Thursday, January 29, 2009

E. P. Sanders's Academic Autobiography Back online

I am happy to announce that Ed Sanders's "Academic Autobiography" is now back online:

Comparing Judaism and Christianity: An Academic Autobiography
A paper read at “New Views of First-Century Jewish and Christian Self-Definition: An International Conference in honor of E. P. Sanders”, April, 2003
E. P. Sanders
April-May 2004

If you have not read it before, I strongly recommend it. If you have already read it, read it again.

4 comments:

  1. Mark,

    In that autobiography Sanders gives good advice, such as learning about Judaism, and studying the most primary sources available.

    In the same vein, it’s advisable, I'd say, to study Hinduism and Buddhism, due to the oral and written traditions saying that Issa had traveled to India during the so-called “lost years,” and again some years after the crucifixion. The recent documentary movie, Jesus in India, (www.jesus-in-india-the-movie.com/html/home.html), indicates that the evidence supporting these events just doesn’t go away.

    One may read about the findings of Swami Abhedananda, who in 1922 confirmed the validity of Notovitch’s findings and his translation of the manuscript at Hemis Monastery in Ladakh, thereby indicating how faulty Max Mueller’s attempted debunking of Notovitch had been. Another secondary attempt at such debunking, by Per Beskow in 1985, ignores Abhedananda’s findings and confirmation of Notovitch’s. His charges that were relevant, and those of Goodspeed also, have been refuted, e.g., see www.tjresearch.info/ecumensm.htm.

    These findings upset the status quo, and can therefore only be discussed by independent scholars, it seems. I wish it weren't so. These are among the thoughts that come to my mind upon reading Ed Sanders’s Academic Autobiography.

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  2. Very interesting - I wonder what's been happening since the article! When was it first published and has there been any reaction to it? I was interested in the criticism of his colleagues - their mendacity.

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  3. Thanks for your response;-) I guess it might have been first published in 2004.

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