Biblical Criticism & History Forum - earlywritings.com

Curiously, in Acts it is Paul the corrupter of the Temple, in the eyes of the aggressive Judaizers (and that they are aggressive - since they want to kill Paul - is a claim of the author of Acts, not only of myself). So in the Gospel tradition of the Judaizers we have basically a Jesus who casts out...

Mark 11:15-19 15 : On reaching Jerusalem, Jesus entered the temple courts and began driving out those who were buying and selling there . He overturned the tables of the money changers and the benches of those selling doves , 16 and would not allow anyone to carry merchandise through the temple cour...

Yet other Sethian texts seem to reject baptism: once Zostrianos finishes his ascent to heaven, he comes back to earth and preaches, “do not baptize yourselves with death”. In the Apocalypse of Adam , some kind of “defilement” of the “water of life” takes place. The Archontics, familiar with Sethian...

It would be interesting to know which is the primary evidence for this claim:

Many of the Gnostics rejected the physical sacraments such as baptism and communion because they considered them useless.

http://www.earlychristiancommentary.com ... -gnostics/

"Mark's" (author) Jesus starts his Mission by having his sins taken away and his Mission will be to take away everyone else's sins. Where is the evidence in Mark that ''his Mission will be to take away everyone else's sins'' ? I note that For even the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to se...

Once I think to have an approximation of the Earliest Passion Narrative (basically, a Jewish trial followed by the single crucifixion of a Jesus Son of Father), something of similar to this, to be clear: 22 While the 12 apostles were eating, Jesus took bread, and when he had given thanks, he broke i...

I imagine a situation where these communities were in modest conflict, but not too serious, as a result of this divergence on the story and interpretation of Jesus. While I may accept a condition of relative peace before the 70 CE, I don't think that it is possible to talk, in an early date, of ''d...

BTW, I don't think you will find the magical "first Christian beliefs" with the original Gospel. Never meant do that. The Gospels are only propaganda, so by definition a betrayal of the reality. Clearly the killers of Jesus were identified with the Jews because of a radical opposition against the g...

One thing you are correct in, each Gospel author built upon the elements of myth of his predecessor(s). Once an element is accepted as part of the story, rather than drop it if it conflicts with your theology, you flip it to match your theology. This is a spot on observation! But your argument falt...

I don't assume that proto-John is the Earliest Gospel in any case. It is clearly after Matthew. So I don't see which utility is in reconstructing proto-John if our first goal is to reconstruct the Earliest Gospel.