Biblical Criticism & History Forum - earlywritings.com

Another point: both Masterman and Paton favor the Virgin's Ftn because in the first century it was outside the city walls. Therefore, it was not legal for the healed man to carry his pallet on the sabbath at that spot because he was not in the special sector inside the walls. I gather the circuit o...

This type of analysis proceeds from the untenable assumption that the scholar knows what "the real Paul" thought and wrote. Something that doesn't make sense to the scholar is then dismissed as un-Pauline, as if everybody knows that "the real Paul" was a perfectly logical and co...

FWIW, The "author" P. C. Sense is a pen name, meaning "Plain Common Sense," used by Bernard J. Sage, barrister, M.A.. Perhaps this sounded better than "B J Sage," which could be taken the wrong way ... See Dictionary of Anonymous and Pseudonymous English Literature , Vo...

I didn’t accuse Price of being dishonest (though I suppose you didn’t directly say that I did). I suggested that Price --- after chiding the ancients for interpolating and padding the text --- did the very same thing. And then he used his padded text to support his specific interpretation of the pa...

Of course , there is a place which when translated from Turkish via Greek means "the City"! :-) Good ol' Istanbul. Everyone says it is the Turkish form of the Greek words for "in the city" but, ha!, I say it is from Greek istemi , "to stand," i.e., that crowded city. :...

I remember Carl Sagan in his epic "Cosmos" said about Plato and Pythagoras that "their influence has significantly set back the human endeavour" which surprised me, given the reputation that they have had. In Sagan's case, the comment seems to relate to the idea that the univers...

Aristotle in Ath. Pol. 10.1 says that Solon brought the value of mina from 70 drachmas up to the full 100. I have read that originally, the drachma was a unit of value, and the mina was a weight. The amount of silver in a drachma varied over time, but there were also copper drachmas. I am not up on...

Those interested in the problem of ancient writers' sources may find this review of interest. Boris Dunsch and Kai Ruffing edit a volume of conference papers on the sources of Herodotus. The review, by Jan P. Stronk, begins by outlining competing scholarly views of Herodotus' reliability, from -- i...

Aristotle in Ath. Pol. 10.1 says that Solon brought the value of mina from 70 drachmas up to the full 100. I have read that originally, the drachma was a unit of value, and the mina was a weight. The amount of silver in a drachma varied over time, but there were also copper drachmas. I am not up on...

Julian, AKA, The Apostate. It is, I think, expedient to set forth to all mankind the reasons by which I was convinced that the fabrication of the Galilaeans is a fiction of men composed by wickedness. Though it has in it nothing divine, by making full use of that part of the soul which loves fable ...