Thursday, December 12, 2019

Hmm …

 The Mirror or the Mask by Lydia McGrew: Liberating Gospel Readers from a Return to a Pre-Reformation Interpretive 'Priesthood'? | Thinking Christian.

The Mirror or the Mask is Lydia’s book-length response to Dr. Michael Licona’s Why Are There Differences in the Gospels? Both authors are friends of mine. I remember well when Mike first told me over dinner about the project that culminated in this book. He’d been studying Plutarch’s Lives, and had discovered, he told me, that ancient authors had a well-known and established practice of altering information sometimes to make a point. Readers were well aware of this, and they read Plutarch’s biographies accordingly.  It was the conventional way to write and to read. If everyone knew and followed the convention, no one was misled. In fact, if one were to take Plutarch as writing facts exactly as they were, that would be the mistake.
I'm not sure I buy his thesis about Plutarch and other ancient authors. I have read Plutarch, though, and I rather doubt that the authors of the Gospels had.

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