on Sunday night I watched a program on TV One that many of you may have watched which saddened me enormously. The show was "Investigator Special - Jesus the cold case". The main reason I was saddened was because I felt the investigation was very biased towards a predetermined end result - it felt as if the reporter had an answer he wanted to arrive at and he went on to find the scholars that would agree with him. Biblical Scholarship, Anthropological studies and Theological Scholarship have moved on dramatically from the middle of last century's 'the bible is all myth invented by the early church for the purpose of denigrating the Jews'. It would have been good to see some modern anthropological evidence and some modern scholarly testimony added to the mix. I feel that would have made the results presented on Sunday much more credible. The case for the discarding of the biblical text has not been proven at all in my book. That the interpretation of the scriptures in the early history of christianity was misused to scapegoat the jews in the same way it has been used to bolster misogyny (bias against women) and slavery and many other is undeniable but to ascribe heinous motives to the writers of the gospels is just not necessary. The writers were not antisemitic, thy were jewish themselves they were part of the establishment it was much later that the split between jews and christians came about.
Allow me to recommend some authors: Anthropologist Renee Girard Things Hidden Since the Foundation of the World and The Scapegoat
Biblical Scholars and Theologians: N.T. Wright, James Alison, Raymond E. Brown, Joseph A. Fitzmyer, James G. Williams, Gil Bailie, Robert Hamerton-Kelly. Oh dear, I got carried away here :). There are a myriad names to add to this list of current scholars who would be helpful to read.
