Not a shock that Catholic churches are reversing the clock

Nor are most of the results.

The AP story on this trend nails the reason why in the second paragraph: Catholic churches are "aging out" on more regular attendees in many places. Often, people who are somewhat more culturally or socially conservative in general want more of that as they get older.

I suspect a related factor is the dead weight of decades of the papacies of John Paul II and Benedict XVI still having influence on American Catholic seminaries.

“There really aren’t very many liberals in the seminaries anymore,” said a young, recently ordained Midwestern priest. He spoke on condition of anonymity because of the turmoil that engulfed his parish after he began pressing for more orthodox services. “They wouldn’t feel comfortable.”

As for what those seminaries are turning out? A lot of hot young buck priests appear to be even more "egg breakers" than their 1960s predecessors. 

The overall influence of JPII, as in at the 1993 Catholic World Youth Day in Denver, is mentioned.

As for Francis the Talking Pope, here's what he thinks:

The U.S. church has “a very strong reactionary attitude,” he told a group of Jesuits last year. “Being backward-looking is useless.”

How much he can do about it? Different story.

So is the fact that many more progressive Catholics, as they see their particular congregations taken over, are running further away.

And, why wouldn't you, when you're getting, in some places, not just the return of the Tridentine mass, but this:

It ranges from Catholics who want more incense, to Latin Mass adherents who have brought back ancient prayers that mention “the perfidious Jew.” There are right-wing survivalists, celebrity exorcists, environmentalists and a handful of quasi-socialists.

"Environmentalists" and "a handful of quasi-socialists" aren't really new, so don't know what they're doing there.

A side benefit of this could be more people pushing back against six Supreme Court justices' Catholicism potentially intruding into their rulings.

A focus of the piece, re younger Catholics, is Benedictine College in Atchison, Kansas. (Note: A few HS grads from my little newspaper burg have gone there.). And holy shit, it sounds like a half-Baylor school:

(A)t Benedictine, Catholic teaching on contraception can slip into lessons on Plato, and no one is surprised if you volunteer for 3 a.m. prayers. Pornography, pre-marital sex and sunbathing in swimsuits are forbidden.

No sunbathing in swimsuits. And, what does Plato have to do with contraception? The Good, the True and the Beautiful being sex for procreation only?

Or, re half-Baylor, per the picture? Something I have commented about before?

That looks like a Catholic version of "quiverful" theology in the developing.

Speaking of? These conservative Catholics in the pulpit, like the Rev. Scott Emerson, are getting political just like the six in black:

Protection is needed, he said in a 2023 service, from “the spiritual corruption of worldly vices.” He has warned against critics – “the atheists, journalists, politicians, the fallen-away Catholics” – he said were undermining the church.

MAGAts in the pulpit! And, that's not joking. The attack in journalists is scary. And, "politicians" surely doesn't mean all of them, you know?

That said, the departing are voting with their wallets. As for Emerson saying "the church has buried every one of its undertakers," really? Been to Western Europe recently?

And, I suspect that priests like Emerson will also be unapologetic about any stones that sitll get turned over in the church's sexual abuse scandals.

From my recent experience at being inside Catholic churches, I can say anecdotally that about 7-10 percent of women under the age of 50 wear some sort of head covering. A few within that, it may be an actual veil. A number of teenaged girls are among this. How much overt or covert prodding is involved with them, I don't know.

No, Yahweh was not originally an Omride deity

Strawmanning, in this piece claiming that Yahweh was originally the family/tribal god of the Omride dynasty of Israel and moved southward to Judah from there.

And, stupidity in commenting, especially by the OP, from the r/academicbiblical post where I saw it .

The start of the strawmanning? How many critical scholars think Yahweh “was already the national deity in the tenth century”? I don’t. Since the name of “Abijah,” if properly translaterated into English, is “Abijam,” or אבים in Hebrew, and son Asa is אסא In Hebrew, the kingdom of Judah has no Yahweh-theophoric kings in the 10th century. 

That said, depending on how carefully one parses, Ahaz, Manessah and Amon also are not. Makes one wonder how Hezekiah got there, and, given the later corruption of the Judahite line that means Josiah likely isn’t Josiah, either, that perhaps Hezekiah isn’t Hezekiah.  It is not until Josiah that we get an uninterrupted set of Yahweh-theophoric kings.

Tis true that the last two Omride kings, brothers Ahaziah and Athaliah, are Y-theophoric, as is sister Athaliah. But? Jehoshaphat in the south preceded not only them but their father Ahab.

That said, all of this, plus the fact that Ahaziah of Judah’s reign dating, like Hezekiah’s and others, are “unstable” is an additional issue.

From there on, setting aside for now the issue of ruling names, Frevel lists seven “pillars” of reconstruction of Israelite / Judahite religion. And, really? Have half of these been held by most critical scholars in the past 30 years?

I outrightly reject 3. I’ve not heard 4 listed as a major tenet of Yahwism before. I definitely reject 5, and also see 4. I reject 6 and because of that, I reject 7. I know I am nowhere near alone, either. Frevel comes off as pushing at an open door while carrying a big mug of smug. Unfortunately, other than point 1, that Yahweh was not indigenous to Canaan, which I totally support, Frevel bases the rest of his argument on the open door of points 5-7.

Next, in talking about Yahweh coming from the south, he mentions Judges 5:4-5 and other passages, but ignores Judges 1. (That said, in English alone, Judges 1 shows how muddied the Former Prophets are. If Jerusalem was captured (then?) put to fire and sword, as in Judges 1:8, why wasn’t it held? Or, if it weren’t because tribal nomads like Mongols and Turkmen didn’t want to live in that city, why was it allowed to refortify itself so much?

Then, re Numbers 10 and Jethro? Why WOULDN’T the author, or editor, of the P passage make Jethro a Yahwist only via Moses? Next, the one paragraph, or less than that, of rejecting the Arab-Midiante etymology is bad enough without giving credence of any sort to the actual biblical proposal. Frankly, that’s a big fail right there. If you’re going to buy the biblical form of the etymology, you lost me, especially knowing that the Yawhist is a producer of epically mangled puns.

The biggest fail would be that there’s no explanation of why Ahab gave his children Y-theophoric names. In his first mention of Ahab, he says this:

All of them bear theophoric Yahwistic names for the first time in the history of Israel: Ahaziah, Joram, Athaliah. This corroborates that YHWH was the patron God of the Omrides. This is not only a new phenomenon in the biblical reflection of the Northern dynasty (Sanders 2015, 79). The father of Baasha, Ahijah (1 Kgs 15:27), and Abijah, the son of Jeroboam (1 Kgs 14:1), are special cases which cannot be discussed in this paper. In Judah Jehoshaphat is the first king to carry a Yahwistic name.

While ignoring that Jehoshaphat ruled first. It also ignores that Jehoram of Judah was likely older than Ahaziah of Israel. Of course, that sets aside the issue of either corruption of or distortion of king lists and that we should perhaps speak of only one Ahaziah and one Jehoram, but that’s a different matter entirely. After all, 2 Kings runs two different narratives about Jehoram of Israel, almost as diverse as 1 Samuel running two different narratives about whether or not Yahweh supported or opposed kingship for Israel.

Finally? As my grokking patience has worn out. Tracing the Samaritans back to this time might be a mug’s game. I think there’s nothing even semi-firm pre-Persian Empire.

RIP Dan Dennett follow up

I posted my own RIP three weeks ago, with links to much previous blogging about Dennett, as well as links to Massimo Pigliucci's and John Horgan's takes on him.

Last week, via Firefox, I saw Dan Falk's take on Nautilus, and it needs some refutation on its "10 brilliant insights."

1. The mind is a user illusion. True to fair degree. But, the user is itself an illusion. One of these areas where Dennett didn't go as far as he could have.

2. Free will is an fantasy, but a welcome one. Not so totally. Per Daniel Wegner, I see subconscious varieties of something like free will existing. As for the idea that our legal system would fall part without traditionalist ideas of free will? "Fall apart" might be too harsh, but, more importantly, contra Dennett's larger implications, maybe it NEEDS reformation.

Beyond that, Dennett's comment there and elsewhere that we need free will sounds like the reverse side of Robert Sapolsky saying "I love determinism but I refuse to draw logical conclusions from that."

Actually, even more, it sounds like the type of comment about religion that would be on the lips of a stereotypical 19th century Anglican divine, that we need it to enforce morality, even if none of it is true.

And, Dennett himself didn't really believe this.

After all, his first big book hit was "Brainstorms." Dan didn't repudiate free will in that book.No. 2 was "Elbow Room: The Varieties of Free Will Worth Wanting." He certainly didn't repudiate free will there, as shown by the subtitle alone. It's been long ago, and I don't have reviews posted on either, but I know this. In fact, he doubled down on that 20 years later in "Freedom Evolves," and that one IS a review. 

In short, on this one, Dan Falk is either repeating a lie by Dennett, badly misunderstanding him, some combo of those, or worse.

3. Consciousness on parallel tracks? First, what Dennett described running on parallel tracks, or perhaps more accurately, what Falk thinks Dennett is calling "consciousness," is not. It's subselves of subconsciousness. And, is it "brilliant"? Only if one thinks it's new. Falk obviously either hasn't read or doesn't remember his Hume. Hume's only lack was not to talk about multiple streams running at the same time. That said, maybe Dennett isn't so totally right on that. His idea was ultimately a Darwinist one, and I've already rejected his algorithmic claims about "dangerous acid." As in ...

4. The power of Darwinism? Dennett's extolling of the power of algorithms and Darwinian universal acid is all tosh and tommyrot. Period.

5. No miracles allowed? True? Yes. But? Not brilliant and not Dennett's.

6. Cultural evolution can mimic biological evolution. "Can," but Dennett's own fine print hedges — and undercuts Point 3. (Oh, Dennett was wrong about memes, too, and Susan Blackmore has repudiated most of her early thought and comments on them. Fanbois don't like to hear that.)

7. Religion doesn't need to be abolished, merely fixed. The reality of Dennett on religion elsewhere, per Horgan, undercuts this. And, of course, I think Dennett, like Dawkins, did think that Islam did indeed need to be abolished.

8. Behavior is predictable? Not as much as Dennett claimed, per his fine print. But, to the degree that a  "light cone" (not a narrow ray) of behavior is predictable, not totally brilliant and not totally new.

9. The truth really does matter. Uttered in part by Dennett against things like "woke" versions of the sciences, and true there, on the hard sciences. Not so true on the social sciences, but bespoke by Dennett from his hoity-toity, OSS-dad, New England past.

10. Reality is more magic than miracles. Unequivocally true.

Sigh on Marcion being before Luke

The idea that Marcion wrote his Evangelion before Luke, and that Luke is dependent on him rather than vice versa gets trotted out again at r/AcademicBiblical. Some of the arguments, in this comment, are lame. The biggie is the idea that we can accurately reconstruct the Evangelion.  (Sidebar: I don't know what the OP means by "aLuke," but the would-be kewl kids throw around new acronyms that they picked up on YouTube or something.)

Re the Evangelion link about Marcion's gospel from Wiki, we have nothing firsthand, if you reject that P69 is verses from it. Among things telling against this being Marcionite is that other early versions of Luke omit 22:43-44, not just it. MUCH more about the dispute here, including a hot take on Clivaz claiming it's Marcion. The piece goes on to discuss that P75 also doesn't contain it, as well as the first revising hand of Sinaiticus, ℵ2a. Weirdly, the author does NOT discuss Vaticanus also omitting. That said, P69 is the only one to omit v42 as well, but per the "here" link, we shouldn't overread that.

Related? The Lukan dependency on Josephus. I think it likely there is some general dependency, but citing the fact that both Luke and Josephus' War have a dedication, and to a "most excellent" patron is thin.

Pytine/Poutine's follow-up to himself is thinner yet. There's good reason why Marcion might have trimmed Josephan references from an extant copy of Luke, starting with Josephus being Jewish. And, of course, trimming the genealogy fits that totally.

He does allow for some version of the Semler hypothesis (Marcion and Luke using common material) being correct, then attacks that by claiming that's "vague" as a hypothesis.

I forgot that I had previously written about Poutine being an idiot on other things, but in connection with the Marcionite "hypothesis." (Those are scare quotes.)

Per all of this, again, we don't have any manuscript directly from Marcion's gospel, per what I said above. And, given that we thus have to reconstruct given comments from Marcionite opponents who were under no obligation to reproduce his gospel word for word, this is a mug's game.

==

Although not mentioned there, this idea, in some circles, has connections with the Dutch Radical School's claim that Marcion fabricated the Pauline Epistles, discussed by me here. 

And, this leads me to one final thought, which I will probably express here again in the future. A fair amount of the people at r/AcademicBiblical seem ready to latch on to new ideas like shiny baubles, without giving them an actually critical look.

Ehrman's "Armageddon": My full takedown review

Armageddon: What the Bible Really Says about the End by Bart D. Ehrman
My rating: 1 of 5 stars

With a much fuller review of this book now, I can say that each time I think that Bart Ehrman can't write a book worse than his previous ones, he proves me wrong, he can, and he does.

First, this book is not, NOT, a historical-critical overview of the composition of Revelation, which limits its utility beyond fairly low-level anti-fundagelical popular exposition.

Second, this is 50 pages or more shorter than his previous two books, neither of which were themselves very good. His "The Triumph of Christianity" book was two stars and in hindsight that may be generous; it exemplifies one strain of Ehrman's recent problems on full display here. His "Heaven and Hell" book, or JW book as I call it elsewhere? Flat 1 star.

And now this.

Third, unlike some books like this, there’s no quasi-endnotes lists of biblical verses cited, so, my desire early on to know if Bart referenced Mark 13:22 — “But about that day or hour no one knows, not even the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but the Father alone” — was frustrated. (Turns out he never cites this simple refutation of fundagelical end-times predictors.)

OK, off to the races.

Bart tries to say that if you include vs 38-39 of Mt 24, that changes the whole complexion of that passage. I don’t see it that way. “As in the time of Noah” is a time of judgment. See “Noah preacher of righteousness” in 2 Peter, an idea that surely was around long before its writing. Also see Hebrews 11:7, that Noah by building the ark “condemned the world.”

Second? Why does Bart insist on translating “δούλος” as “slave”? Does he do that elsewhere in the NT? I highly doubt it; I know that it’s something he’s not fixated on in his many other books. More on this below.

Next? Doesn’t Jesus himself talking about a “lake of fire” contradict Bart’s claims in his previous, JW book? I quote, Revelation 20:10, 15: “(T)he devil who had deceived them was thrown into the lake of fire and sulfur where the beast and the false prophet were, and they will be tormented day and night forever and ever. … Then Death and Hades were thrown into the lake of fire. This is the second death, the lake of fire.” It DOES but Bart REFUSES to accept that. He claims that verse 15 shows this IS “annihilation.” Nope. Nope. Nope. "Tormented day and night forever" is "the second death."

So, at this point, just one-quarter through, we’ve already got on full display two issues Ehrman has shown repeatedly in his last few books. Those are his idiosyncrasies, here over “δούλος,” and his tendentiousness, over the annihilation issue.

And, while I hadn’t yet run into the “Marcionite” issues others mentioned when this book came out, right here, we’re already down to 2.5 stars.

Next? The history of the “classical” understanding of Revelation. Several issues here. First, Augustine was NOT NOT NOT “without a doubt the greatest theologian of the ancient church.” He may have been. He may not have been. Ehrman doesn’t tell you that he’s listed on a second tier by Orthodoxy, and is probably even further back in the Coptic/Miaphysite and the Church of the East traditions. Related? He does NOT mention why the “Church of the East” does not include it, nor does he mention the Syriac Orthodox not including it until modern times. He eventually discusses this a small bit near the end, but no details. It's funny, or "funny," because near the end, he talks briefly about its poorer reception in the East.

Moving forward? No, “Koresh” is not an English version of “Cyrus” and even Wikipedia will tell you that Bart basically got that one exactly backward. “Kurush” is listed as the transliteration in to English of Cyrus the Great’s name in Old Persian, but that it may originally have been “Kurash.” Further related? I would not call J. Philip Arnold a “scholar” and I wouldn’t rate Tabor as highly as one as does Bart. See my review of Guinn’s bio of Koresh.

Next? Although he notes that 2 Thessalonians’ “man of lawlessness” is not “the Beast,” and correctly so, he yet links them together, ignoring, as he knows, that there is no such thing as a “theology of the New Testament,” only of individual books. See my extensive discussion of this issue.

Next? The next BIG fail, a Not.Even.Wrong. Bart claims Nero persecuted Christians. He did not and I have the receipts. First, that "famed" Tacitus passage is almost certainly an interpolation and, per that link, we probably know not only that it is, but who the interpolator was. Second, as I mentioned to classicist John Drinkwater in an email exchange about his Nero biography, Christians in Rome were almost certainly no more than 1/10 of 1 percent of the population in Nero's time in 64 CE. Without even newspapers, let alone electronic media, they would not have been on his radar screen. Plus, CONTRA Drinkwater, and as Ehrman would know, they weren't called "Christians" and identified as a separate movement then.

As far as Pliny and emperor worship? Also wrong, and Bart knows this, too. First, the imperial cultus wasn’t “pushed” until Decius and the Decian persecutions. Second, even then, up until Diocletian and beyond, there were provincial variations. That link above shows how nuanced and evolving this issue was. Remember, it was 200-plus years from Pliny to Constantine. 

Even in as urbanized a province as Bithynia, a proconsul like Pliny simply didn’t have time to go to the forums and agoras in any but the larger cities to enforce the burning of incense. But, this ignores the full reality of what was happening with Pliny, anyway. His letter to Trajan makes clear that, in general, he’s dealing with Christians who were narked on by their neighbors, not the general populace. Ehrman SHOULD know that; it’s clear, from Pliny’s letter. In addition, just a few years later, Hadrian modifies even that, says that Christians should only be persecuted based on overt acts and that false accusations should themselves be punished. From there on to Decius, there was no overriding imperial policy. And, that's a period of more than 130 years.

Finally, we’re at the Marcionite area. Frankly, contra early reviews, while this is not good, it's not horrible, not in and of itself. From what I originally wrote about this book per a review I had then just read, this sounded almost as bad as his previous JW book. If that were the biggest problem, the book would get two stars for sure. But, it's not a nothingburger, so let's dive in, begining by looking at how he's wrong on Christianity. First, there are hints of violence on behalf of the gospel outside of Revelation. Bart ignores that Jesus said “I have come to set father against son and mother against daughter,” and that two swords were enough. He also ignores Matthew 25 (including its talk of everlasting torment, which he tried to explain away in his previous book). Paul wished that circumcisers would castrate themselves.

Or, better yet? Best yet? Bart knows that the best Greek textual tradition in Mark's version of Jesus being asked for "healing" by a leper in Mark 1 is:

40 A man with leprosy came to him and begged him on his knees, “If you are willing, you can make me clean.” 41 Jesus was indignant. He reached out his hand and touched the man. “I am willing,” he said. “Be clean!”

Interestingly, the NIV is about the only modern translation to chose the variant, ὀργισθεὶς, based on the verb ὀργίζω. But, I stand by it. It's a MUCH harder reading textually. Second, while the criterion of embarrassment is overstated at times, I wouldn't toss it, and this is more than "embarrassment" anyway. There's fairly solid contextual reasons to go with this reading. And, "indignant"? In the active, it is "angry," or stronger yet, going back to classical times. "Exasperated" is among other possibilities suggested by Liddell, Scott and Jones, or Strong's, in the passive. This actually good piece at r/AcademicBiblical notes two other things. One is that Mark may have been playing off Elisha's healing of Naaman. Two is that the same word is in Mark 10, where Jesus was indignant at his listeners before saying, "Bring the children to me." Oh, Ehrman admits "Jesus was angry." While this may not be last judgment angry, Matthew 25, with the Son of Man mentioned, is. (Angry to the point of condemnation unto eternal death and not annihilation, Bart.)

More angry Jesus? Calling Peter Satan comes immediately to mind. Matthew 24:2, though in a passive-aggressive middle tone of voice, if not actual middle mood, where Jesus says "stone will not be left on stone."

Or, another oldie but goodie, Bart! Jesus cursing the fig tree in Mark 11:

12 The next day as they were leaving Bethany, Jesus was hungry. 13 Seeing in the distance a fig tree in leaf, he went to find out if it had any fruit. When he reached it, he found nothing but leaves, because it was not the season for figs. 14 Then he said to the tree, “May no one ever eat fruit from you again.” And his disciples heard him say it.

Boom.

On the Tanakh side, this ignores Yahweh's חֶסֶד, or "loving-kindness," spoken of repeatedly in Psalms. There's plenty of other low-hanging fruit on that side, too.

Bart then misses discussing the Euthyphro dilemma in “The lamb becomes a lion.” This, along with similar issues in his “triumph of Christianity” book, indicate to me that Ehrman just doesn’t come off as THAT widely read. Yes, he later mentions D.H. Lawerence's "Apocalypse," but if that weren't about Revelation, would he have read it?

As for Revelation and wrath? He misses that, in Latin Western Christianity, by 200CE, Tertullian was already talking about how one of the joys of heaven would be watching the damned in hell. It's a riff on Luke's story, in old title, of Lazarus and Dives. And, per discussion above, Dives seems to be in eternal torment. Not annihilated. I can't think of anything quite that stark, and certainly not that early, in what became Orthodoxy, but there are strains.

Beyond that, Bart misses the psychology of heaven and hell in general. Look at Dante. Everybody reads, and loves the unique, varied and macabre punishments of the Inferno. The Purgatorio is OK. The Paradiso comes off as saccharine when not outrightly boring. But, it's more than medieval Christianity. Look at Buddhism. Whether it's a one-off Amida type paradise, or non-existence via nirvana (the Hindo-Buddhist version of Bart's annihilation but on the other side of the coin!) nobody is interested in that. But look at Buddhist hells and Tibetan Buddhist demons and people are reading. Maybe that's why Muhammad (if he actually wrote that, and that's not a misrendering of Syriac instead of Arabic) populated heaven with virgins for the ghazis. Or look at Mark Twain's "Captain Stormfield" — his heaven is literarily popular in part because it's not saccharine, it's not conventional, and it has plot twists.)

On wealth and power? I’m first surprised that Ehrman didn’t go Marcionite there, too, with the Tanakh from the Torah on talking about this-life blessings for the faithful of Israel. Second, the Parable of the Talents, even if a parable and not a proclamation saying, shows that Jesus didn’t hate the rich per se. Also note “poor in spirit” in Matthew’s version of the Beatitudes. All of this was just in snippets. Note elsewhere Jesus talking about taking the Kingdom of God by force. Pseudo-Paul talking about battles with cosmic powers.

Does he discuss why other apocalyptic books were NOT added to Christian canons of either old or new testaments, other than the Ethiopians including 1 Enoch? No. He mentions, but does not discuss.

Speaking of "other apocalyptic books," he also nowhere mentions Ezekiel, which was almost as big an influence on Revelation as Daniel. Gog and Magog come from Ezekiel, not Daniel. And, per things like Jack Chick's comics, Gog and Magog are big with the fundies. And, Ehrman never talks about them. And,  if he went to Moody, he knows this, too. Seriously, discussing Revelation without this? Indeed, Gog and Magog are in a Chick from earlier this year. (Surprisingly, given the now dead Jack Chick's anti-evolution stance, the tract accepts the reality of climate change.) I'm sure they were in older ones.

Side note: There's a LOT of people at Reddit's r/academicbiblical who have a hard-on for Ehrman. Ditto Gary the ex-Lutheran, whose blog may disappear from my blogroll, which needs other tweaking, too.

View all my reviews

Roundup of minor issues at r/AcademicBiblical

A new moderator removed a comment to this post by "A Casual Formality." Per a later comment that was allowed, it's clear that the OP was NOT asking a good-faith question. Whether he's a fundagelical troll, an atheist troll or a general troll, his feed makes clear he's a troll. And, it's another new-to-me moderator.

Remember, like Naugrith the Nazi there, mods can be Nazis.

==

Claims on this thread that James Tabor is a "serious scholar" if that's meant to imply accuracy? No, not at all on his DaVinci Code-esque Jesus Dynasty book.

==

Uhh, no, to this dude. Ehrman's The Triumph of Christianity is dreck.

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Contra this? John A.T. Robinson et al's idea that all four canonical Gospels are pre-70, and the reasoning behind it, are dreck.

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This question presumes that Jesus was crucified at Pesach rather than Shavuot, per Hyam Maccoby.

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Here's a nutter OP questioner who claims — straight up, in eventual comment — that Paul's seven authentic letters could have been (with implication that they were) written by somebody other than Paul.  He then doubles down on the stupidity when asked what if somebody claims that the Gallic Wars were written by "Julius Caesar" not Julius Caesar, or the Jewish War was written by "Josephus" not Josephus, and indicates he finds them at least "doubtful" as well. An entirely new one! (And, I'm keeping an eye on him for further nuttery.)

==

Not directly a problem there, but via a comment there in a piece about the Pastorals? Tabor really dates them to the late first century CE rather than second century? At the same time, I'd never heard Jerome's claim that Paul was actually born in Gischala, in Galilee. That and other items further undercut Acts claiming Paul was a citizen. Part of why I say the last one quarter of Acts is ahistorical.

Oopses with Bart Ehrman at r/Academic Biblical

The subreddit had an "ask me anything" March 7 with Bart Ehrman. I find it "interesting" that none of the reverential genuflectors there asked Bart why he went Marcionite in his latest book. (I'm not alone in that observation or similar ones by any means.) I didn't scroll through all comments, but Apple-F returned no hits for "Marcion."  I also searched for "Old Testament," as in, the Marcionite/Ehrmanite god of the Old Testament is a god of wrath, and the three hits were all in one question, and "Tanakh" did not come up.

In the same AMA, Naugrith the Nazi asked what I see as leading/rhetorical question, trying to peddle Delbert Burkett's multi-source theory onto two-sourcer Ehrman. I've already looked at Burkett and found him wanting, with not only an overview, but 1 (bad framings), 2 (minor agreements and verb forms), and 3 (minor agreements of omissions) breakouts of how he's wanting in his later proto-Mark book. (Someone else at r/AB recommended, IIRC, the earlier book to me, then, after I got the later book on ILL and I offered my critique, tried to push again the earlier book that Naugrith references; I refer to that in breakout 3.) Ehrman has his own answer.

And, of course "Mr. Didache" there is Alan Garrow, the nutter who claims the Didache is as old as 1 Thessalonians and other stupidities, all debunked by me. He, like Naugrith, is asking a rhetorical/leading question, and dudes, it's obvious. Garrow asks if, should we set aside Q — as I presume is his wont with his Not.Even.Wrong. dating of the Didache — but keep Marcan priority, is Matthew borrowing from Luke more likely right than the other way around? NO. Even if we indulge your rhetorical stupidity, Luke is most likely about a decade younger. Maybe more. And, ex-Mormon there smokes some Garrow too.

Side note: There's a LOT of people at Reddit's r/academicbiblical who have a hard-on for Ehrman. Ditto Gary the ex-Lutheran, whose blog may disappear from my blogroll, which needs other tweaking, too.