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Thomas L. Brodie | |
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| Born | 1943 |
| Nationality | Irish |
| Education | STD (Doctorate in Sacred Theology) |
| Alma mater | Pontifical University of St. Thomas Aquinas |
| Occupation(s) | Priest and author |
Thomas L. Brodie, OP (born 1943) is an Irish Dominican priest who worked in academia and has published books on the Christ myth theory. He argues that both Jesus and Paul did not exist as historical figures, and that a proto-version of Luke-Acts was the earliest Gospel, instead of Mark.[ citation needed ]
He was born in Crusheen, County Clare.
Brodie earned his STD at the Pontifical University of St. Thomas Aquinas in Rome in 1988, at the age of 48. He has taught Hebrew Scriptures and New Testament in various institutions across the United States and in South Africa, including the Aquinas Institute of Theology in St. Louis, Missouri.
Brodie has written a number of books about the Bible, with emphases on the Gospel of John, Genesis and the narratives of Elijah and Elisha as the basis and literary model for the Gospels.
His 2012 book Beyond the Quest for the Historical Jesus: Memoir of a Discovery endorsed the Christ myth theory that Jesus of Nazareth was not a historical figure, a belief he says he has held since the 1970s. [1]
Following publication of the book, Brodie was forced to quit his teaching job at the Dominican Biblical Institute and was banned from lecturing while his writings were being investigated. [2] The final judgement of the Dominican Order on the matter was published in their periodical Doctrine and Life in May–June 2014.[ citation needed ]
In 2014, Jeremy Corley wrote a paper in the peer-reviewed journal Irish Theological Quarterly criticizing Brodie's book Beyond the Quest for the Historical Jesus: Memoir of a Discovery. Though Brodie argues the Elijah-Elisha narratives acted as literary models for the Gospels, Corley says many of Brodie's parallels are weak and unconvincing, such as Brodie's attempt to connect 1 Corinthians 15:3-7 with the theophanies in Numbers 11-17. Corley also notes many major discrepancies between the Elijah-Elisha narratives with Jesus' life, including how only Jesus has birth stories, teachings, and a passion narrative of the last week of Jesus' life that encompasses most of the four Gospels. Corley also notes that John the Baptist, rather than Jesus, is a better candidate for influence of the Elijah-Elisha narratives. Though Brodie emphasizes literary parallels between Jesus and Elijah/Elisha as evidence for complete literary invention, Corley argues that Brodie ignores the fact that most other histories and biographies of the time, such as the works of Thucydides and Herodotus, are combinations of history and literary writing by the author and that one category doesn't disinclude the other. [3]
David Litwa has questioned Brodie's method of showing the non-existence of Jesus and Paul by attempting to reconstruct their entire lives with different parts of the Old Testament and in its Septuagint format. [4] Litwa writes, for example, that "Like Bauer, however, Brodie tends to make logical leaps from detailed literary parallels to historical dependence. Bauer’s parallels came from Seneca and Philo. Brodie uses bits and pieces of the Septuagint to reconstruct Jesus’s life; then he asks us to believe that Jesus’s life is actually derived from readings of the Septuagint. The parallels are not sloppy but often mind-bending in their complexity. Brodie graphs these parallels in long, maze-like charts" (pg. 31). Litwa further notes that finding literary exaggeration in a story fails to demonstrate its ahistoricity.
The nativity or birth of JesusChrist is documented in the biblical gospels of Luke and Matthew. The two accounts agree that Jesus was born in Bethlehem, in Roman-controlled Palestine, that his mother, Mary, was engaged to a man named Joseph, who was descended from King David and was not his biological father, and that his birth was caused by divine intervention. Some scholars do not see the two canonical gospel nativity stories as historically factual since they present clashing accounts and irreconcilable genealogies. The secular history of the time does not synchronize with the narratives of the birth and early childhood of Jesus in the two gospels. Some view the question of historicity as secondary, given that gospels were primarily written as theological documents rather than chronological timelines.
Biblical studies is the academic application of a set of diverse disciplines to the study of the Bible. For its theory and methods, the field draws on disciplines ranging from ancient history, historical criticism, philology, theology, textual criticism, literary criticism, historical backgrounds, mythology, and comparative religion.
Biblical criticism is the use of critical analysis to understand and explain the Bible without appealing to the supernatural. During the eighteenth century, when it began as historical-biblical criticism, it was based on two distinguishing characteristics: (1) the scientific concern to avoid dogma and bias by applying a neutral, non-sectarian, reason-based judgment to the study of the Bible, and (2) the belief that the reconstruction of the historical events behind the texts, as well as the history of how the texts themselves developed, would lead to a correct understanding of the Bible. This sets it apart from earlier, pre-critical methods; from the anti-critical methods of those who oppose criticism-based study; from the post-critical orientation of later scholarship; and from the multiple distinct schools of criticism into which it evolved in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries.
Rudolf Karl Bultmann was a German Lutheran theologian and professor of the New Testament at the University of Marburg. He was one of the major figures of early 20th-century biblical studies. A prominent critic of liberal theology, Bultmann instead argued for an existentialist interpretation of the New Testament. His hermeneutical approach to the New Testament led him to be a proponent of dialectical theology.
Raymond Edward Brown was an American Sulpician priest and prominent biblical scholar. He was a specialist on the hypothetical Johannine community, which he speculated contributed to the authorship of the Gospel of John, and he also wrote studies on the birth and death of Jesus.
John Dominic Crossan is an Irish-American New Testament scholar, historian of early Christianity and former Catholic priest who was a prominent member of the Jesus Seminar, and emeritus professor at DePaul University. His research has focused on the historical Jesus, the theology of noncanonical Gospels, and the application of postmodern hermeneutical approaches to the Bible. His work is controversial, portraying the Second Coming as a late corruption of Jesus' message and saying that Jesus' divinity is metaphorical. In place of the eschatological message of the Gospels, Crossan emphasizes the historical context of Jesus and of his followers immediately after his death. He describes Jesus' ministry as founded on free healing and communal meals, negating the social hierarchies of Jewish culture and the Roman Empire.
The quest for the historical Jesus consists of academic efforts to determine what words and actions, if any, may be attributed to Jesus, and to use the findings to provide portraits of the historical Jesus. Since the 18th century, three scholarly quests for the historical Jesus have taken place, each with distinct characteristics and based on different research criteria, which were often developed during each specific phase. These quests are distinguished from earlier approaches because they rely on the historical method to study biblical narratives. While textual analysis of biblical sources had taken place for centuries, these quests introduced new methods and specific techniques to establish the historical validity of their conclusions.
The Christ myth theory, also known as the Jesus myth theory, Jesus mythicism, or the Jesus ahistoricity theory, is the view that the story of Jesus is a work of mythology with no historical substance. Alternatively, in terms given by Bart Ehrman paraphrasing Earl Doherty, it is the view that "the historical Jesus did not exist. Or if he did, he had virtually nothing to do with the founding of Christianity."
The study of Jesus in comparative mythology is the examination of the narratives of the life of Jesus in the Christian gospels, traditions and theology, as they relate to Christianity and other religions. Although the vast majority of New Testament scholars and historians of the ancient Near East agree that Jesus existed as a historical figure, most secular historians also agree that the gospels contain large quantities of ahistorical legendary details mixed in with historical information about Jesus's life. The Synoptic Gospels of Mark, Matthew, and Luke are heavily shaped by Jewish tradition, with the Gospel of Matthew deliberately portraying Jesus as a "new Moses". Although it is highly unlikely that the authors of the Synoptic Gospels directly based any of their accounts on pagan mythology, it is possible that they may have subtly shaped their accounts of Jesus's healing miracles to resemble familiar Greek stories about miracles associated with Asclepius, the god of healing and medicine. The birth narratives of Matthew and Luke are usually seen by secular historians as legends designed to fulfill Jewish expectations about the Messiah.
Criticism of the Bible refers to a variety of criticisms of the Bible, the collection of religious texts held to be sacred by Christianity, Judaism, Samaritanism, and other Abrahamic religions. Criticisms of the Bible often concern the text’s factual accuracy, moral tenability, and supposed inerrancy claimed by biblical literalists. There remain questions of biblical authorship and what material to include in the biblical canon.
Richard Cevantis Carrier is an American ancient historian. He is a long-time contributor to skeptical websites, including The Secular Web and Freethought Blogs. Carrier has published a number of books and articles on philosophy and religion in classical antiquity, discussing the development of early Christianity from a skeptical viewpoint, and concerning religion and morality in the modern world. He has publicly debated a number of scholars on the historical basis of the Bible and Christianity. He is a prominent advocate of the theory that Jesus did not exist, which he has argued in a number of his works. However, Carrier's methodology and conclusions in this field have proven controversial and unconvincing to most ancient historians, and he and his theories are often identified as fringe.
Robert McNair Price is an American New Testament scholar who argues in favor of the Christ myth theory – the claim that a historical Jesus did not exist. Price is the author of a number of books on biblical studies and the historicity of Jesus.
George Bradford Caird, known as G. B. Caird, was a British theologian, biblical scholar and Congregational minister. At the time of his death he was Dean Ireland's Professor of the Exegesis of Holy Scripture at the University of Oxford.
Dennis Ronald MacDonald is the John Wesley Professor of New Testament and Christian Origins at the Claremont School of Theology in California. MacDonald proposes a theory wherein the earliest books of the New Testament were responses to the Homeric Epics, including the Gospel of Mark and the Acts of the Apostles. The methodology he pioneered is called Mimesis Criticism. If his theories are correct then "nearly everything written on [the] early Christian narrative is flawed." According to him, modern biblical scholarship has failed to recognize the impact of Homeric Poetry.
The historical reliability of the Gospels is evaluated by experts who have not reached complete consensus. While all four canonical gospels contain some sayings and events that may meet at least one of the five criteria for historical reliability used in biblical studies, the assessment and evaluation of these elements is a matter of ongoing debate.
Philip Maurice Casey was a British scholar of New Testament and early Christianity. He was an emeritus professor at the University of Nottingham, having served there as Professor of New Testament Languages and Literature at the Department of Theology.
Stanley E. Porter is an American-Canadian academic and New Testament scholar, specializing in the Koine Greek grammar and linguistics of the New Testament.
Sheffield Phoenix Press Ltd. (SPP) is an independent academic publisher specializing in biblical studies. It was launched in January 2004, continuing the traditions of the former Sheffield Academic Press.
Mary Ann Beavis is a professor emerita, St. Thomas More College, the University of Saskatchewan. She co-founded the peer-reviewed academic journal, S/HE: An International Journal of Goddess Studies, together with Helen Hye-Sook Hwang in 2021.
The intertextual production of the Gospel of Mark is the viewpoint that there are identifiable textual relationships such that any allusion or quotation from another text forms an integral part of the Markan text, even when it seems to be out of context.
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