Biblical Criticism & History Forum - earlywritings.com

Carrier always came off as having an authority complex. When his books on historical Jesus studies came out he was quick to claim that he was the first credentialed scholar to undertake this topic (and to salvage it from the other mythicists who he says did more to discredit it), which shows a need ...

This is interesting. Would Marcion think that the Jesus cycle existed/took place in a Platonic-esque world of forms? In that way it would be possible to say these things are real while also being ahistorical. His Gospel has Jesus coming down to a specific region in a specific time, but how much is s...

... the structure of the belief is Paul being translated up to Heaven to be reborn out of the jurisdiction of the law, and he becomes an envoy for this new covenant, the gospel of Jesus. I think this is something that needs to be stressed a little more. Paul is not suggesting that Torah is now null...

Were the Marcionites the keepers of the original Christian faith? (1) Was their faith represented by the original Pauline epistles? If so, where did the author of the original Pauline epistles get his ideas from? Kind of a leading question in my opinion, for what are the "original" Paulin...

I can accept that the Letter to Theodore is spurious (though I don't think it is, I can accept it is possible), but I cannot accept that Smith forged it and have not been convinced by any of the arguments put forward thus far as they rely on circumstantial evidence (comparing its discovery to the pl...

Originally I wanted to title this thread something like "Ignatius as a competitor to Paul", and I may still do that, but while trying to formulate my thoughts I had a quick aside. Letters, epistles, ἐπιστολή, and letter writing was an especial genre in Greek and Roman literature. Seneca's...

But above all why did letter writing become so extant that they rival even the four Gospels in authority ? BeDuhn has a suggestion, posted here: https://earlywritings.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=11822 That's really interesting. Thank you for this Peter! If that's the case then it makes the ar...

Originally I wanted to title this thread something like "Ignatius as a competitor to Paul", and I may still do that, but while trying to formulate my thoughts I had a quick aside. Letters, epistles, ἐπιστολή, and letter writing was an especial genre in Greek and Roman literature. Seneca's ...

If I may self indulge a little bit, Pontius Pilate serves a functionary role in the Christian cycle. Is he historical? Yes, without question; but then what else would his purpose be if he was only used as a means of pinning Jesus's own historicity (which may or may not have been in question when the...