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Category Archives: Dissertation
Suetonius, Nero’s Dreams, and Biographical Memory
Several years ago, back in Spring 2011, I took a graduate course taught by prominent Classics scholar Marilyn Skinner on ancient biography and Suetonius’ Life of Nero. One of the most interesting sections of the biography is a series of … Continue reading
Posted in Ancient Biography, Classics, Dissertation, Exegesis, Historical Jesus, History, Literary Theory, Religious Studies, Weird Stuff from Antiquity
Tagged Ancient Biography, Dreams, Flight to Egypt, Gospel of Matthew, Herod the Great, Historical Jesus, Mimesis, Moses, Nero, Suetonius
6 Comments
Diegesis and Mimesis: A Very Brief Introduction
Another major part of working on a dissertation in the humanities is that you will usually incorporate some form of literary theory into the central thesis of your argument. I have discussed in a previous post some current theory of … Continue reading
The Historical Reliability of Popular Biographies, Part 2: Redaction Criticism
In my previous post I discussed the complexity of historical criticism, and how even texts of the same literary genre can vary substantially in terms of historical reliability, based on their date of composition and their available sources of information. In part … Continue reading
The Historical Reliability of Popular Biographies, Part 1: Framing the Comparison
Recently on Κέλσος I have been discussing the generic features that the NT Gospels share with Greek popular-novelistic biographies. Such features include the simple vocabulary and sentence structure found in these texts (as I discussed in my most recent post), which distinguish popular … Continue reading
Grammatiki Karla on Ancient Greek Popular Literature: Language and Style
Seeing that I will be comparing the NT Gospels to the genre of Greek popular-novelistic biography in my Ph.D. dissertation, a major component of this project will be identifying the features and characteristics of “popular literature.” Fortunately, a new academic book on … Continue reading
Idealized Portraits of Jesus, Alexander the Great, and Aesop
I have been busy working on my dissertation recently, which has taken away some time from blogging, but today I will (briefly) share something interesting from my research. The topic of my dissertation is an analysis of the generic and thematic … Continue reading
Patterns of Myth-Making Between the Lives of Alexander the Great and Jesus Christ
Recently on Κέλσος I have been discussing the Alexander Romance and some of the similarities that this mythical biography of Alexander the Great shares with the New Testament Gospels. The earliest Greek version of the Alexander Romance that we possess dates to … Continue reading
Posted in Ancient Biography, Ancient Novel, Classics, Dissertation, Historical Jesus, History, Miracles
Tagged Achilles, Alexander Romance, Alexander the Great, Elijah, Elisha, Gospel Mythology, Hercules, Jesus Christ, King David, Legendary Development, Midrash, Moses, Myth Growth Rates, Myth-Making, Odysseus
4 Comments
Eschatology in Alexander’s Letter to Olympias and the Book of Revelation
I have been writing recently on Κέλσος about the topic of my dissertation, which identifies the NT Gospels as belonging to the genre of Greek popular-novelistic biography, through a comparison with the Alexander Romance and the Life of Aesop. The comparison of Alexander the … Continue reading
Homeric Mimesis in the Alexander Romance
Recently I posted a guest blog by NT scholar Dennis MacDonald, which discusses the possible use of Homeric mimesis in the canonical Gospels, particularly the Gospel of Mark. Mimesis of earlier literature is a common literary technique found in the genre … Continue reading
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[…] very good paper on how cults, aka religions, can invent nonsense and end up believing it to be true.“The…