Biblical Criticism & History Forum - earlywritings.com

I think this is where the discussion is headed (even though we need to uncover more evidence certainly). The name Paul likely results owing to a historical struggle between those who understood ἔσχατος 'religiously' - i.e. to mean 'least' or small - and those who interpreted the terminology 'tempora...

And the same argument applies again John2 (who has this strange obsession with Qumran even though the material was likely from the first century BCE). Christianity was clearly obsessed with angels and being 'like the angels.' It was a mundane community (not at arguing whether or not the Qumran commu...

But spin, do you see the inherited bias? If you begin (unconsciously or not) to assume that Christians were a real community with a real historical Jesus you approach the terminology as if it means ordinary assembly. But I began with the earliest independent attestation for εκκλησια (Celsus) and it ...

When Adversus Marcionem paraphrases the apostle so that: ... that they are in character with an apostle who professes that to the Jews he became a Jew that he might gain the Jews, and one living under the law for the sake of those who were living under the lawc—and so even for the sake of those brou...

Ben, I wanted to note that there is a comparative quality to the argument which precedes the mention of your name in Adversus Marcionem: Let Christ, let the apostle, belong to your other god: yet you have no proof of it except from the Creator's archives (Sit Christus, sit apostolus, ut alterius, du...

I think I have figured out the name 'Cerinthus' incidentally:

Hebrew אַחֲרֽוֹן = last, end
Samaritan Aramaic ˀḥrw, ˀḥrwtˀ n.f. end

It is curious that the LXX uses ἔσχατος in a different sense than the NT. ἔσχατος is a comparative. καὶ μισήσῃ αὐτὴν ὁ ἀνὴρ ὁ ἔσχατος καὶ γράψει αὐτῇ βιβλίον ἀποστασίου καὶ δώσει εἰς τὰς χεῖρας αὐτῆς καὶ ἐξαποστελεῖ αὐτὴν ἐκ τῆς οἰκίας αὐτοῦ ἢ ἀποθάνῃ ὁ ἀνὴρ ὁ ἔσχατος ὃς ἔλαβεν αὐτὴν ἑαυτῷ γυναῖκα a...

Love you. That is very cool. Almost too cool to contemplate. ἔσχατος is another clue. How far does it go back? Does it go back to something in Hebrew? Hmmm. Harry Potter is ending and soon it will be bed time.

FWIW I have always thought the editors turned singular nouns into plurals when spoken by the apostle (in our recension of the texts). Take for example this one: God has put us apostles on display at the end of the procession, like those condemned to die in the arena. We have been made a spectacle to...