NO, Yonathan Adler does NOT "over-egg it" on his magisterial new study of the origin of Jewish beliefs and praxis. (Said person is a good commenter on Aussie politics, though.)
Fortunately, several people set straight this poster's presumption that Pauline influences aren't in the gospels.
Also, in this piece? I'm more leery of Tom Dykstra than that, though nothing about Mark's Chapter 4 parables impinges on Jesus mythicism, I'll note. OTOH, per my link, one of Dykstra's pieces I criticized was him talking about sources in Mark. (And link rot says it's gone.)
And, linking to the Westar Institute's blog, and also to a decade-old book from its Acts Seminar? Interesting.
Also interesting? Several of the people on his blogroll haven't posted anything in years. One won't load and ergo is presumably defunct. (That said, I got the new Ehrman review from a site that is still posting fresh stuff.) Another blocked me for whatever reason, not human blocking, but internet-mechanical blocking; it said I was blocked. James McGrath? On the conservative side of critical scholarship indeed; I've tangled with him about the origins of the Eucharist and other things.
I don't think Davidson is a mythicist himself. I can't even say that he's a secularist. He is studious when he writes, and in much depth. I don't know that he's explained why.
This is not against the U.S. Religious Right, mainly Christian, but with a few Orthodox Jews along for the ride, and even, for political reasons, a few Muslims.
This is against the Religious Center and Left, as well as Right, of all religious traditions that believe in praying to a god(dess) to get him/her to change their minds.
Via Tales of Whoa, who says (rightfully) that even within the world of religiosity, with the Western dual-omni god, at least, this is one that doesn't make ANY sense, we have this in-depth research test.
It checks all the scientific boxes:
Remote
Random
Double-blinded.
People were asked to pray for COVID patients' recoveries. And it made no difference.
Zip. Zilch. Nada.
Summary details:
The objective of this study was to evaluate the effect of intercessory prayer performed by a group of spiritual leaders on the health outcomes of hospitalized patients with Novel Coronavirus (COVID-19) infection, specifically focusing on mortality and hospitalization rates. Design: This was a double-blinded, controlled, and randomized trial conducted at a private hospital in São Paulo, Brazil. Interventions: Both groups continued to receive their usual medical care in accordance with HCor Hospital's institutional patient care protocol for COVID-19 patients. Intervention: Both groups received their regular medical care according to HCor's institutional patient care protocol for COVID-19 patients. The intervention group, in addition to standard treatment, received intercessory prayers performed by a group of spiritual leaders. Main outcome measures: The primary endpoint was in-hospital mortality. Secondary endpoints included the need for mechanical ventilation during hospitalization, duration of mechanical ventilation, length of ICU stay, and length of hospital stay. Results: A total of 199 participants were randomly assigned to the groups. The primary outcome, in-hospital mortality, occurred in 8 out of 100 (8.0 %) patients in the intercessory prayer group and 8 out of 99 (8.1 %) patients in the control group (HR 0.86 [0.32 to 2.31]; p = 0.76). Additionally, there were no significant differences between the groups in terms of secondary outcomes. Conclusion: The study found no evidence of an effect of intercessory prayer on the primary outcome of mortality or on the secondary outcomes of hospitalization time, ICU time, and mechanical ventilation time.
A total of 199 patients is relatively robust, too, at least partially undercutting "small sample size" claims.
As for the theology, philosophy of religion and related?
This issue hits home hardest with the classical Western monotheisms, post-early Jewish contact with Greek philosophy. In other words, the "dual-omni" god, as I call him, both omnipotent and omnibenevolent.
But, this critter doesn't even have to be omnibenevolent. Only the first omni is really in play, as long as omniscience is understood as a subset of omnipotence.
So, you have a deity who already knows what is going to happen because, and in addition to he (she, it) having already created things to happen and play out that way. And yet, you're praying for him to change his mind.
After all, the Torah records Moses himself as saying, in Numbers 23:19:
God is not human, that he should lie, not a human being, that he should change his mind.
There you go.
BUT?!
After the Great Flood, when Yahweh smells Noah's burnt offering, although Genesis 8:21 doesn't use the actual word, he is said to have "repented" of what he did. Of course, before that, in Genesis 6:6, he "repented" of having created human beings in the first place, and there, the Hebrew word is used.
Beyond that, in Genesis 8, Yahweh is just as much quasi-human as Zeus, as he "repents" precisely because he SMELLS Noah's burnt offering.
Fact is, of course, as this illustrates, there is no theology of the Bible, or of the Tanakh or New Testament. Nor even of individual books that have gone through multiple writing and editorial hands.
Of course, there is, in Isaiah, the passage, II Kings 20, when Hezekiah is told that his illness will kill him and he prays and gets 15 more years of life.
I guess believers in an omnipotent god could say this was his own plan all along and he just didn't make that clear. In other words, per Job as filtered through Paul in Romans, this is god's inscrutability and y'all on earth just need to shut up.
Well, as I have called it, that's the psychological division of the problem of evil, so you just opened a bigger can of worms. And, per what started us off? The more liberally religious, at least in Christianity, as well as the wingnuts, ultimately go there.
Or, also among the semi-liberal theologically, but something also used by religious fundamentalists there's C.S. Lewis, whose essay "Does Prayer Work" Tales of Whoa cites. Lewis says, in essence, that in a scientific test mode, this isn't real prayer. Gee, don't we have psi phenomena people claim exactly the same when telekinesis, etc., are subjected to scientific testing?
But, Lewis and the wingnuts are wrong anyway, as the study allowed for exactly that:
The intercessors consisted of Protestant religious leaders who were selected based on their faith, availability, and commitment to daily prayers for a specific period. They were volunteers from Protestant congregations across various cities and denominations. The theological knowledge of each intercessor could not be objectively evaluated, but their voluntary participation and shared belief in the efficacy of prayer for the sick were significant factors in their selection.
Your last door is closed.
I've called out Hudson before for his apparent belief that the biblical year of jubilee, or the seven-cycle culmination of sabbath years with an extra year to make 50, was actually real. The truth is that, as Edward Chancellor details in "The Price of Time," kings in the ancient Near East (anachronism, but still often used) would occasionally, upon their accession, have a debt jubilee, but only then, and only for certain types of debt. And, the reason they did them was not because of divine mandate but (derp!) to quell social unrest. It was a one-off of Rome's bread and circuses. No ancient kingdom or empire had anything like the biblical ideal, and the 7x7 numerological artifice should alone indicate this isn't real.
But, Hudson still thinks he's an academic biblical exegete, and his latest proffering (link is to Counterpunch, but it's also at Naked Capitalism, and problably Alternet, TruthOut or other places) is based on the current Israel-Gaza war. Many people, not just academically trained (if not in actual academia, like me) exegetes, but people in the general populace, know about I Samuel 15, where Yahweh orders Saul to commit a holocaust (I used that word specifically, not just "genocide," precisely because of the current situation) against Amalek, the Amalekite people. In fact, via the prophet or judge Samuel, Yahweh tells King Saul to kill not just all the people but even all their livestock.
Hudson, perhaps in part acting Jesuitically or Pharasaically (take your linguistic poison) on parsing the verbiage, claims it ain't so:
Netanyahu has evoked what he claims to be a Biblical excuse for Israeli genocide. But what he pretends to be a covenant in the tradition of Moses is a vicious demand by the judge and grey eminence Samuel telling Saul, the general whom he hopes to make king: “Now go and smite Amalek [an enemy of Israel], and totally destroy everything that belongs to them. Do not spare them; put to death men and women, children and infants, cattle and sheep, camels and donkeys” (1 Samuel 15:3).
These were not the Lord’s own words, and Samuel was no Moses.
Really?
Let's quote the start of 1 Samuel 15, specifically, verses 1-3, not just verse 3:
And Samuel said to Saul, “The Lord sent me to anoint you king over his people Israel; now therefore listen to the words of the Lord. 2 Thus says the Lord of hosts, ‘I have noted what Amalek did to Israel in opposing them on the way when they came up out of Egypt. 3 Now go and strike Amalek and devote to destruction[a] all that they have. Do not spare them, but kill both man and woman, child and infant, ox and sheep, camel and donkey.’”
’Tis so indeed, Hudson.
But wait! Hudson gets better:
It was not the Lord offering that command to destroy Amalek, but a prophet anxious to place a king on the throne.
Really?
So, in essence, Hudson is calling Samuel a false prophet. And, lying
about the run-up to Saul being anointed on top of it.
That also ’taint so, as selected verses from 1 Samuel 9 and 10 tell us. We start with 9:15-16:
15 Now the day before Saul came, the Lord had revealed to Samuel: 16 “Tomorrow about this time I will send to you a man from the land of Benjamin, and you shall anoint him to be prince[c] over my people Israel. He shall save my people from the hand of the Philistines. For I have seen[d] my people, because their cry has come to me.”
Then to chapter 10: 1-2:
Then Samuel took a flask of oil and poured it on his head and kissed him and said, “Has not the Lord anointed you to be prince[a] over his people Israel? And you shall reign over the people of the Lord and you will save them from the hand of their surrounding enemies. And this shall be the sign to you that the Lord has anointed you to be prince[b] over his heritage.
Now, later in chapter 10, in what is surely another "hand," we have this, in 10:17-19:
17 Now Samuel called the people together to the Lord at Mizpah. 18 And he said to the people of Israel, “Thus says the Lord, the God of Israel, ‘I brought up Israel out of Egypt, and I delivered you from the hand of the Egyptians and from the hand of all the kingdoms that were oppressing you.’ 19 But today you have rejected your God, who saves you from all your calamities and your distresses, and you have said to him, ‘Set a king over us.’ Now therefore present yourselves before the Lord by your tribes and by your thousands.”
This is preceded by another "bookmark," the full chapter of 1 Samuel 8, also having Yahweh telling Samuel it's the people's fault, not his. But, opening verses there show this was partially Samuel's fault that the people wanted a king. We read in 8: 1-5:
When Samuel became old, he made his sons judges over Israel. 2 The name of his firstborn son was Joel, and the name of his second, Abijah; they were judges in Beersheba. 3 Yet his sons did not walk in his ways but turned aside after gain. They took bribes and perverted justice. 4 Then all the elders of Israel gathered together and came to Samuel at Ramah 5 and said to him, “Behold, you are old and your sons do not walk in your ways. Now appoint for us a king to judge us like all the nations.”
So, it seems clear there are two narratives. Chapter 9 and the first half of 10 have an enthusiastic embrace of a king, it seems, sandwiched between warnings. Proof of this? A bad transition from from the end of 8 to start of 9. 8:22 has:
And the Lord said to Samuel, “Obey their voice and make them a king.” Samuel then said to the men of Israel, “Go every man to his city.”
Followed by 9:1-2:
There was a man of Benjamin whose name was Kish, the son of Abiel, son of Zeror, son of Becorath, son of Aphiah, a Benjaminite, a man of wealth. 2 And he had a son whose name was Saul, a handsome young man.
But it gets better. 9:15-16 says:
15 Now the day before Saul came, the Lord had revealed to Samuel: 16 “Tomorrow about this time I will send to you a man from the land of Benjamin, and you shall anoint him to be prince[c] over my people Israel. He shall save my people from the hand of the Philistines. For I have seen[d] my people, because their cry has come to me.”
Note
the footnote there, that Saul here is not called "king." That's another
example we're dealing with two hands. Indeed, one thread appears to end
at 1 Samuel 12 with Samuel's death, with him missing entirely in chapters 13-14 before popping up again in chapter 15. Somewhat Joshua, but definitely,
Judges and the two books of Samuel of the Former Prophets, as shown in
various Greek versions and also at Qumran, have a torturous history.
I Samuel 13:1, Masoretic Text version:
Saul lived for one year and then became king, and when he had reigned for two years over Israel
Is proof positive of this torturous history.
The positive thread starts Chapter 10, then, as noted above.
Clearly,
the previous narrative not only has Samuel being told by Yahweh to
anoint Saul, but it being presented as a good thing in Yahweh's eyes,
overall.
But, Hudson nowhere at all wrestles with how this evolved.
Also, contra Hudson, in neither of the two threads (setting aside the possibility there were originally more than two) does it say that Samuel wanted Saul to be king. That's Goalpost Shifting 101. Also, Saul is not mentioned as being a general when crowned. In I Samuel 9-10, he's simply a young man looking for lost donkeys.
The rest of Hudson's piece is more crapola.
He is clueless about just how torturous the text-developmental history of 1 and 2 Samuel in general were, first of all. Second, whether Saul was a real person or not, or even David, for that matter, later kings who perceived themselves as David's heirs needed to in some way justify what seemed to be a usurpation.
Next, Hudson gets on his debt hobbyhorse:
The Jewish Bible is remarkable in criticizing the kings who ruled Judah and Israel. It is in fact a long narrative of social revolution, in which religious leaders sought – often successfully – to check the power of a selfish and aggressive oligarchy that was denounced again and again for its greed in impoverishing the poor, taking their land and reducing them to debt bondage.
’Taint so, Michael.
First, there is no "theology of the Tanakh" any more than there is a "theology
of the New Testament." And, given the torturous history of 1 Samuel in
particular and all four of the Former Prophets/Deuteronomic history in
general, there's no unifying theology of the four books, or even the one
book. As for him citing Ezra in that piece? That was the same Ezra who commanded IMMEDIATE divorce of non-Jewish wives.
As I said on Twitter, Hudson needs to talk to a good modern exegete of the Tanakh, say an Idan Dershowitz, before writing any more dreck like this.
(Sidebar: If Hudson does want to go hunting for a background to the issue
of debt that stands on better ground than his attempt to base it on
biblical jubilee years? Per comments by David Graeber
in "Debt," it's the old hunter-gatherer world he needs to look at, and,
like the Inuit, preferably looking at a hunter-gatherer world with
limited interaction with the agriculturalist world. The fact that he
doesn't, along with this, reinforces my thought that he is in part
acting as an apologist for Judaism as seen through certain eyeballs, as a
"good" Jewish socialist Trot would do.)
As for his attempting to rescue Judaism from the Jews? He reminds me of Walter Kaufmann. Kaufmann had the exact same problem of pontificating about biblical Yahwism without talking to actual scholars.
Beyond that, I've called out politicizing biblical criticism many, many times on this site.
The biggie? Apparent politicization of biblical archaeology, namely in attempting to prove an early-age kingdom of Edom existed, and that in the name of modern Zionism, naturally.
More recently, on the r/AcademicBiblical subreddit, there was what I called "goysplaining," Gentiles (I presume) attacking a comment with a quote from Amy-Jill Levine saying there are things in the Talmud Jews DO need to be apologetic about. Elsewhere, there, commenters plumping for a historic King David, in the service of modern Zionism, too.
Beyond that, there's the whole question of Jewish identity, which I discussed in detail in my review of Shlomo Sands' book.
