I bought the kindle version yesterday and started looking through it. Yes, the lack of a Table of Contents is frustrating. But I found some interesting commentary. Even in the Foreword by Richard C. Miller (who I cannot recall knowing about & which forward made me look at his
Resurrection and Reception in Early Christianity eg. via previews or reviews eg. this
goodreads one)
All the first ten or so commentaries are interesting. I hadn't previously read David Fitzgerald and didn't read all his article, but it likely gives an overview of his position. I got the impression it is static.
Robert M Price's first commentary is interesting though it
represents and highlights the difficulties in trying to put 'Jesus Mythicism' or, as he's known for calling it, 'the Christ Myth Theory', into a neat box: that's not entirely a reflection on RMP but the fact it's still an evolving field with a wide range of dimensions (to which he has added a lot: to know RMP one has to read a lot of RMP).
'Dying and Rising Gods' by Derreck Bennett is thorough and topical. He covers very well how the concept, which fell out of favour even a decade or so ago, has come roaring back through a few scholars' recent books.
'Jesus', by Barbara G. Walker is kinda interesting via a quick look but a bit esoteric and maybe outdated in it's 'throw a lot of stuff out there without much in-depth discussion and hope some of it sticks' approach.
'Pauline Origin of the Gospels in the Wake of the Jewish-Roman War' by rgprice is very good, although I think he spends a lot of words (and readers' time) outlining conventional 'scholarship', something most readers would know.
rgp gives a few good gems such as
"David Oliver Smith’s work shows that Paul’s epistles are at the heart of much of the supposed Q material"
his views and points that
.
"Paul was the inspiration for the Jesus character [in the Gospel of Mark] ...
"the Gospel of Mark is in fact a polemic attack against Paul’s opponents, Peter, James, and John, those “reputed to be pillars,” [as were parts of the Pauline epistles] ...
"Peter, James, John, and the other disciples in the [G.Mark] story cannot understand Jesus’ parables. This is why the disciples fail to recognize who Jesus is. Aside from demons, Peter is the one who finally recognizes him, but Jesus then calls him Satan and Peter goes on to deny and abandon Jesus, just as Paul describes in his letter to the Galatians. The story itself is an allegorical mystery that presents Paul’s apostolic opponents as individuals who themselves fail to grasp the mysteries of Christ."
.
and his post
Deciphering the Gospels, 2018, view that
The Gospel of Mark must have been written by someone within the inner Pauline circle [ie. someone "more than simply a Pauline 'follower'."]
(I wonder if all this might have happened in or around a/the marcionite community)
rgp notes
"In 1988, Wolfgang Roth had published a little-known book that laid out the relationship between the Gospel of Mark and the story of Elijah and Elisha from the books of Kings in the Jewish scriptures, called Hebrew Gospel: Cracking the Code of Mark. This work was followed up in 2010 by Adam Winn with another book on this topic, called Mark and the Elijah-Elisha Narrative. These works show how the writer of Mark constructed his narrative from one of the most popular and well-known narratives in the Jewish scriptures."
I'd like to add Thomas L Brodie's contribution as Adam Winn's supervisor at the Dominican Biblical Institute in Limerick, Ireland, and the author of the forerunner to Winn's book, [] The Crucible Bridge: The Elijah-Elisha Narrative as Interpretive Synthesis of Genesis-Kings and a Literary Model for the Gospels[/i], 2000.
I started flicking through 'Under the Mushroom Tree: R. Gordon Wasson versus John M. Allegro' by Michael Hoffman, but I get the impression it's longwinded and typical lukewarm take by 'person C' [Hoffman] on person A v person B that pervades these sorts of issues and discussions, and requires the reader to know more than they do and to be interested in the all ingredients in lukewarm minestrone type soup.
It's all interesting and mostly topical, yet will take a while to digest.