The above list was posted here by the same person before. Though iirc, it previously included a "course" offered on a downloadable "app" for the Apple iphone!
The list is absolutely pathetic. Only one of the 5 links appears to be to a course which is really some sort of degree course involving lectures about Jesus and the bible at the Univ. of Minnesota in the USA. More about that particular course below, but as far as the other 4 links are concerned -
- the first link appears to be just a "Short Course" of some weeks. It's not a degree course or anything remotely like that. Most universities and their colleges offer additional "short courses" in topical subjects or controversial subjects, mainly as a way of raising extra income.
- the second link appears to be some sort of evening classes.
- third link to Univ. of Sydney is actually offered by "Dept of Hebrew, biblical and Jewish studies.
- 4th link to Univ. of Minnesota; see below.
- 5th and last link is a course of only 2 hours per week offered in a dept called "The School of Critical studies".
Only the 4th link to the Univ. of Minnesota appears to be a genuine university degree-level course given in it's "College of Liberal Arts" within a dept called Classical & Near Eastern Studies. It contains two course modules about Jesus, both of which seem to be taught only in the "Fall of each year". , and one course about the bible which is taught only in the spring and the fall of each year.
What that course at Minnesota actually teaches about the existence of Jesus, I have no idea. But it does not appear to be taught from a conventional university history dept as we would know it in UK and European universities. In the UK, afaik, university courses taught about Jesus and the bible, are typically taught in a "Faculty of Divinity" or a “Faculty of Theology”, and not as part of mainstream secular history in the history dept. What goes on in the USA might be very different of course, because as we all know America is an unusually religious Christian nation. And of course there are hundreds of thousands of universities around the world teaching literally millions of course subjects ... so it would not be surprising if amongst that lot you could find some that taught religious issues from a history dept ... but afaik, that is not usually the case for well-known mainstream universities in the UK and Europe
However, the point was not to find some proper universities that do teach religious studies as part of their mainstream history curriculum. The point is that the people who have been continuously touted & named here as "historians" who believe in Jesus, e.g. Bart Ehrman, Dominic Crossan and thousands of their colleagues (inc. people like William Lane Craig), have in fact all been shown to be "bible studies" scholars with academic backgrounds drowning in religious studies and religious belief, who work in specifically biblical studies departments ... they are not “historians” working in the mainstream history departments of their respective institutes.
Those are the people who we are talking about. The people named and touted here by HJ posters as "expert historians", who write books and give lectures saying Jesus is a "certainty" ... and by-&-large they are certainly NOT "historians" teaching and researching from mainstream secular university history departments. And that has been shown here from their academic backgrounds many times.
