Biblical Criticism & History Forum - earlywritings.com

Sophia/Wisdom as mediator and possible Isis influences on The Wisdom of Solomon: "Isis and Sophia in the Book of Wisdom", John S. Kloppenborg in Harvard Theological Review / Volume 75 / Issue 01 (1982): If the book of Wisdom (Wisdom of Solomon) was written in Alexandria in the Late Ptolema...

I have shown that mediating deities were common throughout ancient Near Eastern and Greco-Roman culture. Humans needed some type of mediator and model to show them how to connect with god/s or the divine. It's no surprise that Jesus became a preexistent being associated with Wisdom and the Logos or...

IMO per Plato_2.0, Pneuma is the invisible power that imparts motion to humans like the invisible wind in a ship's sail causes a ship to have motion. Literally a ghost-wind that causes humans to move, eat, etc. when present and drop dead when absent (imagine how they explained a sudden massive hear...

Ancient Near Eastern and Greco-Roman kings also acted as mediators between the divine and humans. Some of them were even said to be preexistent and were associated with the logos like Jesus. How the Gospels Became History: Jesus and Mediterranean Myths (Yale University Press, 2019), M. David Litwa: ...

In Middle Platonism the logos or demiurge (there was a lot of overlap between the two) became something like a divine model for philosophers. The logos/demiurge was seen as a mediator between the transcendent god and humans. This also isn't all that different to how some of the heroes and mystery cu...

sure but there seems more going on here than just events being described, like why the stories have odd features and details. and maybe metaphorical meanings in there. are these just plain stories or do they encode other information? after all there's the esoteric sayings that turn up in Thomas, a ...

after all , the epistles undermine the claim when they reveal there were other competing traditions and i think it is such as these that may have sourced the gospel stories. I think we also can't just assume that the Gospel stories are based (or mostly based) on other traditions. It's possible that...

Another interesting thing to point out is the words that are used for resurrection mean to go from a laying position to an upright position. To go from a sleeping position, to a waking position. So resurrection is "getting up" and "awakening". Waking from sleep was a common metap...

I completely agree with Ken Olson. Just because Paul believed that Jesus was physically raised to heaven doesn't mean Paul knew about anyone actually finding the tomb empty like we find in Mark. The story of people finding the tomb empty could be completely made-up. I personally think the finding of...

The logos that brings light and life into the world is comparable to the Egyptian sun god who brings light and life into the world and the underworld. Egyptian Solar Religion in the New Kingdom: RE, Amun and the Crisis of Polytheism (Routledge, 1995), Jan Assmann: The phrase "secret words in hi...