Welcome to Scholarly Diagnostics where the aim is to popularize and distill viewpoints of near eastern scholarship for the open minded inquisitive lay learner hungry for truthful insights into the past. I am your guide on this voyage, lead editor Dan Oldenkamp.
I have been studying ancient writings and first century scholarship since my early days of Bible lab reading clay cuneiform ignited my passion early in the 80s.
Deconstruction for me began with a novel challenge “The year of Living Biblically” to which I highly recommend. It is my belief than none should claim the Christian moniker without having read the book in as closest translation to original intend through all the different books.
I am driven by an autistic passion for understanding of the mindset of early religious text authors that has propelled me through each decade investigating what the best scholars have worked their lives investigate and convey.
I am perpetually fascinated by the evolution of the narrative with each author writing for their own intended audience and theological political agenda.
This collection of articles was created for the non scholared reader as compendium of academic knowledge, reference, and sources to educate and fight the spread of misinformation and information suppression.
Contained within this tomb of unpopular texts of antiquities and shock blogs, I will unravel how a people group used the written word to unite and legitimize by re-framing reality to impart laws and divine moral commandment absorbing myth, legend, gods, and philosophy into a curated univocal world view used throughout the ages to re-shape the world by re-writing the past.
Decoding and decyphering antiquity has been the lifelong endeavor of so many scholars I could not begin to thank them for their works they have produced for the world to which I have spend decades devouring and for which these articles derive much of their inspiration aided with modern methods of summarization and contexturalization.
Richard Carrier
David Fitzgerald
Robert Price
Elaine Pagels
Dan Mclellan
Bart Ehrman
James Tabor
Paula Fredriksen
Albert Schwietzer
Joshua Bowen
Warren Carter
Martin Goodman
and chroniclers / content creators such as Paul Ens, Derek Lambert, and Justin Holmes.
Just to name a few whose works and literature have been most influential to my investigation of near eastern theological first century and ancient scholarship.
Not deriving my financial living through scholarly means I am afforded the unbiased ability to reference leading edge and biased ideology and make direct statements without risk of financial or peer reprisal. For example, we can clearly say that the only contemporary evidences for historical Jesus have been clearly tampered.
I do not need to employ Baysian reasoning of probabilities to assert that Jesus, Muhammad, Buddha, and Moses in all probability are literary constructs and not derived from actual people as I generalize my opinion on the shoulders of those who have already done the analysis.
This means some of my arguments may arrive under cooked or some evidences and sources may be misinterpreted against all efforts. Please I implore you to write in if you disagree with what is presented. I will weigh any substantiated response and agree to open up comments for any page that is thoughtfully contentious.
your neurodivergently obsessive editor,
Dan Oldenkamp