Robert Boylan interviews Kevin Christensen on Josiah and the Deuteronomists and Barker

[Kevin Christensen]

Robert Boylan had a Zoom with me on Saturday.  

FWIW,

Kevin Christensen

Canonsburg, PA

[Zosimus]

Really enjoyed this, thanks for sharing.

I had a question. In the Book of Mormon Onomasticon entry for Zarahemla, there's a mention of Barker:

"Margaret Barker combines several of these meanings into complex wordplay designed to communicate the deeper meaning of the Servant Songs of ISAIAH: "To whom has the arm [zĕrōʿa] of the LORD been revealed?" can also mean "To whom has the seed/son [zeraʿ] of the LORD been revealed?" (Isaiah 53:1 ||Mosiah 14:1; cf. Mosiah 15:31 "The Lord hath made bare his holy arm") without changing the HEBREW consonantal text - especially since the next line reads "he grew up before him as a suckling child" (Isaiah 53:2 [ RSV "young plant"; LXX "little child"] ||Mosiah 14:2) - and this coheres with Isaiah 53:10||Mosiah 14:10 "he shall see his seed/offspring, " which can also be read "he shall be revealed as the son."[12] This is merely part of the much broader liturgical and esoteric content of First Temple Israelite religion jettisoned by Deuteronomistic revisionism - according to Barker - a revisionism which did not infect the Book of Mormon."

The footnotes say this comes from "Temple Mysticism". I assume you have the book somewhere on that shelf behind you 

Do you have any thoughts on this proposed etymology?

[Kevin Christensen]

13 hours ago, Zosimus said:

Really enjoyed this, thanks for sharing.

I had a question. In the Book of Mormon Onomasticon entry for Zarahemla, there's a mention of Barker:

"Margaret Barker combines several of these meanings into complex wordplay designed to communicate the deeper meaning of the Servant Songs of ISAIAH: "To whom has the arm [zĕrōʿa] of the LORD been revealed?" can also mean "To whom has the seed/son [zeraʿ] of the LORD been revealed?" (Isaiah 53:1 ||Mosiah 14:1; cf. Mosiah 15:31 "The Lord hath made bare his holy arm") without changing the HEBREW consonantal text - especially since the next line reads "he grew up before him as a suckling child" (Isaiah 53:2 [ RSV "young plant"; LXX "little child"] ||Mosiah 14:2) - and this coheres with Isaiah 53:10||Mosiah 14:10 "he shall see his seed/offspring, " which can also be read "he shall be revealed as the son."[12] This is merely part of the much broader liturgical and esoteric content of First Temple Israelite religion jettisoned by Deuteronomistic revisionism - according to Barker - a revisionism which did not infect the Book of Mormon."

The footnotes say this comes from "Temple Mysticism". I assume you have the book somewhere on that shelf behind you 

Do you have any thoughts on this proposed etymology?

I do have Temple Mysticism on my shelf.   I reviewed it for Interpreter several years back.   

https://journal.interpreterfoundation.org/book-review-temple-mysticism-an-introduction-by-margaret-barker/

My first serious exposure to mysticism came from reading a chapter in Nibley's The World and The Prophets where mysticism involved "“an intuitive and ecstatic union with the deity obtained by means of contemplation and other mental exercises.”3  He emphasizes the incommunicable nature of the experiences, the impersonal view of deity, and the need for a teacher/guide to direct the student on the path to illumination."  The important thing for LDS readers is that Barker defines mysticism differently.  For her, it involves "seeing the Lord."  Her defining examples of temple mystics are Isaiah and John. With Isaiah, she cites the vision in Isaiah 6, in which the prophet reports, “I saw also the Lord sitting upon a throne.” She then comments that “John identified the enthroned figure of Isaiah’s vision as Jesus in glory, showing that Jesus’ closest disciples understood him in the context of temple mysticism, and indeed identified him as the figure at the very centre of the mystical vision” (p. 2). Barker explains that “Jesus himself received visions in the manner of temple mystics, and that these formed the core of Revelation,” and she says that recognizing this is “important for recovering temple mysticism and for establishing its key role in early Christianity” (p. 24).

As to her etymology, I'm impressed.  She started teaching herself Hebrew when she was 13, and continues to be fascinated with word play, which she see as a characteristic aspect of the Wisdom style., and also variant texts, alternate readings, the effect of different contextualization and nurture, Targums and the patterns that emerge from them.  You might compare the kinds of things that Matthew Bowen has been exploring in his essays and books.  

https://journal.interpreterfoundation.org/author/matthewb/?journal 

Plus I think of Joseph Smith's comment in D&C 128: 18 "I might have rendered a plainer translation to this, but it is sufficiently plain to suit my purpose as it stands. It is sufficient to know, in this case,..."

I think of Jesus speaking to the Nephites at the temple in 3 Nephi 17:2-3  "I perceive that ye are weak, that ye cannot understand all my words which I am commanded of the Father to speak unto you at this time. Therefore, go ye unto your homes, and ponder upon the things which I have said, and ask of the Father, in my name, that ye may understand, and prepare your minds for the morrow, and I come unto you again."

And 2 Nephi 25:5 "there is none other people that understand the things which were spoken unto the Jews like unto them, save it be that they are taught after the manner of the things of the Jews."

Plus some of Joseph Smith's annotations in Fascimile 2.  "If the world can find out these numbers, so let it be. Amen." and "The above translation is given as far as we have any right to give at the present time."

That leaves us room for expansion, for not only finding more in the translation we have in the Book of Mormon, but drawing on further light and knowledge.  And I always come away from Barker with a feeling that my mind has been expanded, my understanding enlightened.  I think it can be a worthwhile project to plug her insights into our scriptures and see what comes to light.  She's not a rival to the Restoration, but is I think, a part of it.  Only that reasonably explains to me the depth of fit and ongoing fruitfulness her work has with the Restoration.

FWIW,

Kevin Christensen

Canonsburg, PA

Edited February 28, 2024 by Kevin Christensen

[juliann]

I can't express how much Barker enhanced my studies, especially when it came to her inclusion of women. It was very gratifying to be able to meet and talk with her. I'm so grateful you have worked so hard to bring her to an LDS audience. It makes a vital difference in BOM studies as well. 

[Kevin Christensen]

1 hour ago, juliann said:

I can't express how much Barker enhanced my studies, especially when it came to her inclusion of women. It was very gratifying to be able to meet and talk with her. I'm so grateful you have worked so hard to bring her to an LDS audience. It makes a vital difference in BOM studies as well. 

When did you meet her?   I managed at the BYU Seminar in 2003 in Provo, the Joseph Smith Conference in 2005, when she spoke in Yonkers, NY to the Orthodox leaders there in 2012, when she was at FAIR in Provo in 2015 (I saw her talking there with Maxine Hanks who had recently been rebaptized), and once in 2016, when my wife and I got back to Europe for the first time since our missions, we visited Hugh and Margaret at their home in Derbyshire for dinner.  There are many other LDS scholars I know who have spent more time with her than I have, Jack Welch and Professor Hall, for instance.  And when I spoke at the Conference on Hebrews at BYU, I met two women who had taken her summer school classes in England.  They said about a third of the attendees were LDS, and that Barker likes them "Because they know what I am talking about."

 

Edited February 28, 2024 by Kevin Christensen

[Saint Bonaventure]

A very worthwhile interview.

Kevin, how do you respond to what must seem like the endless literature and arguments that present King Josiah in a much more positive light than does Barker? 

[Kevin Christensen]

1 hour ago, Saint Bonaventure said:

A very worthwhile interview.

Kevin, how do you respond to what must seem like the endless literature and arguments that present King Josiah in a much more positive light than does Barker? 

At length and in detail, using references like those in the PowerPoint I used in the interview by Robert Boylan.  The main issue is that the 2 Kings account is in the Bible, which means, "the Bible says that Josiah was the best and most perfect King since Moses."  If the Bible says it in the obvious proof text, it must be so.  Nothing more to think about.  No other information to consider, including other parts of the Bible.  I responded to Bill Hamblin's "Vindicating Josiah," who was in fact my editor for "Paradigms Regained" in an Interpreter essay in 2016.

https://journal.interpreterfoundation.org/prophets-and-kings-in-lehis-jerusalem-and-margaret-barkers-temple-theology/

Barker herself gave a talk at BYU on Josiah in 2003, which was published in Glimpses of Lehi's Jerusalem.  Her key insight for me there that "Josiah's changes concerned the high priests, and were thus, changes at the very heart of the temple." It's online here.  She also shows that the religion that Josiah suppresses was not Canaanite but rather the religion of Abraham and the patriarchs, and that all of the elements that Josiah suppressed reappear in Christianity.   And for LDS, the fact that Josiah burned and destroyed the tree of life, and that Lehi has a vision of the tree of life should draw some consideration.

https://scholarsarchive.byu.edu/mi/39/

I responded at length to the BYU Studies essay by Eliason/Crawford in a section of "Twenty Years after Paradigms Regained" Part 2, pages 65-68.

https://journal.interpreterfoundation.org/twenty-years-after-paradigms-regained-part-2-responding-to-margaret-barkers-critics-and-why-her-work-should-matter-to-latter-day-saints/

I've got more in a forthcoming essay responding to Grant Hardy's ever so brief dismissal in The Annotated Book of Mormon.  My response is not ever so brief.  But here is what he says, and how I start to respond.

Quote

Hardy, dismisses her this way.
Some LDS writers, drawing on controversial  theories of biblical scholar Margaret Barker, have suggested that the Book of Mormon includes traces of anti-Deuteronomistic ideology, but this hypothesis runs counter to the ethos of the Book of Mormon as a whole.” (Hardy, 764)
He supports his case against Barker with the “controversial” label, while providing no details of what her theories are, what books and articles she has written, what her language skills are, what sources and evidence she gathers, what notable non-LDS Biblical scholars appreciate her work, or what peripheral or direct relevance her work might have for the Book of Mormon, or even mentioning that Barker herself has directly addressed the question of the Book of Mormon relative to Jerusalem 600 BCE.  Hardy addresses the question of the Book of Mormon and the Reform with this argument:
Nephite authors, with their emphasis on Moses, prophets, fulfilled prophecies, obedience to commandments, blessings and curses, and covenant obligations, take a basically Deuteronomistic approach to history. This is perhaps most clearly evident in their frequent invocation of God’s promise to Lehi that “inasmuch as ye shall keep my commandments ye shall prosper in the land; but inasmuch as ye will not keep my commandments ye shall be cut off from my presence” (2 Ne 1.20, with nineteen additional citations).” 
Besides this paragraph in Hardy includes a detailed appendix listing places where the Book of Mormon contains “Biblical quotations, Allusions and Parallels.” Part of that section goes through Deuteronomy  and cites fifty-one Deuteronomy verses to compare with Book of Mormon passages.  Even with this added set of citations, I do not find Hardy’s argument persuasive because while Nephi, Lehi, and Jeremiah all demonstrate respect for and knowledge of Deuteronomy, they all openly contradict our current version of Deuteronomy on exactly the verses and issues that Barker uses to unlock the nature of Josiah’s reform.  None of those key verses appear on his list of Deuteronomy quotations, allusions, and parallels or anywhere in his commentary. Given that Lehi and Jeremiah know and cite Deuteronomy, for me it follows that any contradiction they make is deliberate and significant.  
 

The arguments I have dealt with basically treat the question of Josiah as a bad influence as unthinkable.  So there is very little engagement with Barker's case, or mine for that matter.  Just a dismissal of the notion that a case to the contrary could be made by anyone.  Hamblin comes closest to engagement, but even he does not engage her evidence closely.   Hamblin points to Jer. 44:17-23, as criticizing the Queen of Heaven.  But I see the situation as requiring a much broader take to demonstrate Jeremiah's attitude.  That verse, I think, ought to be read in parallel with Jeremiah's critique of the Jerusalem temple.  He was not anti-Temple, but very opposed to the notion of ritual without accompanying repentance.  Incidentally, Barker's most detailed approach to Jeremiah is in the Mother of the Lord.  Hardy and Elaison and Julie Smith (a very good scholar in her other work) all just dismiss the question that Josiah might have done something bad, and don't seriously wrestle with the opposition and the published arguments out there. ""By proving contrarities, truth is made manifest," said Joseph Smith.  By suppressing contrarities, ideology is manifest. 

FWIW,

Kevin Christensen

Canonsburg, PA

Edited February 28, 2024 by Kevin Christensen

[juliann]

44 minutes ago, Kevin Christensen said:

When did you meet her?   I managed at the BYU Seminar in 2003 in Provo, the Joseph Smith Conference in 2005, when she spoke in Yonkers, NY to the Orthodox leaders there in 2012, when she was at FAIR in Provo in 2015 (I saw her talking there with Maxine Hanks who had recently been rebaptized), and once in 2016, when my wife and I got back to Europe for the firs time since our missions, we visited Hugh and Margaret at their home in Derbyshire for dinner.  There are many other LDS scholars I know who have spent more time with her than I have, Jack Welch and Professor Hall, for instance.  And when I spoke at the Conference on Hebrews at BYU, I met two women who had taken her summer school classes in England.  They said about a third of the attendees were LDS, and that Barker likes them "Because they know what I am talking about."

 

I met her when she spoke at the FAIR conference. I was also at a temple conference she spoke at in Logan.  I first discovered her writings when I was at CGU in the 90s and bought every book she had published.  

[Kevin Christensen]

6 minutes ago, juliann said:

I met her when she spoke at the FAIR conference. I was also at a temple conference she spoke at in Logan.  I first discovered her writings when I was at CGU in the 90s and bought every book she had published.  

Good.  And it looks like you started reading her before I did.  Well done!  Summer 1999, stumbling onto a copy of The Great Angel at a Dallas Half Price books.

 

[juliann]

10 minutes ago, Kevin Christensen said:

 Some LDS writers, drawing on controversial  theories of biblical scholar Margaret Barker,

My experience with controversy in the academic world is that new theories that oppose older theories from established scholars get push back. I remember James Robinson saying in a seminar that one older scholar now knew his take was wrong but continued to publish defending it. It's almost as if you have to wait for a generation to die off before "controversy" becomes mainstream. 

She presents a viable option. There is no controversy in that. 

[OGHoosier]

18 minutes ago, juliann said:

It's almost as if you have to wait for a generation to die off before "controversy" becomes mainstream. 

An important scientific innovation rarely makes its way by gradually winning over and converting its opponents: it rarely happens that Saul becomes Paul. What does happen is that its opponents gradually die out, and that the growing generation is familiarized with the ideas from the beginning: another instance of the fact that the future lies with the youth.

— Max Planck, Scientific autobiography, 1950, p. 97

 

Paging Thomas Kuhn.

Edited February 28, 2024 by OGHoosier

[Nevo]

3 hours ago, juliann said:

She presents a viable option. There is no controversy in that.

I wouldn't go that far.

Barker is an original and stimulating thinker and obviously has a devoted following outside of the academy. Within the academy, her writings seem to resonate most with theologians, which is not really surprising. But only rarely does her name turn up in the author indexes and bibliographies of mainstream scholarly publications. Google one of her better-known peer-reviewed papers, "Hezekiah's Boil," and you'll notice that most of the people citing it are Mormons (BYU Studies, Jeff Lindsay's site, Meridian Magazine, By Common Consent, Robert Boylan's site, Interpreter, this site, etc.). That's fine, but let's not kid ourselves that Barker's theories are poised to go mainstream any day now. Or a generation from now. 

For the uninitiated, here are some of those theories:

• "Enochic mythology was that of the first temple, the pre-Deuteronomic and pre-Mosaic religion of Jerusalem."
• "King figures passed beyond the temple veil from earth into heaven, from immortality to the resurrected state, and then returned."
• "The high priest had been a divine figure, and not, as is usually held, a representative of the people. . . . He was an angel, the manifestation of the Lord on earth, and thus the divine Son."
• "Jesus saw himself as one of the high priestly initiates, one of the resurrected ones, and that this mystical experience is recorded in the Gospels as his baptismal vision. After this experience he believed himself to be the Lord, the Son of God Most High, the high priest who had come to perform the final act of atonement at the end of the tenth Jubilee. Thus the whole of the ministry was the post-resurrection period."
• "The Isaiah tradition . . . represented the world view of the first temple, an Enochic and non-Mosaic faith."
•  "The Letters to the Seven Churches were sent from the Jerusalem church to Asia Minor, to warn the young churches there against St Paul. They are the oldest material in the NT apart from the visions of Jesus as recorded by John."

  (Source)

[juliann]

51 minutes ago, Nevo said:

I wouldn't go that far.

Barker is an original and stimulating thinker and obviously has a devoted following outside of the academy. Within the academy, her writings seem to resonate most with theologians, which is not really surprising. But only rarely does her name turn up in the author indexes and bibliographies of mainstream scholarly publications. Google one of her better-known peer-reviewed papers, "Hezekiah's Boil," and you'll notice that most of the people citing it are Mormons (BYU Studies, Jeff Lindsay's site, Meridian Magazine, By Common Consent, Robert Boylan's site, Interpreter, this site, etc.). That's fine, but let's not kid ourselves that Barker's theories are poised to go mainstream any day now. Or a generation from now. 

For the uninitiated, here are some of those theories:

• "Enochic mythology was that of the first temple, the pre-Deuteronomic and pre-Mosaic religion of Jerusalem."
• "King figures passed beyond the temple veil from earth into heaven, from immortality to the resurrected state, and then returned."
• "The high priest had been a divine figure, and not, as is usually held, a representative of the people. . . . He was an angel, the manifestation of the Lord on earth, and thus the divine Son."
• "Jesus saw himself as one of the high priestly initiates, one of the resurrected ones, and that this mystical experience is recorded in the Gospels as his baptismal vision. After this experience he believed himself to be the Lord, the Son of God Most High, the high priest who had come to perform the final act of atonement at the end of the tenth Jubilee. Thus the whole of the ministry was the post-resurrection period."
• "The Isaiah tradition . . . represented the world view of the first temple, an Enochic and non-Mosaic faith."
•  "The Letters to the Seven Churches were sent from the Jerusalem church to Asia Minor, to warn the young churches there against St Paul. They are the oldest material in the NT apart from the visions of Jesus as recorded by John."

  (Source)

Well, her association with LDS and her penchant for women's studies will not endear her so there is that. But it isn't HER or the collection of all her theories that will eventually start to seep into scholarly publications, it will be original ideas or approaches that newer scholars will pick up to make their own mark. And of course theologians are the most interested in her, she is doing temple theology.....but they can also be scholars. From Kevin's article, quoting Barker, https://journal.interpreterfoundation.org/twenty-years-after-paradigms-regained-part-2-responding-to-margaret-barkers-critics-and-why-her-work-should-matter-to-latter-day-saints/

Quote

 

There is no such thing as objective biblical scholarship, that is, biblical scholarship produced by those with no faith commitment. I have often said that a professor of French who had never been to France, did not speak the language, and doubted that France even existed would not be taken seriously. The same should apply with biblical studies, but it does not.

The result is that the much biblical study produced in the UK, outside the faith-based institutions, is of no use to the consumers of biblical scholarship, that is, the faith-based communities. Any medical school that produced no graduates fit to practise medicine and no research relevant to the human body would be closed down. The same should apply with biblical studies, but it does not.

All the independent biblical scholars that I know work from a faith-based perspective, and it is with us that the future lies. It is necessary to recognize this, and not allow ourselves to be convinced that those who are not earning a living by their scholarship are somehow second rate.

 

Claremont Graduate School (now University,) school of religion, not only thought this they implemented it. That is why they set up Councils for believers of a variety of faiths, including LDS. It resulted in the Mormon Studies program there. This was in the 90s and it was an exceptional experience to be there to see and experience this process. CGU was very friendly to Mormons while also being one of the most liberal programs out there.  

I don't get exercised over her methodology because as Kevin quotes another scholar who explains the variation in conclusions from mainstream scholars given the context in which they place their subjects, I think it explains a lot of what is going on with her.  I have rarely found books/articles that don't have parts that I disagree with while also using what I do agree with. I don't find this unusual at all.

Quote

 

If weight is given to the miracle tradition, then Jesus emerges as an ancient magician (Morton Smith) or as a Jewish charismatic healer and exorcist (Vermes).

If the weight is given to the sayings tradition, then a range of images of Jesus is adduced.

If the wisdom sayings (proverbs, parables, aphorisms etc.) are given prominence, then Jesus emerges as a sage (Vermes, Flusser) or even an itinerant subversive sage (Borg, Robinson, Funk).

If an emphasis on the authenticity of the prophetic and apocalyptic sayings is retained, then Jesus emerges as an eschatological prophet (Meyer, Sanders, Charlesworth).

If his Kingdom sayings are interpreted apocalyptically (following Schweitzer), and are linked with the Son of Man sayings, then Jesus is an other-worldly figure, expecting cosmic catastrophe and as being relatively indifferent to social concerns.

If the Kingdom sayings are not interpreted apocalyptically, and the Son of Man sayings are viewed as secondary, then Jesus emerges as a this-worldly figure, a social prophet, with a social programme (Borg, Horsley, Hollenbach).

If the emphasis is placed on the opposition to him and his death at the hands of the Romans, then Jesus emerges as a para-Zealot revolutionary (Brandon) or the pacifist victim of oppression.

 

Kevin also quotes Barker's admission that she is open to a charge of going beyond the evidence.  She isn't trying to be sneaky.

 

Quote

 

She noted in the introduction to The Older Testament that

the link between the Old and New [Testaments] is far more complex than the use of proof texts and the fulfillment of prophecies. These are the tip of an iceberg whose greater part remains invisible. I have tried to reconstruct the invisible mass from its effects which are perceived. Thereby I have left myself open to the charge of going beyond the evidence. The outline offered results from projecting given positions and problems back to the point of their confluence and solution. Whether or not this is an acceptable method remains to be seen.”⁴¹

 

 

[Nevo]

1 hour ago, juliann said:

But it isn't HER or the collection of all her theories that will eventually start to seep into scholarly publications, it will be original ideas or approaches that newer scholars will pick up to make their own mark. And of course theologians are the most interested in her, she is doing temple theology.....but they can also be scholars.

Maybe. At one point, Crispin Fletcher-Louis seemed like someone who could develop some of her ideas in a more robust way, but he doesn't seem to have an institutional affiliation either at this point. It's hard to disseminate your views to future generations if you never train any graduate students.

This reminds of a quote from my scholarly crush, Dale Allison:

Quote

We may justly suspect that many or even most NT scholars hold the view of Jesus that they do because it was instilled in them at a young age by their education; and once they came to see things a certain way, they found it difficult to change their minds. Intellectual inertia can be obstinate. Are there any important historians of Jesus whose views in their fifties or sixties were radically different from their views in their twenties or thirties?

Imagine with me a young graduate student in a department of religion. She becomes convinced that Schweitzer was close to the truth—or, as the case may be, not close to the truth—because a revered professor, whose arguments she has not yet the means to rebut, persuades her of this. Once her paradigm about Jesus is in place, a cognitive bias will also be in place. We all see what we expect to see and want to see—like highly prejudicial football fans, who always spot more infractions committed by the team they are jeering against than by the team they are cheering for. A professor of paleontology once praised a student with these words: ‘She has no preconceptions, so her observational skills are excellent’. 

If we hold a belief, we will notice confirming evidence, especially if we are aware that not everyone agrees with us. Disconfirming evidence, to the contrary, makes us uncomfortable, and so we are more likely to miss, neglect or critically evaluate it. After a period of time, then, one might anticipate that our graduate student will have collected her own evidence for her professor’s belief and become all the more persuaded of its correctness. As soon, moreover, as she communicates her views in public fashion, say by tutoring undergraduates or publishing a paper, she may be set for life. The prospect of embarrassment from publicly admitting error can make it hard to admit error to oneself, to undertake the difficult cognitive task of rearranging data into a new pattern after one has long been looking at an old pattern.

If, in the near future, someone truly demonstrates that my sort of Jesus cannot be the historical Jesus, others would no doubt be quicker than me to see the truth. I would have to reconfigure my entire reconstruction of early Christianity, a task requiring courage and prolonged intellectual effort. Maybe I wouldn’t be up to it.

— Dale C. Allison, Jr., "The Problem of Apocalyptic: From Polemic to Apologetics," in John S. Kloppenborg and John W. Marshall, ed., Apocalypticism, Anti-Semitism and the Historical Jesus: Subtexts in Criticism (JSNTSup 275; New York: T&T Clark International, 2005), 108–109.

 

1 hour ago, juliann said:

I don't get exercised over her methodology because as Kevin quotes another scholar who explains the variation in conclusions from mainstream scholars given the context in which they place their subjects, I think it explains a lot of what is going on with her. 

Yes, Kevin loves that quote from Fr. McDade (a theologian of course!). It's a hoary criticism that hasn't aged well: the quest for the historical Jesus has failed because various questers have come up with different pictures of Jesus (looking down the well of history and seeing their own reflections, blah, blah, blah). Well, most of those theories have gone the way of all the earth over the last 25 years, along with their exponents. The apocalyptic Jesus seems to have carried the day (notwithstanding a recent left-field challenge from James Crossley with his Marxist Jesus).

Anyway, back to Barker. I agree that she is upfront about going beyond the evidence. So that's to her credit, I guess.

 

Edited February 29, 2024 by Nevo

[SeekingUnderstanding]

10 hours ago, juliann said:

The result is that the much biblical study produced in the UK, outside the faith-based institutions, is of no use to the consumers of biblical scholarship, that is, the faith-based communities. Any medical school that produced no graduates fit to practise medicine and no research relevant to the human body would be closed down. The same should apply with biblical studies, but it does not.

If Christians didn't use their book of scripture to legislate their view of morality on the rest of us, maybe. As it is, the bible has profound impacts on the lives of everyone living in the vicinity of christians.