Academics Via Press Release

I’ve received 2 email alerts today touting the Jonah ossuary inscription as legitimate as proven by James Charlesworth’s independent examination.

Isn’t it odd that scholarship has devolved to the point where academics and people with a financial stake in a matter have turned to publicity firms to market their ‘product’ once the academic community as a whole has rejected and proven it wrong.

What we’re seeing is the abandonment of academic methodology and the embracing of the crude and cynical methods of the marketplace.

We live in odd times. Our scholars are coming to resemble P.T. Barnum and not Gerhard von Rad.

9 Examples of Dilettantism and Pseudoscholarship

Jan Krans has uploaded a class handout which lists 9 very fine examples of pseudoscholarship and dilettantism in biblical studies including, but not limited to

1- The Shanks/ Witherington ‘Jesus the brother of James’ Ossuary.
2- The ‘Secret Gospel of Mark’
3- (This one is my favorite) –

The Aramaic original of the Lord’s Prayer has been found, and gives access to a deeper spiritual meaning than the Greek version or its Latin translation; a correct rendering of the first words (cf. ‘Our Father who art in heaven”) is “O, Birther of the Cosmos”. Neil Douglas-Klotz, Prayers of the Cosmos. Meditations on the Aramaic Words of Jesus.

Now that’s a doozie worthy of the dilettante of the decade award.

4- (And of course, the stupidest of them all) –

The gospels about Jesus and the cults around him are modelled after earlier Egyptian and Eastern myths and esoteric sects. Timothy Freke and Peter Gandy, The Jesus Mysteries. Was the Original Jesus a Pagan God?

Enjoy the other 5.  They’re equally ignorant.

Related articles

• The Most Dilettantish of All Dilettantes (zwingliusredivivus.wordpress.com)
• And Now We See What the ‘Lead Codices’ Nonsense is Really All About (zwingliusredivivus.wordpress.com)

Tom’s Right, But Even More, Real Academics Don’t Peddle Fraud!

As Elkington and his ‘lead codices’ consortium is attempting to do.

According to Elkington (bold and italicized), who we all know is the erudite, scholarly fellow (/sarcasm): Regarding the omission of academic postings on this site, it was set up to release news into the public sphere (due to significant demand) and not as an academic forum (real academics tend not to use Facebook and are not bloggers! – They respectably keep their counsel, which is why they haven’t participated directly on this site, although th … Read More

via The Musings of Thomas Verenna