Biblical Criticism & History Forum - earlywritings.com

Why doesn't anyone ever acknowledge 'hey our information from antiquity is shit.' The people reporting these things weren't exactly smart. There are corruptions in the transmission of their original information and - quite frankly - their reporting when clear is usually based on hearsay, half-truths...

I thought I would make a thread about indisputable historical facts about early Christianity. I don't think there are a lot of things which are certain about the tradition. My best stab at it: 1. the narrative outlining the ministry of Jesus was called the gospel. 2. the earliest known New Testament...

For instance, what if we were to make a thread containing 'all the verifiable facts about early Christianity.' Imagine how small a list that would be. Maybe I should start that thread ...

The better line of inquiry is to ask what prompted the Fathers to write these things

Morton Smith had been promoting his theory that early Christians had secret occult sexually-related rituals Direct me to a publication pre 1958 please .... You realize that in Clement of Alexandria and a Secret Gospel of Mark this appears as a tentative statement in a footnote. And what does "sexua...

There has never been a Lukan community. Even Irenaeus makes Marcion's attachment a shotgun wedding

https://www.studylight.org/dictionaries ... riter.html. Hilgenfeld takes it as an example of an affectionate diminutive

Flavor of the month I guess. The relationship with Justin, the reference to the second author of Against Marcion as an apostate, the fourfold gospel, the fact that Eusebius is the first person to identify a continuous "gospel harmony" with Tatian, the fact that Rhodon addresses Callistos (Callistiwn...

FWIW I think version 1 of Against Marcion was written by Justin, version 2 Irenaeus who may have been Tatian and version 3 = Tertullian.

Could be part of an understanding that the "word of God" i.e. the gospel was meant to in four parts.