I thought I would never tweet about Brian Zahnd again. But because of the recent brouhaha I thought I would do a little thread about his sophistry when it comes to talking about Scripture. One must remember BZ has had a defective view of Scripture for many in years. (1/7)

In 2013 BZ wrote in a blog post, “The Old Testament is the inspired telling of the story of Israel coming to know their God. But it’s a process. God doesn’t mutate, but Israel’s revelation and understanding of God obviously does. Along the way assumptions are made. …” (2/7)

“…One of these assumptions was that Yahweh shares certain violent attributes with the pagan deities of the ancient Near East. These assumptions were inevitable, but wrong.” Did you get that? BZ says much of what the OT says about YHVH is WRONG. (3/7)

This is why Zahnd refuses to say YHVW = JESUS. This is why he wants to push the main protagonist of the Bible to page 939. He doesn’t believe the depiction of God in the OT is congruent with the the NT. BZ believes many times the OT depiction of God is a pagan depiction! (4/7)

BZ sounds like DBH (for those who read DBH’s response to Leithart on his recent book.) This is not a coincidence as BZ loves DBH. They are both thoroughgoing modernists no matter how desperately they want to claim the mantle of patristic thought. How do I know this?… (5/7)

For several reasons! For one, also in 2013 BZ was recommending the book (among others) *Who Wrote The Bible* by Friedman to people on Twitter. This conspiratorial book is written by an agnostic who regurgitating modernist JEPD speculations about the OT and its authors. (6/7)

While there are many classics written by faithful Christians BZ points seekers to an agnostic to help them understand Holy Scripture. (A book that made me want to puke.) Concluding, BZ is modernist who dazzles with words. There are more spectacular things to be dazzled by. (7/7)

Zahnd is sneaky in the way he communicates. He would make a good Jesuit. He won't tell you outright that YHVH ≠ Jesus. Instead he'll say something like, "Of course YHVH is Jesus! But the OT authors didn't know that. Their depiction of YHVH was incomplete & at times wrong!" (8/7)

This is the problem with many of Zahnd's tweets about the OT. Most don't know that underneath his tweets is a firm belief that YHVH is depicted as paganistic. For Zahnd, when YHVH is speaking to Moses or David, YHVH isn't *really* speaking. (9/7)

For BZ, the YHVH of Scripture is either Deuteronomist propaganda, superstition, hearing of demons, faint truth, or cocktail of all that together. He certainly doesn't believe that the YHVH *presented to us* = Jesus. This is why he pushes so hard with his OT vs NT rhetoric. (10/7)

Having made such strong statements about YHVH being presented as a pagan god as well as endorsing JEPD theory, it seems BZ is close to Marcion. But instead of fully rejecting YHVH BZ wants to ‘baptize’ the salvagable narratives with a Christian imagination & toss the rest. (11/7)