Reinventing Jesus: How Contemporary Skeptics Miss the Real Jesus and Mislead Popular Culture

J. Ed Komoszewski — Kindle highlights from '>-'. 18 highlights.

Earlier 20th-century scholarship (especially the Jesus Seminar) treated the Gospels as myths, but current scholarly consensus has shifted. Graham Stanton (King's College London) and David Aune (Notre Dame) both argue the Gospels fit the genre of Greco-Roman biography (bios), which aimed to faithfully record historical fact even with theological purpose.

The Jesus Seminar and the consequence of rejecting eyewitness origins

Mike explains what is at stake if the Gospels are not rooted in eyewitness accounts.

Bauckham's argument: Papias assumes oral tradition's value depends on derivation from living eyewitnesses

Theoretical implication of Papias's framework for evaluating the community tradition view.

The genre of the Gospels: from assumed mythology to recognized Greco-Roman biography

Historical shift in scholarly understanding of the literary genre of the Gospels.

Q&A: The historical-critical method — recommended response is Bauckham's Jesus and the Eyewitnesses

Q&A for a student in an early Christian philosophy course using the historical-critical method.

Objection that scholars affirm historicity only because they signed faith statements is refuted by citing atheist/agnostic scholars who agree

Responding to the claim that Christian bias explains scholarly consensus on historicity