Biblical Criticism & History Forum - earlywritings.com

Looking at the communities of Paul and trying to create a picture of the religion that was Christianity .. 'the communities of Paul' seem to be communities he is trying to take under his wing; some seem recalcitrant. It should be mentioned, that this special characteristic of early Christianity as ...

It has been suggested that the pentecost event in Acts was somehow related in some confused (or word-play?) manner with Paul's 1 Cor 15:6 reference to the resurrected christ appearing to the 500 at once. 500 = pentakosiois (πεντακοσίοις) Very interesting, I didn't know that. Do you remember who hav...

I am not certain I would even expect there to have been a single spiritual event (a Pentecost, if you will) which sparked Christianity, or at least the spiritual aspect of Christianity. I imagine, rather, a heightened expectation of spirituality among certain sects (including Qumran, perhaps), a sp...

It should be mentioned, that this special characteristic of early Christianity as the 'spirit-community', i.e. filled with God's spirit, also seems to have been a thing for the sectarians of the Dead Sea Scrolls, if I'm not mistaken. I think they also operated with the notion that they had access to...

Looking at the communities of Paul and trying to create a picture of the religion that was Christianity, one could describe this phenomenon as a 'spirit-religion'. The spirit is the spirit of God, that can make humans take part in the very nature of God and his mind and his will. The spirit regenera...

It is almost universally exclaimed by interpreters and commentators, that the centurion at the cross is the first person in the story of Mark who actually understands Jesus' identity, the Son of God. Mark apparantly starts his story with an incipit telling the audience that Jesus is "the son o...

Exactly, a metaphor, perhaps. But then the question still remains: In a metaphor, there are two meanings, the surface meaning and the transposed meaning. The transposed meaning could be something like the Gentile world 1 receiving the spirit, because it has now left Israel, the temple, symbolized b...

Either: 1) Mark has just not cared to compose his story to be 'realistic', and he doesn't care at all about this gross anachronism, that this guy suddenly grasps the whole truth about Jesus, without even knowing about the resurrection (which hasn't happened yet) 2) or else, for Mark the resurrectio...

Is there another third solution? I think there is: The event happened as a 'parable', and it is symbolic of Gentiles coming to faith ... symbolic of God's new covenant with humans at large (in principle, including Gentile Roman executioners 1 ), which replaces his old covenant with Israel centered ...

. Most verses or passages in Mark 15 are contradictory or 'sliding door' type events, situations, or comments or passages ... Jesus refusing to tell Pilate whether he was the King of the Jews or not in Mk 15:2-5. In Mk 15: 8-15, again no direct answers to Pilates questions - 8 So the crowd came and...