What does the Geek think? Is Canaan the victim of some mixed up sources, a hidden castration story, or some other possibility that I’m missing?

We see a historical pattern of vilification of a wartime enemy, the vanquishing of that enemy, and the subsequent romanticization, extolment, and assimilation of the subdued culture by the victor. Don’t we also find it in the Bible? Would you please comment on how shifting attitudes toward Jews and Jewish culture are reflected in the new testament, its development, and early Christian history?  How and why does the new testament both vilify and extol Jews? 

A listener asked about Paul’s “thorn in the flesh”. Your interpretation of bar-wielding angels inspired me to a slightly different interpretation. A skolops can be any pointed thing from a splinter to a thorn to a pike to a palisade log. In between those extremes, it could also be a spear. We have Paul, speaking of journeying to the Heavens, Satan afflicting him, asking Kyrios (“Lord”) thrice that it might pass from him, and Kyrios refusing to lift the burden. That sounds to me a little like a condensed version of the Garden of Gethsemane with the Longinus spearing from John. Is it possible that John and Paul took this concept from a common (now lost) motif of the suffering servant?

How can you reconcile the work of Robert Eisenman, Charles Cutler Torrey and the mythicism movement?

Can you list any books, chapters, or portions of the New and Old Testament that are likely borrowings from texts from older civilizations?