I am gradually transitioning my online courses to a high-quality video-and-syllabus format through MythVision. The first to launch is my course on New Testament Studies for Everyone. You can check out a five-minute video describing that course and how it works. And visit the new registration page for current cost and all the details (my old description of the course’s content is also still applicable).
You get lifetime access to the videos and materials, and also get to ask me all the questions you want about course-related topics on my blog here (for as long as it remains active), simply by commenting on any blog post on the same subject (use the categories drop-down menu to the right to find a suitable blog to post your question to); and don’t forget to mention you’re a student of this course!
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Didn’t know where else to put this but in my (1899) Douay-Rheims it says that “Luke” was well known as a painter, is there any Patristic evidence for that? Also, it makes the weird claim that both Mark and Romans were written in Latin. Were those claims frequently made by the Catholic Church (particularly Jerome) or were they the invention of the revisers (1899) of the DR?
I can’t speak to where those ideas then came from. But they certainly aren’t true. And no, I am pretty sure no ancient source says any of that (though I haven’t exhaustively checked, e.g. “maybe” Jerome says it in some obscure place).
Methods in the 19th century were shit, though; even crank. So I can speculate that someone reasoned “there are Latinisms in Mark; ergo Mark could have originally been written in Latin; ergo it is a fact that Mark was written in Latin.” That’s massively illogical. But is the typical way bullshit “became fact” back then. Similar thinking could explain Romans (“It was written to people in Rome; people in Rome spoke Latin; ergo Romans could have originally been written in Latin; ergo it is a fact that Romans was written in Latin.”).
Meanwhile, Wikipedia says the myth that Luke was a painter arose in the Middle Ages (see Luke as Artist). Notably the myth arose right at the same period as the Two Iconoclasm controversies. I doubt that’s a coincidence.
I know you’re biased in this case but I think taking online classes for no credit with you and Dennis, et al. would be more intellectually stimulating for the would be scholar or pastor even though no degree is earned. Last year (or the year prior?) I had a convo with an old classmate from grad school and the best analogy I can think of would be taking a fish out of water, swinging it around in the air seven times, then throwing it like a frisbee to the other side of the lake. Despite having an M.Div. and taking classes alongside myself, he had less knowledge of the Bible than the average listener of The Bible Geek podcast or Bart Ehrman’s free online lectures. He asked me to review a draft for him and it used the criteria of embarrassment to establish something related to the anointment of Jesus by (presumably, Mary) with perfume. I told him that story was clearly fiction as Jesus foretold his death and resurreciton which is a clear sign of it not going back to the historical Jesus, who had no such awareness.
At what point does a graduate degree in Biblical studies become so invaluable to not only job prospects but also conversations with the average educated layperson? Although I don’t regret getting mine, I will say that about 80% of what I learned in grad school was from reading outside the syllabus. I’ve met bookstore employees who know that the KJV has gone through revisions but there are seminary professors who make the most ludicrous parallels between the Biblical figures and current events (e.g. comparing Mary Magdalene, an alleged sex worker, to the woman who gave flowers to the police during a BLM protest).
One of my textbooks claimed that Josephus was the one who destroyed the Temple, and another claimed that the 2000 US presidential election happened in 2002. Yet another claimed that Jefferson was our second president. In other words, some of my textbooks were not only wrong but dead wrong. Wrong to the point that would elicit laughter from AI chat apps.
tl:dr: seminary courses are overpriced and sometimes flatly inaccurate, even about mundane matters. Therefore, people taking online courses such as this, albeit not for credit, may learn more than the average Joseph of Arimathea or Mary Magdalene.
Which is why the main component of (at least a legitimate) PhD program is compelling you to do exactly that. I often joke (and it isn’t really a joke) that 99% of what I did as a historian in my program was confirm books and articles were of no use to my dissertation. I had to be able to answer a question like, “What does Dr. X say about subject Y,” and know when the answer is “Nothing” or “Nothing relevant” (and indeed, actually know that was true, which requires reading or at least skimming X’s work, even though it ends up saying nothing of any use to your project).
It sounds annoying, but in truth, the knowledge you gain from this is immense. Even though 99% of it isn’t relevant to your dissertation, it is 100% relevant to your leaving that program as a bona fide expert.
But I also agree that if one can sort wheat from chaff (there is a lot of BAD information in YouTube shows and podcasts and the like), there is a lot to be learned online that wasn’t available to the average person thirty or even ten years ago. If one can interact with it all with critical discernment, they can indeed come out with more knowledge than your average seminary student (who is being taught a specific system of dogmas anyway).
Assuming historicity, how likely is it that Jesus could have read the warning inscription at the temple, in Greek? I assume Muslims in Mecca and Medinah can read the English signs that say “Muslims (this way), Non-Muslims (that-way)”, so my thinking is Jesus could have read at least that much in Greek, even if it meant asking someone what it said and learning some of the words that way.
This is much debated in the field.
IMO, there isn’t any reason Jesus wouldn’t know enough pidgin Greek to get along in Gentile interactions. But reading is a much more difficult matter; modern Muslims have extensive childhood training in reading, so reading other languages is actually much easier for them than someone who never learns to read at all. (This is a major issue in literacy studies; see my Columbia adviser William Harris’s extensive treatment in Ancient Literacy; for Judea, Catherine Heszer, Jewish Literacy in Roman Palestine.)
However, anyone can ask someone to read for them, and this was the usual way public writing functioned (coins, inscriptions, decrees). If you saw a sign, and couldn’t read, you’d just ask around what the sign said. Someone would know, and odds are, everyone local would know, even the illiterate, because they already did this, and it got around.
All that is as to the general point. But as to the specific point: we only have a fragment of the sign you are talking about. The part we have just happens to be from the Greek part. But like the Rosetta Stone, it almost certainly had other linguistic sections (probably at least one in Aramaic, and possibly another in Latin). Not that the illiterate could read those either, but more could, and so the “ask locals” method would be even more reliable.