Biblical Criticism & History Forum - earlywritings.com

According to Smith and Landau. Morton Smith said that he realized at Mar Saba that he had discovered a previously unknown letter of Clement against the Carpocratians. He took careful photographs which he only properly studied after leaving Palestine and arriving at Athens. This account makes it unli...

According to Paul, Jesus became Son of God at the resurrection . Christians can inherit the mantle via adoption. That would be true whether Jesus was pre-existent or not. I kinda don't get it. Hanging around at creation but not the Son? marcellus of ancyra probably taught that the word or logos of ...

Lots of Christians in the early 2nd century used the NT rather than the Jewish Bible, while still in theory accepting the authority of the Jewish Bible. Most of them found Marcion's outright rejection of the Jewish Bible unacceptable and in response they made much more use of it (allegorically inter...

Matthew Mark Luke 20.20 Then the mother of the sons of Zeb'edee came up to him, with her sons, and kneeling before him she asked him for something 20.21 And he said to her, "What do you want?" She said to him, "Command that these two sons of mine may sit, one at your right hand and o...

But, are they actually letters? They seem to be artificial constructs to me. I strongly agree - they seem to be artificial constructs to me. But for purposes of answering Joseph's original question, (which was why did the letters came to rival the gospels in authority), it doesn't matter whether th...

Contra Celsum After these matters this Jew of Celsus, instead of the Magi mentioned in the Gospel, says that Chaldeans are spoken of by Jesus as having been induced to come to him at his birth, and to worship him while yet an infant as a God, and to have made this known to Herod the tetrarch ; and ...

I tend to believe that Morton Smith is right....because the librarian of the Patriarchate of Jerusalem took the extraordinary steps of cutting Clement's letter out of the codex....and "losing" it. If it were obviously fake that would be the dumbest thing possible to do. Much better to let...

Provisionally, about dating, though not a simple subject--nor is naming unnamed ancient authors!--I note that it is rather widely agreed that Celsus used a previously-written Jewish source about Jesus, and it may turn out that some baraitot (early traditions) are relevant. Celsus' Jew according to ...

............................................................................ This was also something that followers of Pseudo Dionysius in the 4th century were said to do, to experience God's "essence." This has been discussed in BC&H before. I think Dan Merkur (sp?), a practicing MD ...

Does this idea require a relatively early misdating of Jesus ?
If Jesus was first misdated to the time of Jannaeus in say the late 4th century CE would there be surviving traditions about the Teacher of Righteousness to assist such misdating ?

Andrew Criddle