Barbara Thiering

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Barbara Thiering (born 1930) is an Australian writer. In books and journal articles she has attempted to challenge Christian orthodoxy, drawing on claimed new evidence that gives alternative answers to its supernatural beliefs. Her analysis has been rejected by many scholars in the field.

From her speciality, the Dead Sea Scrolls, she has developed the argument that the miracles, including the Virgin Birth and the Resurrection, were not just legends as critical scholars hold, but were deliberately manufactured myths. They never actually happened, and the authors of the Gospels knew this. They wrote according to the theory of pesher that is illustrated in the Scrolls, in two levels. For the “babes in Christ” there were apparent miracles, but the knowledge of exact meanings held by the highly educated members of gnostic schools gave a real history, of what Jesus actually did.

Born in Sydney, Australia, Thiering graduated in 1952 from Sydney University with first class honours in modern languages, was a high school teacher of languages for several years, and then, while caring for her three young children, continued study and research privately. She obtained an external Bachelor of Divinity degree from the University of London, a Master of Theology from Melbourne College of Divinity, and a PhD from Sydney University in 1973.

As a consequence of her research publications in academic journals, she was invited to lecture at Sydney University, at first in the Department of Semitic Studies, then in the School of Divinity (now the Department of Religious Studies) where she continued until her retirement. During this time she was a member of the Board of Studies in Divinity and the Board of Continuing Education, and served for twelve years as a lay member of the NSW Equal Opportunity Tribunal. When her work became known in the USA, she was made a Fellow of the Jesus Seminar.

In 1990 a documentary film about her research, Riddle of the Dead Sea Scrolls, was shown by the Australian Broadcasting Corporation.

Dr. Thiering's book: "Jesus, the Man" has recently been re-published.

[edit] Academic Reception of her Work

While Thiering's thesis attracted some controversy in the media when "Jesus the Man" was published in 1990, critics claim her ideas have not received acceptance by her academic peers. In a response to a letter Thiering wrote to The New York Review of Books, objecting to a review by Geza Vermes, Vermes gave his personal estimation of the academic reaction to her work:

"Professor Barbara Thiering's reinterpretation of the New Testament, in which the married, divorced, and remarried Jesus, father of four, becomes the "Wicked Priest" of the Dead Sea Scrolls, has made no impact on learned opinion. Scroll scholars and New Testament experts alike have found the basis of the new theory, Thiering's use of the so-called "pesher technique", without substance."

(The New York Review of Books, December 1st, 1994)

In 1993 Nicholas Thomas Wright, now Bishop of Durham, wrote:[1]

It is safe to say that no serious scholar has given this elaborate and fantastic theory any credence whatsover. It is nearly ten years since it was published; the scholarly world has been able to take a good look at it: and the results are totally negative.

In 2005 Peter Flint, Professor of Religious Studies and Co-Director of the Dead Sea Scrolls Institute at Trinity Western University in British Columbia, wrote:[2]

"Her views and theories on Jesus and Christian origins have little basis in the scrolls, and even less in the New Testament. Her pesher technique misues the concept of pesher, her datings of the scrolls are suspect and seem informed by an outside agenda, the connections she draws between Qumran and other nearby communities in the Judean Desert are highly questionable, and the links she finds between the scrolls and the New Testament are almost always without foundation."

[edit] Bibliography

Books on Dead Sea Scrolls and Christian Origins

Academic Journal Articles

  • "The Biblical Source of Qumran Asceticism" Journal of Biblical Literature 93,3, 1974, pp.429-444.
  • "Suffering and Asceticism at Qumran as Illustrated in the Hodayot", Revue de Qumran 8,31, March 1974, pp.393-405.
  • "Inner and Outer Cleansing at Qumran as a Background to New Testament Baptism", New Testament Studies 26, 2, 1980, pp.266-277.
  • "Qumran Initiation and New Testament Baptism", New Testament Studies 27, 5, 1981, pp.615-631.
  • "The Date of Composition of the Temple Scroll" in G. Brooke (ed.) Temple Scroll Studies (Sheffield Academic Press, 1989).
  • "Can the Hasmonean Dating of the Teacher of Righteousness be Sustained?", in Mogilany 1989. Papers on the Dead Sea Scrolls offered in memory of Jean Carmignac, ed. Z.J. Kapera, The Enigma Press Krakow, 1991.
  • "The Mandaeans and the Dead Sea Scrolls", Mandaean Thinker, Journal of the Mandaean Research Centre Inc, Issue 4, July-August 1995.
  • "The Date and Unity of the Gospel of Philip", Journal of Higher Criticism, Vol 2, no.1, Spring 1995, pp. 102-111.
  • "Pesher and Gospel", The Qumran Chronicle, Vol. 5, no 1, July 1995.
  • "Jesus and the Dead Sea Scrolls: The Question of Method", Journal of Higher Criticism, Vol 3, No 2, Fall 1996, pp.215-236.
  • “New Radiocarbon Datings and the Christian Connection of the Dead Sea Scrolls”, The Qumran Chronicle, vol 6, no 1-4, December 1996, pp. 115-123.
  • “Christian History and the Dead Sea Scrolls: More About Method”, Journal of Higher Criticism, Vol 5/1, Spring 1998, pp. 88-112.
  • (With G.A.Rodley) “Use of Radiocarbon Dating in Assessing Christian Connections to the Dead Sea Scrolls”, Radiocarbon vol 41, no 2, 1999, pp.169-182.
  • “The Date and Order of Scrolls, 40 BCE to 70 CE”, in The Dead Sea Scrolls Fifty Years After their Discovery 1947-1997, eds L. H. Schiffman, E. Tov, J.C. VanderKam, Israel Exploration Society, with the Shrine of the Book, Israel Museum, Jerusalem 2000.
  • “Christianity and Science: Friends at the Beginning” The Educational Forum. A Publication of Kappa Delta Pi, International Honor Society in Education, Winter 2002, vol 66, no 2, pp. 116-125.
  • “Theological Scholar’, in M.P.Wolfe and C.R. Pryor, The Mission of the Scholar, Peter Lang, New York, 2002.
  • “The Qumran Sundial as an Odometer using Fixed Lengths of Hours”, Dead Sea Discoveries, 9, 3, 2002, pp. 347-363.
  • “The Copper Scroll: King Herod’s Bank Account?”, in George J. Brooke and Philip R. Davies (eds) Copper Scroll Studies, (Sheffield Academic Press, 2002).

Publications on Feminist Theology

  • Created Second? Aspects of Women's Liberation in Australia (Family Life Movement of NSW, 1973, ISBN 0-909922-60-8)
  • Deliver Us from Eve (ed.) (Australian Council of Churches Commission on the Status of Women, 1977)
  • "Reflections of a Woman Theologian" , in Against the Odds, eds. Madge Dawson and Heather Radi (Hale and Iremonger, 1984).

Other

  • "The 'Chariots' and the Dead Sea Scrolls", in B. Thiering and E. Castle (eds) Some Trust in Chariots, 1972.
  • "Can Religion Listen to Reason?" Madgwick Memorial Lecture, University of New England, 1991 (published).
  • “The Land Where Myths Have Died”, in Seachange, Australian Writing and Photography, ed. Adam Shoemaker, 1998.
  • “No Religion, only Faith”, in I Believe This, ed. John Marsden, Random House Australia 2004

[edit] External links