some [...]

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The latest issue of BAR revisits the much hyped Gospel of Judas, and has some unkind words for National Geographic and their media-heavy release of the original material. The biggest complaint was that they picked the wrong scholars who didn’t understand Gnostic cultures and misinterpreted key passages of the text. Most significantly, NatlGeo published an [...]

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Easter must be near, as the annual “Christian Interest” story is going around. From the BBC: Was Jesus Black?
Some say that it’s obvious that Jesus was a black man: he liked Gospel, called everyone ‘Brother’, and couldn’t get a fair trial.
There are serious traditions that the family of Jesus migrated from Nigeria (!), and Ethiopian [...]

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The other day, I nearly picked up a package of “Last Supper Mints”, which was a 3″x1″x0.5″ metal tin with 50(!) mints within, covered lovingly with a 18th C. reproduction of daVinci’s Last Supper image without. Briefly, I considered putting a photo of the box in my collection of Last Supper images, but the image [...]

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