Christian Humanist Profile 255: Michael F. Bird

March 11, 2024 00:32:23
Christian Humanist Profile 255: Michael F. Bird
Christian Humanist Profiles
Christian Humanist Profile 255: Michael F. Bird

Mar 11 2024 | 00:32:23

/

Hosted By

Nathan P Gilmour

Show Notes

 If you don’t spend much time around Biblical-studies people, the neologism “parallelomania” might be a new one on you, so let me explain: for different reasons, some writers in Biblical studies seem bent on discovering, naming, and insisting on a particular significance for any text that looks like, sounds like, works like, and otherwise resembles canonical and orthodox and historically central texts.  Sometimes the parallelomaniac insists that the similarities render orthodox Christianity a mere winner among contenders, historically speaking, and sometimes the parallelomaniac wants to say that the tradition that comes down to most of us is not much more than centuries of plagiarism.  Dr. Michael F. Bird wants to slow down a bit: yes, the ways that worshipers talk about Jesus develop from generation to generation, and yes, some of the formulations differ from one another, but the conclusions might be too hasty.  His recent book Jesus Among the Gods: Early Christology in the Greco-Roman World proposes some different practices for reading a spectrum of ancient texts, and then he shows the reader what those reading processes look like, and Christian Humanist Profiles is glad to welcome him to the show to talk about all of it.

Other Episodes

Episode

November 30, 2020 01:09:05
Episode Cover

Christian Humanist Profiles 208: James Matthew Wilson

Michial Farmer interviews James Matthew Wilson about his recent book "The Strangeness of the Good."

Listen

Episode

February 24, 2020 01:07:43
Episode Cover

Christian Humanist Profiles 181: Paul Matzko

Jay Eldred interviews Paul Matzko about his recent book "Radio Right."

Listen

Episode

November 25, 2019 01:00:29
Episode Cover

Christian Humanist Profiles 172: Thomas Kidd

Nathan Gilmour interviews Thomas Kidd about his new book "Who Is an Evangelical?"

Listen