by Gaedhal
Thanks for responding! [Gaedhal refers to Richard C. Miller’s email]
I think that you once described the field of biblical studies as the last holdover of the dark-ages. The New Testament is obviously Hellenistic Graeco-Roman mythology. However, instead of the SBL [Society of Biblical Literature] studying it as such, it erects barriers to studying it as such. I think that you shared recently that members of the guild tried to censor some of your writings, or the writings of some PhD students that you have influenced. You and your students were simply studying and critiquing “the New Testament”—or as you like to call it: ‘earliest Christian writings’—and the guild tried to censor all of you for “going too far in this direction”.
Biblical studies is still, as Avalos points out, an apologetic enterprise. The teleological ‘end’ of biblical studies is to convince the world at large that religion in general, and Christianity in particular, is a force for good in the world. However, to suggest that Christianity is essentially no different to other Greco-Roman mystery/missing-body cults, is to puncture this entire apologetic empire. And Big Bible is Big Business. I think that the guild has been treating you so rottenly of late that you have suspended your Facebook page.
It is as you said on Mythvision: Christianity is a ladelful of the stew that is Greco-Roman Hellenic mythology. Big Bible takes this ladelful of stew and studies it in splendid isolation from the larger stew of Greco-roman Hellenic mythology that Christianity was drawn from.
You mention that travelogue from Corinth, written in Greek—the language of the New Testament!—and written at about the same time that Paul was writing to the Church at Corinth… and how practically no SBL school instructs its students to read this ancient travelogue.
I have a very short fuse when it comes to obvious cynical con-artists such as Wes Huff. It amazes me that Kipp Davis could call this guy a “budding scholar”. But this is the problem of Old Atheism. The likes of Kipp Davis and Bart Ehrman want to be thought well of by the likes of Huff and Licona for reasons which totally escape me. With Avalos it was not so: he wanted to burn the guild to the ground, and, indeed, you yourself have criticised him for not divorcing himself completely from SBL…
[In another communication Gaedhal informed us:]
This could be why the SBL guild is treating Richard C. Miller so badly. If Christianity is but Hellenistic Greco-Roman mythology—and it is!—then it is bad for Jews if this be found out. If Yahweh be as fictitious as Zeus, and if Jesus is as mythical as Hercules, then the Jews go from being “the Chosen People” and “a great monotheistic Faith” to simply being a gang of religious swindlers and hucksters who have been duping and swindling the Goyim with their religious bullshit for about 3,000 years.
And we cannot have that! (indeed, David Skrbina writes of this in his Jesus Hoax).
2 replies on “SBL”
My second correspondence was in relation to this piece extolling the wonders of circumcision, and calling upon the Catholic Church to reinstitute the Feast of Circumcision, and to institute a new feast called: “Jesus the Jew”. The Tablet is a liberal Catholic magazine.
As we on the antichristian white right constantly point out: there would be no Jewish problem without the Christian problem. Indeed, William Luther Pierce calls Christians the ‘shock troops’ of the Jews. This is why I am curious as to what is going to happen to the Calvinist Extremists, represented by Joel Webbon and Co. who are beginning to dip their toes into the pro-white Rubicon. The more they wade into this river, the more they will find themselves opposed by Christians. As Alex Linder points out: ‘the kind of society that you want to build: Christianity makes impossible.’
Religious rules evolved from practical knowledge through the stages of cult then myth. The Golden Bough gives excellent examples of how this process happened over humanities eons.
The middle eastern religions judaism/islam show this well with their prescriptive kosher and halal laws, even penile circumcision which is a desert practice to prevent infection……
The practical knowledge against race mixing is deep in the European psyche, that still existed despite christianity in north and west Europe very strongly up to the WW2 era. The only reason it was never codified into religion was that it’s against core christian values.
A religion which denounces such truths must be considered evil.