Biblical Criticism & History Forum - earlywritings.com

I am pretty certain the Nazoraean gospel is indeed a version of canonical Matthew with some changes made and additions inserted. I am pretty certain the Ebionite gospel is a combination of Matthean and Lucan materials with tendentious additions and changes. What I am not at all certain about is tha...

Thanks for responding, Peter. Most scholars seem to pull out the middle of 4 Esdras and consider it non-Christian Jewish, while considering the beginning and ending to be Christian and naming them 5 and 6 Esdras, respectively. Based on this scheme, 4 Esdras would almost certainly come before the Apo...

maybe it was the other way around, and 4 Esdras was a Jewish Christian work that incorporated the Apocalypse of Peter I don't think so. Dear Peter , Can you please tell me why you think that the Apocalypse of Peter used 4 Esdras, instead of the other way around? I couldn't find any information as t...

In order to establish a date of authorship for the Apocalypse of Peter , some scholars, like C. Detlef Müller, as quoted on the Early Writings page (below), theorize that the Apocalypse of Peter used a quote from 4 Esdras . They conclude that since 4 Esdras was written about 100 AD, that the Apocaly...

K. Lewis, Since you have studied Revelation, I want to ask if you think the Book sets the End Time events, particularly Armaggedon as happening at a specific year. It describes armies on horses, so this implies some time when nations were still using horse cavalry, eg. before WWii. To give an analog...

Ben, I approach the issue of "Jesus Ben Damnaeus" as a mystery or a question. You mentioned one occurrence of a Greek name for a High Priest in the 1st century (Theophilus). This agrees with the idea that Jewish high priests tended not to have such names in the first century. What is its meaning, i...

A Jewish priest would tend not to take a Greek name.... Why not? After the Maccabean period we have Jewish high priests named Aristobulus, Alexander, Antigonus, and Theophilus: all Greek names. Right. Onias and Menelaus came to my mind when I wrote that. The position of high priest was a very impor...

To begin with, as a Jewish Pharisee who wrote derisively about all other messiah claimants, Josephus would have been unlikely to believe Jesus to be the Christ. However, even if he did come to that belief, common sense would tell us that he would dedicate a heavy portion of Antiquities to his Messi...

War 6.5.4: The Jews took this prediction to belong to themselves in particular, and many of the wise men were thereby deceived in their determination. Now this oracle certainly denoted the government of Vespasian, who was appointed emperor in Judea. My view is that, like the early Christians, Josep...

My personal theory is that, contra Origen, Josephus was a "low-key Christian", and that the Testimonium Flavianum was real. To answer the OP, Joshua/Jesus was a quite common name at the time (like John and James/Jim today), so the frequency of the name in Josephus didn't catch my eye. But I do think...