Biblical Criticism & History Forum - earlywritings.com

Can anyone tell me who Jesus is angry with in this passage (supposedly) from the Secret Gospel of Mark, as it appears in Scott Brown's Mark's Other Gospel: Rethinking Morton Smith's Controversial Discovery : II.23 “And they come to Bethany. And there was there a certain woman whose brother of hers [...

I wish I was familiar enough with the materials being discussed here to provide some insight, but since I'm not I'll have to settle for asking the question :oops: : I know there was an on-going trend towards greater veneration of Pilate within certain Christian circles, exemplified by perhaps the Go...

... I doubt we could do much on such a close verbal level with the lost Marcionite epistles. Too much actual text is missing from our extant information (nearly all of Philemon, by far most of Philippians, and so forth). It could still be done on what is known or reconstructed, though?? Maybe one o...

I don't have anything intelligent to add but to me this is a really fascinating group. I'm always trying to think outside of the box which the modem forms of these religions tends to put us in, and a group like this is a perfect example of the fluidity of these categories in the ancient times.

What you have here is interesting AC. It sure seems like a lot of weight to place on "the interpolator would copy Matthew because it was orthodox" though. I'd say any of the four or more conjectures that go into it could be questioned to SOME extent, even if they're agreed upon by the majo...

I just wanted to throw a little love Ben's way and commend him for all the hard work on this stuff lately. Keep it up, please!

Is it possible that Josephus originally identified him as James, the brother of the Jesus who would go on to be the replacement high priest? This seems to make some narrative sense. The priest unfairly persecutes this guy known to be righteous and in response is deposed and replaced by the guy's bro...

To borrow another term from the sciences, I think 'controls' would help a lot here (and plenty of other places, to boot). I'm thinking that finding a large enough sample size of comparable documents will be a main hurdle here, but say we had sets of documents known to be related by a small number of...

@maryhelena: Wow! There really is a close connection of ideas in those two quotes of Philo and Paul you give above. Not only the same ideas, but following the same kind of sequence of thoughts (at first glance at least). Also I wasn't aware of the close connections between Philo and those Judean pol...

I think this is great work and it fits will with my own proclivities. But are you suggesting a direct dependence of Paul on Philo for this idea? Couldn't it just be that their ideas inhabit the same realm of 1st century messianic midrash? If that is the case at least Paul would only be commiting one...