The Bible Geek Show

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The Bible Geek Podcast 20-018 Nov 08, 2020

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In John 3:14-15, is the writer comparing Jesus to the serpent god? Why does God conceal his real name in the Old Testament? I was wondering what inspired the "Temptation narratives" in the various gospels? Why would the Romans undermine their state security by replacing their gods with a lesser god like Jesus? Does Paul show any knowledge of the contents of the 3 synoptic gospels or the one of John? Which biblical criticism books would you wish were translated in English that have not been yet? The Old Testament has numerous battles where the victorious army kills everybody in a town except for the virgin females, which they kidnap and force into marriages. Is there a word in English for this practice? How did Islam originate as a sect of Christianity? How to account for striking parallels between the Apocryphon of John from Nag Hammadi and the Life of Adam and Eve?

The Bible Geek Podcast 20-017 Oct 28, 2020

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What are your thoughts on the interactions between the biblical Paul and the 12? Did they even live at the same time? Why was it important that the first Christians get their message to Rome? Are the Odes of Solomon (e.g., Ode XXXI) and the Gospels both inspired by the Q Source? What was the early Christian attitude towards slavery? In the Acts of Thomas Saint Thomas was literally sold into slavery BY JESUS HIMSELF! Pilate is always used to underscore the evil of Jews, who are always treated as worse criminals. Am I correct in seeing him that way, as a rhetorical argument that pagans are less of an enemy than Jews? Was Jesus (assuming he actually existed) an Apocalyptic prophet or a Revolutionary? Do you know anything about the scholarly reception of Russell Gmirkin's book "Berossus and Genesis, Manetho and Exodus"? Do you think it holds up and we need to rethink our chronology for the Documentary Hypothesis?

The Bible Geek Podcast 20-016 Oct 02, 2020

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Analyzing Worldwide Church of God theology. Does an objective moral standard require God--or vice versa? Morton Smith and the Secret Gospel of Mark Marcion and Galatians Mithraism The Egyptian

The Bible Geek Podcast 20-015 Sep 23, 2020

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Ironies of Bible-worship Do we know exactly what caused Judaism to metamorphose from a polytheistic religion into a monotheistic religion? How much of a role might its adoption of Zoroastrian ideas have played in this? Could the young man fleeing the Garden naked originally have been Peter? What’s your opinion of the 60s-80s genre I like to call "Christploitation" Films? Was Cain originally Yahweh’s son? Where did Medieval artists get the idea of assorted sadistic torments in hell? Is Hell a fleshy place for things to burn? If today’s cult founders are discussed ad nauseum by their followers after their passing, why would the NT epistle authors have nothing to say about their founder whom they believed was God incarnate?

The Bible Geek Podcast 20-014 Sep 21, 2020

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A possible Greek pun in the story of the Gerasene Demoniac. Balaam appears twice in Numbers, in chapters 22 and 31. In Chapter 22 he seems to be a good guy who fears God, but in Chapter 31 he masterminds an operation to seduce the Hebrews away from God. Do the 2 stories come from different sources? How did Paul recognize Jesus on the Damascus Road if he had never met him pre-crucifiction? How was Paul different from the gospel writers? Did he believe Christ lived above the Earth, never came to Earth. What is Jacob doing with the peeled rods manipulating the genetics of his and Laban’s sheep? A Catholic apologist friend of mine insists that "late" dating of the gospels rests on the assumption that Jesus is not God and therefore could not have predicted the destruction of the Temple in Mark. Valid? During early Christianity, did anyone ever account for the "fact" that Jesus could walk on water, but was taken outta here with 3 nails and a hammer? How did early Chritians explain this away?

The Bible Geek Podcast 20-013 Sep 03, 2020

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Is the dating of the gospels well established? How do we know Mark was written in 60-70 AD? Could it be MUCH later? Is the Pauline view that the wicked dead will not be resurrected unto judgment derived from the LXX (mis)translation of Psalm 1:5? In a recent Bible Geek episode, you used the phrase “weighed in the balance“ from the book of Daniel. The phrase brought to mind the weighing method used by Anubis to determine whether a person’s soul can go to paradise. Do you think the reference in Daniel harks back to Egyptian religion, or is it merely used as a common simile? What would Christianity look like today if Paul The Apostle, had never been born? Would Christianity even exist? Do you think Dr. Robert Eisenman believes that Jesus Christ was not a historical figure? Can you recommend any books that speak to the issue of the claim that the Catholic Church is God's Church from a free thought perspective? Was Paul's view that it was better not to marry part of a larger school of thought? Was celibacy seen as more spiritual or more pure? Was even marital sex viewed as sinful? Perhaps the reasons are more practical, such as lack of financial burden, freedom to travel, etc? What do you think of Daniel Boyarin’s revisionist understanding of the interaction between Jesus and Pharisees in Mark 7? What is the intended gender of the “Sun of righteousness” in Malachi 4:2?

The Bible Geek Podcast 20-012 Aug 21, 2020

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How much weight should we give to such a silence about Jesus' life as being evidence for Paul not thinking of Jesus as a human being that walked the earth? Now, if the silence of a Gospel-like-Jesus in the epistles is viewed as a telltale sign that we instead might be dealing with a celestial Jesus-figure, how do you explain the lack of historical Jesus references/allusions in the Pastorals (with the one exception of 1 Tim 6:13? ) Is it possible that "Q" was not an actual document, but instead was an oral tradition from which New testament authors quoted in their writings? If for some reason you were to take a break from biblical studies, where would you direct your scholarly energy? Listener ideas for a Jesus novel. Why do Christians worship Jesus? How different do you think Christianity as we experience it would be if there were only the Gospels? Could the originals of the New Testament be kept in the Vatican's secret library? What did Deuteronomy 29:29 actually mean when it was written?

The Bible Geek Podcast 20-011 Aug 20, 2020

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Do you SUPPOSE that "Mark", which lends itself so readily to being a stage play...actually BEGAN as such? Mark is unique in that it never SAYS "angel". And we are never told who this boy is. Could it be that the "boy in white" is actually STAGE DIRECTION that by a quirk of fate found its way into the long term "record"? In that the acting instructions read "scene opens: angel (depicted by beautiful boy in white) is sitting on the right side...blah, blah, blah". The audience would have KNOWN the boy in white was SUPPOSED to be an angel, it would be culturally obvious, and so it need not have been spelled out to the crowd. But somehow, this play, with all its stage direction was edited into a "novel" and SOMEHOW this translation was simply included by MISTAKE? Is there a subtle stressing within the Bible that Lunar connotations (Abraham, Jacob, Elisha) might be better or more favorable than Solar (Isaac, Esau, Elijah)? If so, any theories as to why? Has any scholarly work been done to discover the origins of various biblical stories in more ancient traditions? In Hebrews 1:1-2 most translations employ "world" or "universe" here. The actual word is aionas, or ages. Everywhere else, even in other parts of Hebrews, aionas is translated as ages. it's translated at age. Why? According to the average Christian's knowledge, most everything, if not all, has been taken care of once Jesus ascends to Heaven. I can't for the life of me figure out why God would then need Paul. From the Christian perspective, why was Paul even necessary? OK, why didn't JC stay dead? What say you, Bible Geek, a dead JC would have quite an effect on Christianity but what kind of an effect?

The Bible Geek Podcast 20-010 Aug 03, 2020

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Do the Pseudo-Clementines anticipate Pascal’s Wager? Do you find that in Catholicism the Eucharist and the rosary take on more importance than the Bible? Why do we call the coming return of Jesus to judge the living and the dead the Second Coming? Why not count his birth #1, his resurrection as # 2, his return from harrowing Hell as # 3, and the Parousia as # 4? Might the story in John 1:41-50ff be thinly veiling “Simon” (Magus) and Dositheus (equivalent in meaning to “Nathaniel”), whom the Pseudo-Clementines number among disciples of the Baptist? What if when the basic gospel was "discovered" in the Jewish Scriptures through pesher readings, perhaps some of the readers figured that it was something that had actually happened right under everyone's noses, but that nobody had noticed due to the secrecy of the mission. Under this assumption, Mark's Messianic Secret makes a lot of sense. It serves not just to explain why the readers never heard of it, but why nobody at all had. Margaret Barker proposed (quite convincingly, to me) that First Temple Royal Cult beliefs survived the Deuteronomic Reform and had a strong influence on Christianity. Part of her idea is that Wisdom was supplanted by The Law that was introduced by the Deuteronomists. Wouldn't this mean that the keepers of the Old Time Religion would have a distaste for the Law? Would they have obeyed the Law begrudgingly, while secretly being "Keepers" (nasar) of the old ways? Is there a viable alternative to modalism and tritheism that explains the Trinity? What are the major arguments for and against Lukan authorship of Acts? Pliny tells Trajan that Christians congregate on fixed dates before sunrise and sing hymns to Christ as if to a god. So did early Christians worship the sun as a manifestation of Christ? Should higher criticism of the bible be taught in schools as an elective subject? Does the bible in fact say that the Earth is flat?

The Bible Geek Podcast 20-009 Jul 09, 2020

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Is 1 Thessalonians 2:14-16 an interpolation? Is there a good critical study of Marian apparitions? Is Joseph of Arimathea’s retrieval of Jesus’ body based on Flavius Josephus’ account of rescuing a crucified friend with Titus’ permission? In Gal. 5:2-4 Paul writes that "if you let yourselves be circumcised Christ will be of no value to you at all. Again I declare to every man who lets himself be circumcised that he is obligated to obey the whole law. You ... have been alienated from Christ; you have fallen away from grace." But in Gal. 5:6, he writes "in Christ Jesus neither circumcision nor non circumcision has any value," and in Gal. 6:15 he writes "Neither circumcision nor non circumcision means anything." Which is it? Are you willing to speculate on what a smoking gun reference to Q would look like in a patristic source? Why did the redactor preserve the very different Decalogues in Exodus 20 and 34? Does Exodus 34:19 actually mean to mandate infant sacrifice?

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