Is the New Testament Greek Poetry?

Is the New Testament Greek Poetry, or heavily influenced by it? Dr. MacDonald has a new course available courtesy of Derek at MythVision Podcast, and he very kindly answered some questions on the topic!

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Music: Brak Bnei Original Composition

[MythVisionPodcast]

This guy filling in for the amazing Megan looks familiar. 😉 By the way, your questions were on point Megan!

[valentinann]

And suddenly some stories make sense. Thanks for this video!

[bobbiefritz]

A great fill in Thank you Digital Hammurabi! Love Derek’s work.

[PopGoesTheology]

Great questions! Very relevant. Thanks for your hard work. 3:13 4:28 Zelos

[bengreen]

there once was a gospel called John
that everyone thought - something's wrong
it's odd, so to speak
coz it copies the Greek
it was written by man, all along...

[McbrideStudios]

It seems that we sometimes forget that there were educated christians and fail to consider that those getting gospels written or writing them down may not have just been believers but members of high society who wanted the stories to speak their language. We largely acknowledge that there was a Greek and Roman philsophic influence, why not a heavy poetry or prose influence? Unless that idea subtracts from the devinity in their eyes.

[annemariededekind]

Thank you so much for your scholarship

[varus]

I’m not surprised that the biblical scholars don’t want to know about this, if they spent the last 20 years sequencing the synoptic gospels, then they find that in 1 year they could have found that is was basically all copied from Greek mythology.
I agree with Dr. MacDonsld that the NT is not any sort of revelation about god or religion. I would not even classify the NT as religious writing.

[fortunatomartino]

Digital Hammurabi would be a great name for a new wave band from the 80's

[oldmanfromscenetwentyfour]

Linguists have analysed the writings of the NT and find they're written in a style that was used for the writing of FICTION.

[AlexThomson-EasternApproaches]

Dr MacDonald is no doubt right early on in this interview to castigate Bible scholars for their lack of attention to Greek poetry, but the boot's on the other foot just before 14:00, when he refers to the Decapolis city of Gadara on the shore of the Sea of Galilee as "um an island or whatever".

[dionysianapollomarx]

Cool. Gospel authors weren’t dumb plagiarists. They were intellectually imaginative.

[onbedoeldekut]

My introduction to the idea of mimesis was through Rene Girard's book Evolution and Conversion: Dialogues on the Origins of Culture.
It's a tour-de-force in human psychology and the reasons why we do the things we do, and I think comprehension of our cultural and individual psychologies are immensely important in understanding (or attempting to) those who came before us, and to give weight to our interpretations of the things we find of them.
Mimesis can maybe tell us that Greek poetry was a factor in the construction of books which came later, and mimesis of a different form can inform to why the writers chose to commit ink to papyrii.
(they wanted to be liked).

[tw]

The one (and rather easy) task that reminds to be completed is to outline why Gospels developed into religion and Homer's work not. It is amazing to see the coherency between past, Babylon and Egypt beliefs, old testament and all this blending into Greek mythology and Roman Imperium to create the fundaments of Western Civilization - I N C R E D I B L E! Thanks so much.

[andresvillarreal]

Every time I think about this I come to variations on the same theme: Greeks and Romans have a lot more to do with the New Testament and the new religion that appeared at or after 70 C.E., and simple people from Galilee have less of an impact. For the moment, my working hypothesis is that Romans or Greeks created Christianity with a lot of input from Greek and other mythologies and a little bit of input from stories about a prophet from Galilee or its surroundings.

[happytofu]

18:03 "they are not simply peasants, lowlives and people who are not educated" - wow. what a disgustingly derogatory view on people without education. Good for the audience that they might have been educated, but that does not make uneducated peasants lowlives. Education is a priviledge and not everyone is born with the opportunity.

[amycollins]

Dennis MacDonald is woefully ignored by the Biblical studies community. I have only one minor critique and that may be he does not include astrotheology to be a part of Mark, It can potentially be both filled with mimesis and be constructing an astrological theme and that would place it as the masterpiece of masterpieces among the zealous writers! I'd love to hear if any lines of Aratus are also in Mark and other places or maybe I just need to learn Ancient Greek and dig for myself :)

[danielmalinen]

The question, since such an argument has been made many times, is the Gospel of Mark a purely prosaic and fictional writing and copy, or rather a Judaized version, of the Odyssey and the Iliad and that the Jews made up Jesus to replace Odyssey?

[charlesmuhmanson]

All languages have phrases and sayings that get repeated and used in conversation. More is needed to give these speculations credibility.

[andrewclemons]

This looks ridiculous so I'll shall watch it