Biblical Criticism & History Forum - earlywritings.com

Based on how literally and carefully I expect your translation is, Ben , I think that strictly speaking the short answer is that the sentence ("But they have these various changes set down in the gospel inscribed according to the Egyptians") only means that the Naassenes possess the theory of the ch...

Thanks. Maybe in his time it wasn't clear to him (3rd century). In the late 2nd century it sounds like Clement of Alexandria was saying that the Encratites used it but that they used it incorrectly, eg. they interpreted it, wrongly in his view, as opposing marriage. So if the Encratites were relying...

Thanks for writing back so quickly, Ben. Another translation issue is whether Hippolytus said that (A) the Naassene Gnostics set down the changes of the soul in the Gospel According to the Egyptians, or if he said that (B) they had the description of the changes of the soul that was set down in the ...

Ben, I respect your translation on your Text Excavations page alot because you are very careful. One part that got me tripped up because I don't know Greek was what Clement of Alexandria in Stromata III.9 said was in the Gospel of the Egyptians. Your translation reads to me as if he wrote that the ...

One can theorize that manuscript D is right and Mark had Lebba as one of the 12 disciples, and that Matthew saw the story of Levi in Mark's gospel and switched it to be about himself, and then Luke switched it back again to be about Levi. Or one can theorize that the publican Levi was the publican M...

Ben, I thought Cephas must have been Peter's Greek name because Bauckham wrote that a Palestinian Jew wouldn't have two Semitic names. But in the case of Peter, it turns out that he did have two Semitic names, Simon and Cephas, with Cephas, Peter, being his Christian or spiritual name or nickname us...

...the ancient Israelite Patriarch Levi, who was not the forefather of a separate tribe. What does this mean? I was just speculating on possible ideological reasons for Levi not to be one of the 12 apostles, and I thought of how the 12 apostles were based on the fact that there were 12 Patriarchs o...

It is not clear to me whether this Jewish-Christian gospel actually made a point of identifying Matthias with Levi instead of Matthew or whether it merely used the Greek form Matthias and Didymus assumed that it was the Matthias of Acts 1.21-26 instead of the apostle Matthew. You made a good point ...

Has anyone approached the question from the possibility that the literary Levi was replaced by the literary Matthew for an ideological/theological reason? -- The Call of Levi not to be one of the Twelve I glanced through your article, which theorized that the calling of Levi was meant to refer to t...

One of my main questions about the text is what status it had among the Jewish Christian church in Jerusalem in c. 135 AD. First, I should note that scholars have a 70 year period for its date of composition, c. 50-150, so while it looks like it was written before the 135 destruction, this is not cl...