04-16-2024, 11:34 AM
Back to the original item above, Ed Vasicek has his own site: Ed Vasicek's Site. It includes a collection of articles ("papers") that indicate the drift of his teaching. It links to his books, as well. From what I've seen, he believes that the reason the 2nd Century Christian leadership abandoned the Hebrew scholarship was simply antisemitism, which is quite plausible given the way Jews continued persecuting Christians until Constantine. He's a little wordy for my taste, but I'm still looking at his stuff.
Ann Spangler is mainstream. You learn a lot about someone by whom they admire, and she offers praise for the likes of Martin Luther King. On the other hand, I gather that most of her books are not so much her own expertise, but her ability to do research and summarize what real experts have to say. Lois Tverberg is similar in that respect. She has the tools, but all of her expertise is second-hand. I checked their articles and read into some of their books where chapters appear online.
Both of them typically come down on a rather conservative answer for most questions. They rarely do anything edgy; it's all quite mainstream and tame. Further, it tends to be wordy. The one thing that troubled me most is they do not distinguish between Hebrew and Jewish. They seem to believe the propaganda that Judaism is a faithful representation of the ancient Hebrew approach to things. Someone like Heiser was more careful to point out that the Second Temple teachings were a shift in some ways from more ancient understandings, and sometimes it was questionable.
Still, I'm interested in looking at their book project. Vasicek's papers are easy to get. I'll check on his books.
Ann Spangler is mainstream. You learn a lot about someone by whom they admire, and she offers praise for the likes of Martin Luther King. On the other hand, I gather that most of her books are not so much her own expertise, but her ability to do research and summarize what real experts have to say. Lois Tverberg is similar in that respect. She has the tools, but all of her expertise is second-hand. I checked their articles and read into some of their books where chapters appear online.
Both of them typically come down on a rather conservative answer for most questions. They rarely do anything edgy; it's all quite mainstream and tame. Further, it tends to be wordy. The one thing that troubled me most is they do not distinguish between Hebrew and Jewish. They seem to believe the propaganda that Judaism is a faithful representation of the ancient Hebrew approach to things. Someone like Heiser was more careful to point out that the Second Temple teachings were a shift in some ways from more ancient understandings, and sometimes it was questionable.
Still, I'm interested in looking at their book project. Vasicek's papers are easy to get. I'll check on his books.