Philip Maurice Casey (18 October 1942 – 10 May 2014)[1] was a British scholar of New Testament and early Christianity. He was an emeritus professor at the University of Nottingham, having served there as Professor of New Testament Languages and Literature at the Department of Theology.[2][3]
Casey was born in Sunderland. His father was the Anglican vicar of Wheatley Hill, but after his death his mother moved to Chevington and Casey to boarding school at Woodbridge School, Suffolk. He entered St Chad's College, Durham University having intended to become an Anglican priest, but changed his views in 1962 while completing his undergraduate degree in theology. Casey stated that he had not held any religious beliefs since.[4] Following his degree in theology, he took a further degree in classical and general literature.[5] He then taught classicsatSpalding High School, an all-girls grammar school, from 1967 to 1971.[5]
Casey's work argued strongly for Aramaic sources behind the New Testament documents, specifically for Q and the Gospel of Mark.[10][11]
Casey's Aramaic ideas were challenged by Stanley E. PorterinExcursus: A response to Maurice Casey on the Languages of Jesus[12] citing modern scholarship,[13] that the linguistic environment of Roman Palestine was probably multilingual.
Casey described himself as an independent scholar, who did not serve the interests of any religious faith or anti-religious group. He believed that Jesus really existed, but did not believe in his divinity. He criticized Christian fundamentalists who accept incredible miracles (such as Jesus walking on water), Christian churches that refuse to grasp the Jewishness of Jesus, mythicists who reject everything about Jesus, and even some liberal scholars, such as the Jesus Seminar, who viewed Jesus as a kind of cynical philosopher, and gave credence to the earliest apocryphal writings, such as the Gospel of Thomas and the Gospel of Peter. Casey believed that the documents on Jesus of greatest historical value are the Gospel of Mark and the Pauline epistles. According to Casey, Jesus would preach, heal people with psychosomatic disorders, and be crucified and buried, but would not be physically resurrected; the story of the empty tomb is, according to his views, a legend. After Jesus' death, his disciples and his brother James would have some visions of him. Casey has criticized Pope Benedict XVI for his books about Jesus (Jesus of Nazareth, Jesus of Nazareth: The Infancy Narratives and Jesus of Nazareth: Holy Week), accusing the pontiff of using sources that are, in his views, unreliable, like the Gospel of John.[14]
Casey also held some unconventional views about the New Testament: for example, he believed that the Gospel of Mark was written in c. 40 AD[15] (while most scholars believe that it was written in c. 70 AD[16]) and that the Gospel of John is completely deprived of historicity[17] (whereas most scholars believe that at least some historical kernels can be found in that text as well[18]).
Casey, Maurice (1976). The interpretation of Daniel VII in Jewish and Patristic literature and in the New Testament: an approach to the Son of man problem (Ph.D.). London: British Library. OCLC640114346.
——— (1979). Son of Man : The Interpretation and Influence of Daniel 7. London: SPCK. ISBN9780281036974. OCLC6338109.
——— (1991). From Jewish Prophet to Gentile God: The Origins and Development of New Testament Christology. Edward Cadbury lectures, 1985-86. Cambridge, England & Louisville, KY: T&T Clark & Westminster John Knox Press. ISBN9780227679203. OCLC24302203.
——— (2002). An Aramaic Approach to Q : Sources for the Gospels of Matthew and Luke. Society for New Testament Studies - Monograph Series. Vol. 122. Cambridge, UK & New York: Cambridge University Press. ISBN9780511061158. OCLC57146437.
——— (2007). The Solution to The "Son of Man" Problem. Library of New Testament Studies. Vol. 343. London & New York: T & T Clark. ISBN9780567140494. OCLC741690930.
——— (2010). Jesus of Nazareth: An Independent Historian's Account of His Life and Teaching. London & New York: T & T Clark. ISBN9780567104083. OCLC858048706.
^Maurice Casey - Jesus: Evidence and Argument Or Mythicist Myths? 2014 - Page 37 "... many more details of my ordinary life here than I did in the original draft of this book. I was born in 1942, in the middle of an air raid in Sunderland. My father was the Anglican vicar of Wheatley Hill, a mining village some seven miles outside .."
^Casey, Maurice (1996). Is John's Gospel True?. London: Routledge. ISBN9780415146302.
^Maurice Casey An Aramaic Approach to Q: Sources for the Gospels of Matthew 2002 "Sources for the Gospels of Matthew and Luke Maurice Casey. ...wrote sound Hebrew as a living literary language. They also make it probable that some Jews spoke Hebrew."
^Maurice Casey Aramaic Sources of Mark's Gospel 1998 - Page 61 "Hebrew found in the Evan Bohan, a fourteenth-century Jewish anti-Christian treatise by Shem-Tob "