Interview – Dr Kipp Davis on Jewish Apocalypticism
My guest today is Dr Kipp Davis. . Kipp is a biblical scholar and an expert in early Jewish literature and history, with a focus on the Dead Sea Scrolls. He earned his Ph.D. from the University of Manchester (2009), has held several professional academic appointments in Europe and North America, and has published widely on the topics related to the Bible, its creation, development and transmission in the Second Temple period. His work on manuscript forgeries in private collections and best practices for provenance research and conservation has been widely publicised in academic venues as well as in mainstream media. He presently works as a public facing scholar, and runs a YouTube channel where he regularly features videos and lectures promoting quality scholarship of the Bible.
Today I’ll be talking to Kipp about Jewish apocalyptic thought, apocalyptic writings and the relevance of these to an understanding of the historical Jesus.
Kipp’s video channel can be found here: https://www.youtube.com/@DrKippDavis
9 thoughts on “Interview – Dr Kipp Davis on Jewish Apocalypticism”
There appear to have been two traditions of the ‘pure sacrifice’, the sacrifice that would finally avert the deity’s seemingly unending wrath, paying off the ‘debt’ at last, as it were, and then turn that same wrath against the persecutor or enemy. One version of the ‘perfect sacrifice’ tradition was not accepted into Jewish belief, but evidently persisted among ‘people of the land’ – however they are rightly to be described. Their ways in religion seemed to the Judaic returnees as having no connection to their own at all, and this brought the need for that contest between priests and prophets of the two groups. We also find a remnant of this concept of the ‘pure sacrifice’ persisting in a non-Jewish traditions in parts of Arabia and of western north Africa, in Arabia certainly until at least the 7thC AD and there’s no doubt that it concerned the death of a human creature deemed to be of perfect ritual purity, untouched by the baseness of earth.
Hi Tim,
What’s your views about the Testimonium Slavonium which Dr Samuel Zinner recently said in Jacob Berman’s podcast is strong evidence that Jesus existed – or that Josephus in the 70’s thought that Jesus existed and was an actual seditionist against Rome (alongside several other pieces of evidence he believes are strong evidence that it is indeed a surviving but interpolated copy of the original Aramaic/Hebrew ‘the Jewish war’, by quoting the arguments of Leeming & Leeming)? Have you a had a look at this?
No, sorry, I haven’t
Hi Tim What do you think of this video debunking Kipp davis and Josh bowen thoughts on exodus during a Paulogia video?
Unfortunately it’s a 3 hour stream
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=jeqffTUo8kk&pp=ygUPRXhvZHVzIGRlYnVua2Vk
I’m not well versed in that topic, that period or that scholarship. And I’m definitely not interested in watching three hours of desperate rearguard apologism by frigging Michael Jones.
What’s wrong with Michael Jones? I found him via a pretty good video about protestant Christianity being tied to many good societal outcomes such as lack of corruption, charity donation, economic growth etc. Seems like a good guy.
He’s an apologist who works hard to find ways to justify his faith. Sometimes he uses good, scholarly material. Often he doesn’t. I debunk some of his arguments here.
And then he responded to that: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nrv1uAxdxDk
Of course he did. His response was, as ever, terrible.