Thursday, October 01, 2026

Ben the Amateur Exegete has another nothingburger roundup

Here's the link.

Contra Robyn Faith Ehrman Walsh, no, it's not "striking" that the gospels don't describe Jesus' appearance. We don't know for sure Apollonius of Tyana looked like. Many later Cynic philosophers are unknown to us. Within his own tradition, we don't know what John the Baptizer looked like. Etc., etc. Someone more famous in his own time than Jesus and John? We don't know what Josephus looked like, either. No external source tries to describe any of the three and Josephus doesn't try to describe himself. Worse? Walsh did this same schtick last year, per another post by Ben. Worse yet, in that same post, is a piece claiming Jesus was "Ugly," because Isaiah 53 and something Irenaeus said 150 years after Jesus lived. I've had enough of various thoughts of John Nelson to reject that one, too. (And gack, his PhD thesis bled an alleged 100,000 words over that, he says. [No follow on that link enacted.])

The bible doesn't exist, but only as an intellectual formulation? A nothingburger to those who know the formation of the canon of the Christian Old and New Testaments. 

The intertextual bible (giving it a separate link) actually sounds interesting enough that Ben, other than posting Charles Kuffner like snippets, should actually write a post about it. 

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Gack! Going through his posts, he believes in a historical Moses. 

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