The Gospel According to Homer | Discussion with Dr. Dennis MacDonald

How are the gospels related to (and dependent on) other books? To what extent have they been influenced by Jewish and Gentile literature? Are they better characterized as reliable history or creative fiction?

Dr. Dennis MacDonald, a classicist and New Testament scholar, has published extensively in defense of his controversial thesis that the Gospels and Acts are to be primarily understood as clever emulations of ancient classics. His magnum opus is "Synopses of Epic, Tragedy, and the Gospels." In his eyes, the evangelists did not only model their stories on the Jewish scriptures, but also on Graeco-Roman literature, especially Homer’s epics. When Dr. MacDonald sees the Gospels, he sees ingenious rewrites of the Iliad and the Odyssey. This, of course, has major implications for New Testament studies and the quest for the historical Jesus.

In our discussion together, I offer some questions and objections: how influential was Homer in the ancient world? What is the actual evidence you provide for your view that the Gospels use Homer? What about parallels between Jesus and the Buddha? We discuss all these and more here in the ninth episode of The Life Discussion.

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If you want to dive deeper, check out the document I composed with many of the resources, charts, arguments, and objections we discuss in the video: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1Z....