Category Archives: Book reviews

“Jesus the Nazarene”—Book Review and Excursus (conclusion)

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A. Jordan, Jesus the Nazarene: The Talmud and the Founder of Christianity         Wipf & Stock, Eugene Oregon. 2023: 173 pp. This is the final installment of a book report on A. Jordan’s Jesus the Nazarene, which is the first of its kind: a Jewish endorsement of the mythicist theory. The author argues that a single prophet living in the early first century BCE founded the Christian religion, that he is known in Jewish sources as Yeshu ha-Notsri, and so on. (A list of ten points was given here.) Some positives of the book: (1) Jordan takes seriously what the Talmud has to say about the Hasmonean-era Jesus/Yeshu. Very few New Testament scholars do so. (2) In the course of Jesus … Continue reading →

“Jesus the Nazarene”—Book Review and Excursus, Pt. 2

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A. Jordan, Jesus the Nazarene: The Talmud and the Founder of Christianity         Wipf & Stock, Eugene Oregon. 2023: 173 pp. The prior post presented the views of the linguist, A. Jordan, regarding The Talmudic “Jesus.” Like me, Jordan sees the Jesus of the Talmud—generally called Yeshu ha-Notsri in Jewish records (never “Jesus of Nazareth”)—as being the “real” Jesus. The Talmudic Jesus lived in the early decades of the first century before the common era and had a completely different biography than Jesus of Nazareth, though some elements seem to have survived in the Christian gospels: the radical nature of the prophet’s teachings, his opposition to the Pharisees, success in gaining converts, trial, and execution by crucifixion. In this post we … Continue reading →

“Jesus the Nazarene”—Book Review and Excursus

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A. Jordan, Jesus the Nazarene: The Talmud and the Founder of Christianity Resource Publications (Wipf & Stock), Eugene Oregon. Paperback. March 2023. 173 pp. Wipf & Stock publishers have kindly furnished a complimentary copy of the title above for review. I requested the recent book because it expands on the thesis that Yeshu ha-Notsri (“Jesus the Nazarene”) was the founder of Christianity who lived in the early part of the first century BCE, a thesis explored on this website and in the final chapter of my book NazarethGate: Quack Archeology, Holy Hoaxes, and the Invented Town of Jesus (American Atheist Press, 2015). This series of posts is something more than a book report. It touches on issues such as “Was … Continue reading →

H. Detering, “The Gnostic Meaning of the Exodus”—A commentary (Pt. 1)

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→ Table of Contents      The prevailing picture of Christian origins does need to be revised… All New Testament scholars are aware of textual material and historical data that cannot easily be reconciled… Some scholars are also aware that the literary and historical bases for the traditional reconstruction are very, very shaky. The picture itself has not yet budged, however, and will not budge until alternative explanations for the (sometimes very curious) data available are taken up for forthright discussion and evaluation.     —Burton Mack, “All the Extra Jesuses” (Semeia 49 [1990], pp. 169–70.) Some background The above words of Burton Mack are as applicable today as when he wrote them almost thirty years ago. We do need a thorough revision of Christian origins, … Continue reading →

J. W. Wesselius: “The Origin of the History of Israel” (2002)—Review

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This book by the Dutch scholar Jan Wim Wesselius presents yet another radical solution to the question hulking over OT studies like a malignant phantom: Who wrote the ancient history of Israel? Much depends on the answer—including the self-proclaimed legitimacy of the modern state of Israel. We recently considered Russell Gmirkin’s answer, which I personally find quite plausible: a group of Jewish scholars penned the Torah in Alexandria, c. 273 BCE, drawing on sources found in the Alexandria Library (particularly Berossus and Manetho). Wesselius presents a very different, but equally provocative, solution to the authorship question as regards the so-called Primary History (Genesis through 2 Kings). His book’s full title is The Origin of the History of Israel: Herodotus’s Histories … Continue reading →

R. Gmirkin: Berossus and Genesis (2006)—Review

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Though there are a few reviews of Gmirkin’s book it deserves a revisit today, over a decade after publication. Priced at $180, it’s unlikely that many of you have read this important tome. I did so only because the nearby University of Oregon Library possesses a copy. This is not a thoroughgoing review of Berossus and Genesis, Manetho and Exodus: Hellenistic Histories and the Date of the Pentateuch (New York: t & t Clark 2006), but rather a series of excerpts (see below) presenting its essential thesis and argument. For more details, see Neil Godfrey’s 2012 analyses (here, here, and here), and also Laura Knight Jadczyk’s fine customer review on Amazon.com. At 332 pages, the book contains eleven chapters and … Continue reading →

Christianity in the Light of Science—Book announcement

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A couple of days ago I received my author’s copies of the forthcoming anthology of essays, Christianity in the Light of Science: Critically Examining the World’s Largest Religion (Prometheus Books, 399 pp, US $19). The book goes on sale July 26, 2016, and it is available at pre-order discount on Amazon.com. The volume should also be available soon through Prometheus Books (whose website is currently in upgrade mode) and, of course, via your favorite local bookstore. My contribution is Chapter 12 (of fifteen), entitled “Pious Fraud at Nazareth.” Christianity in the Light of Science is edited by John Loftus (his fourth such anthology) and has a Foreword by Frank Zindler. It is dedicated to the late Victor Stenger, whose New … Continue reading →

The Hebrew Gospel—Pt. 2

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In the last post we introduced the Hebrew Gospel, specifically through the work of James R. Edwards and his 2009 book The Hebrew Gospel and the Development of the Synoptic Tradition. Edwards successfully sunders the Hebrew Gospel from association with the canonical Gospel of Matthew. The Hebrew Gospel was indeed pre-Matthean and even pre-synoptic. However, it had links not with the Gospel of Matthew but with the “special Luke” material in the third gospel. Furthermore, Edwards gives indications that the Hebrew Gospel was “heretical”: it was used by Jewish Christians, was never canonized (pp. 104–05), and contained a defective christology and a rejection of Paul (192). Now, “defective christology” can mean only one thing: the Hebrew Gospel had a different … Continue reading →

The “Hebrew Gospel of Matthew”—Pt. 1

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It doesn’t take long for researchers into Christian origins to come across enigmatic notices in the Church Fathers regarding a gospel originally written in Hebrew. I write “enigmatic” because such a Hebrew Gospel has never been found. So, scholars have been scratching their heads for generations—nay, centuries—over numerous ancient remarks attesting to such a work which has, apparently, disappeared. Some scholars maintain that the ancient remarks about a Hebrew gospel are simply errors—the ancients didn’t know what they were talking about! How convenient… A little thought, however, quickly shows this line to be completely indefensible, because if multiple unrelated sources wrote about a Hebrew gospel, it is most unlikely that they would all be wrong. But this is the way … Continue reading →

“A Shift in Time” (L. Einhorn)—Book review, Pt. 2

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A Shift in Time: How Historical Documents Reveal the Surprising Truth About Jesus by Lena Einhorn (New York: Yucca Publishing, 2016) Review by Hermann Detering translated from the German by René Salm In the foregoing paragraphs I necessarily simplified Einhorn’s argument and left out much in her book that supports her hypothesis. The many charts and tables that graphically illustrate and summarize her points are particularly successful and greatly strengthen the book’s conclusions. [A list of illustrations following the table of contents would have made the charts even more useful.—R.S.] Despite the above, however, I find myself not entirely convinced by Einhorn’s solution. The focus of this study is too narrowly fixed upon Josephus. Left untreated are many currents that … Continue reading →