When we last left Tim Callahan with Bible Prophecy: Failure or Fulfillment, we delivered a harsh assessment of Callahan as one working outside his field. This latest work delves into several areas beyond my expertise (OT archaeology), but from the sections of which I do have significant topical acquaintance, it appears that Callahan has learned little or nothing in the intervening years.
As in that prior book, the bibliography serves notice: it is much larger than the prior one, but still riddled with outdated source material, with barely a touch at serious Evangelical scholarship (after Gleason Archer, Callahan's most scholarly Evangelical source is Chuck Colson) and significant omissions. For example, there is an endorsement of the JEDP thesis using the popular works of Friedman, with no sign of any dissenting views (such as Whybray's devastating critique of JEDP in The Making of the Pentateuch, or even Mendenhall's work on suzerainty treaties, for that matter).
There is commentary dedicating revisions of Egyptian chronology like Rohl's to the fringe, never mind the Centuries of Darkness collection by several serious historians offering an only slightly less radical revision than Rohl.
Callahan also offers the "borrowed creation myth" idea and even uses tge Tiamat/tehom equation; there is no knowledge of Heidel's refutation of that thesis; not a breath of Bryant Wood on Jericho; and you won't find any references to any peer-reviewed journals, other than newsstand popular items like Biblical Archaeology Review.
Worst of all, Callahan makes use of the seriously outdated and thoroughly discredited work of Sir James Frazer and endorses aspects of the "pagan copycat" myth as well as suspicions of Gnostic gospels "suppressed" by the church, to the point of resurrecting Bultmann's long-refuted thesis that the Mandeans had anything historical to say about Jesus.
Yet again, it is obvious that Callahan did no more than visit his local library and use what resources he found there, and then presumed that there was no more to be found.
Callahan also repeats some of the same errors as he did in his prior book, as well as many new errors which we have answers for on this site; he still uses "fundamentalists" as a catchphrase, and still hasn't consdiered Jewish exegetical procedure of the first century. It'll be enough to provide some bullets of commentary:
- This is odd reasoning [15]: "The real reason ancient inscriptions are given any more credibility than the Bible is that the biblical record was transmitted to use via scribal copies." Indeed? So apparently we can forget about all other epistemic methods; if it's set in stone or clay, according to Callahan, that gives it more credibility.
- Callahan thinks he is offering new indight when he says that Yahweh was worshipped outside of Israel [19]. I thought exclusivism was a hallmark of polytheism?
Callahan also does not understand how worshipping Molech would "profane the name of either Yahweh or El." [22] Callahan will need to familiarize himself with the honor and shame society of the Bible; to put it in a modern way, it's like denying Albert Einstein his credibility as a physicist by ignoring him and asking a vagrant on the street how to split atoms -- and/or giving their two answers equal weight.
There are many examples of Callahan making errors due to his lack of grasp on the social world of the Bible; as for example his treatment of David and Nabal as "extortion" [259] and his question of why Yahweh takes up Satan's challenge in Job [328] (it is an honor challenge).
- That Josephus reports extra stories about OT figures not in the OT "indicates that even after the time of Jesus what was canonical was not fixed in the mind of the Jews." [23] Callahan had best do some study in the sources we list here to learn what a "canon" was for -- it was not in order to "list every single thing that happened."
- Callahan offers that El Shaddai is explained by relation to the Hebrew shad, or breast, thus making Yahweh a hermaphroditic deity. Perhaps he needs to check out the word shadad, which refers to one with the power to destroy. Better yet, he needs to bypass creative feminist theorists like Teubal.
- Callahan continues to dismiss ancient principles of purity, referring to "fear" as a motive, and not grasping why Jacob buried idols under a "sacred oak" unless he wanted to go back and get them later.
He's missing two points: If indeed Jacob was getting rid of them, then under a sacred oak -- a ritually unclean place for a Yahwist -- would be exactly where they would belong. However, it happens that Jacob probably did intend to retrieve them -- not out of reverence, but because possession of Laban's household gods was an inroad into getting an inheritance from him.
- Callahan says of Joseph's dream, "...it usually does not occur to us to ask what nomadic shepherds are doing binding sheaves..." Dreams are generally not pictures of reality.
- Credit where it is due, though, for a good point: Callahan makes Benjamin's 700 left-handed slingers specially trained troops who had their right arms bound in training to take advantage of the special tactics "lefties" could use in that day; similar procedures were used by the Maori, the Spartans, and the Scots [188].
- That the Jewish temple was architecturally similar to Canaanite temples "naturally provokes the suspicion that the worship there also did not vary greatly from that in Canaanite temples." [290] So by that logic, the Mormon stake around the corner from me, which is little different architecturally from a Baptist church further down, means that Baptists really DO believe in Kolob. Was God obliged to created a new architectural design? Was the Temple having a "main hall" like all other temples a sure sign of pagan worship, rather than of the practical need to have room to operate?
- Callahan compares Passover to the Dionysian Anthesteria festival because in the latter, people smeared pitch on lintels and door posts to keep a destroyer at bay, and chewed buckthorn as a purgative. There is no "purgative" in the Passover lamb; the "destroyers" were dead people, and that Greek festival was far more complicated (see here). This is no more a "parallel" than it is for neighboring houses to use security systems.
- Callahan takes at value a claim from Sojourners magazine (!) that the name of Junia in Rom. 16:7 had been "expunged" in later copies of Romans due to anti-woman sentiment, leaving a man's name (Junias).
In fact, as a real scholar, Morris, notes in his commentary on Romans [533], patristic writers took it as a female person, and "Junias" is not a male name; it is more likely the accusative of the feminine Junia. To be a man's name it would have to be a contraction of Junianus, of a sort of contraction which is otherwise unattested. Bauckham (Gospel Women, 166f) confirms this point, noting the unanimous verdict of patristic writers that Junia was a woman, other than a mistaken attribution to Epiphanus; the making if Junia into a man did not occur until medieval times. Bauckham notes 250 instances of the female name "Junia" in inscriptions; Junianus is found 80 times, but the alternate form used in some copies of Rom. 16, Junias, is not found anywhere; and even the instances of Junianus are found in Latin, not Greek forms.
While Bauckham admits that it is possible that Junias was a real name (we have some names attested only once in thousands of inscriptions), the evidence is all against this as it stands.
- Callahan tries to parallel Christian atonement with Tlazoleotl, the Aztec goddess, of whom he says: "was called the 'eater of dirt' and could forgive sins if they were confessed to her priests and penance was done for them." [387] What Callahan fails to mention is that this goddess "ate" your sins as a gossipmonger would "eat" your news of sexual dalliances.
- Callahan makes much of Jesus being clothed in swaddles, as something merely invented based on Wis. 7:4; in fact, this was standard wear for babies in this era and part of their social acclimitization. (Readers will note throughout Callahan's book the same flawed reasoning present in Randel Helms, one of his sources, about things like this.)
- Callahan suggests that John incorporated pieces of Egyptian mythology as a way of luring in Gentiles [401]. Callahan missese that Egyptian religions were considered as much worthless "superstitions" as Christianity and Judaism, in Roman eyes.
- Callahan writes that [406] because the Romans "assaulted Theudas and his followers for merely gathering at the Jordan to see if the waters would part for him," it is unlikely that Jesus' entry into Jerusalem would not provoke a similar response. Callahan misses not less than three points here:
- Theudas' attempt occurred some 12-15 years after Jesus, in a far more serious political climate;
- Thuedas' specific location by the Jordan -- at the borders of the rival Parthian Empire -- made him a more serious-looking threat;
- Josephus actually reports that the "assault" occurred because the Romans came upon the people "unexpectedly", not because there was an order to make an assault.
- Callahan declares that Luke "seems to shy away from endorsing the physical resurrection on the third day after death," merely because he leaves out the "Jonah in the belly of the whale" teaching -- though he uses the third day motif enough times elsewhere (9:22, 13:32, 1833, 24:7/21/46). Callahan's is also unaware that "Paradise" was the Jewish abode for good spirits [423-4].
- Callahan makes muchh of Jesus wearing a seamless garment, supposing that this being the sort a high priest wore, the Jewish authorities would have called it "such a sacrilege that they would have torn it from him..." [424] Serious scholarship represented by Witherington's commentary on John [308] reports rather than a "seamless tunic was not unusual for a Jew" because of purity regulations against using two types of thread in a garment, and that what Jesus is described as wearing was a tunic and not an outer garment worn by a priest.
And what more needs be said? These sample details show once again that Callahan is not credible as a Biblical commentator.