Work
Further information: Jesus the Man (book)From her specialty, studying the Dead Sea Scrolls, their semiotics, and their hermeneutics, she has propounded a theory arguing that the miracles, including turning water into wine, the virgin birth, healing a man at a distance, the man who had been thirty-eight years at the pool, and the resurrection, among others, did not actually occur (as miracles), as Christians believe, nor were they legends, as some skeptics hold, but were "deliberately constructed myths" concealing (yet, to certain initiates, relating) esoteric historic events. She alleges that they never actually happened (that is, that the events they chronicle were not at all miraculous), as the authors of the Gospels knew. They wrote, according to her interpretation of the methods of pesher, which she discovers in the scrolls, on two levels. For the “babes in Christ,” there were apparent miracles, but the knowledge of exact meanings held by the highly educated members of Gnostic schools gave a real history, of what Jesus actually did.
In view of her research publications in academic journals, she was invited to lecture at Sydney University, at first in the Department of Semitic Studies, then in the School of Divinity (now the Department of Religious Studies) where she continued until her retirement. During this time she was a member of the Board of Studies in Divinity and the Board of Continuing Education, and served for twelve years as a lay member of the New South Wales Equal Opportunity Tribunal. When her work became known in the United States, she was made a fellow of the Jesus Seminar.
In 1990 a documentary film about her research, Riddle of the Dead Sea Scrolls, was shown by the Australian Broadcasting Corporation.
Read more about this topic: Barbara Thiering
Famous quotes containing the word work:
“Bees plunder the flowers here and there, but afterward they make of them honey, which is all theirs; it is no longer thyme or marjoram. Even so with the pieces borrowed from others; one will transform and blend them to make a work that is all ones own, that is, ones judgement. Education, work, and study aim only at forming this.”
—Michel de Montaigne (15331592)
“To-day ... when material prosperity and well earned ease and luxury are assured facts from a national standpoint, womans work and womans influence are needed as never before; needed to bring a heart power into this money getting, dollar-worshipping civilization; needed to bring a moral force into the utilitarian motives and interests of the time; needed to stand for God and Home and Native Land versus gain and greed and grasping selfishness.”
—Anna Julia Cooper (18591964)
“Children, then, acquire social skills not so much from adults as from their interactions with one another. They are likely to discover through trial and error which strategies work and which do not, and later to reflect consciously on what they have learned.”
—Zick Rubin (20th century)