Biblical Criticism & History Forum - earlywritings.com

Well, sort of. I'd assume that any sizeable emigré christian population from Southern Europe would include Catholics. In the same vein I would assume that any jewish diaspora population from Judea/Palestine would include Pharisees. They were the most popular jewish religious party of the time (more...

Furthermore, by the time of Paul, a jewish community had of course already been living in Egypt for centuries. There were even two jewish temples in Egypt - at Leontopolis and Elephantine if memory serves. How can we imagine this community without scribes and Pharisees? Surely this was also the cas...

Both, Matthew and Luke genealogies of Jesus attest to his Davidic Bloodline, but factually it is incorrect. Historically both genealogies do not match and have errors and anomalies that don’t ring true. Done it appears to authenticate the Messiahship of Jesus. Even aside from the problems with the ...

Good question, but I think there are actually three source texts in play, not two: I never caught the connection to Exodus! As far as I'm concerned, combining Exodus and Malachi in Greek offers a satisfactory answer to the question without even requiring Mark to have looked at the Hebrew. The funny...

So in this hypothesis (that Mark co-opted the baptist), what biblical precedent is there for an announcer of the messiah's arrival? Where did this idea come from? Moses leading to the promised land? I think Mark tells us himself. Malachi 3 (Mark 1:2) and Isaiah 40 (1:3) are both heralding prophets ...

...he seems to be portrayed as some old testament prophet, but why baptism for forgiveness of sins when the system for forgiveness was sacrifice at the temple? Since we're being wildly speculative here anyway, I think that the portrayal of John the Baptist as an Old Testament prophet was intentiona...

I can't PM yet, so I'll thank you here. Thanks for everything!

I agree. In fact, the spirit which has just descended into (καταβαῖνον εἰς) him, kind of like an invasion, now casts him out into (ἐκβάλλει εἰς) the desert, kind of like an exorcism. The terminology is raw and almost violent. I'd never really noticed that particular angle. I'd seen it as involuntar...

The issue, of course, is that the gospel of Mark appears to evince no such reluctance about the baptism of Jesus: Mark 1.4, 9-11: 4 John the Baptist appeared in the wilderness preaching a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins. .... 9 In those days Jesus came from Nazareth in Galilee and...

What I mean is, Mark can be seen as doing what Alex Jones does in the video. Sandy Hook is too horrible to comprehend. It must be an inside job. The gospel is similarly saying - there's got to be this other explanation other than Romans were better soldiers or the Jews were idiots. Oh yeah, the Jew...