Biblical Criticism & History Forum - earlywritings.com

Therefore it wasn't there in the earlier part of the 1st century CE.

On Tacitus, Annales 15.44, worthwhile reading Smith's article, which I cited above; on Tacitus see pp. 525-39 of volume 20 of The Monist (1910): http://books.google.com/books?id=UKsLAAAAIAAJ&printsec=frontcover&dq=editions:8WNf-wFpLRMC&hl=en&sa=X&ei=m5fcUvGWAdSlsQS8uIGoCw&ved...

Cult with no human founder: cargo cult of John Frum http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Frum Mithraism Satanists cult of Dionysos in early stages Something I've been thinking about: is there an analogy with founding myths of cities in antiquity? Cities are often said to have been founded by a hero or ...

1. that our earliest manuscript of Tacitus is from the 12th century Irrelevant. Plenty of manuscripts are only found in medieval times. That's pretty normal transmission. 2. no classical writer knew anything of christians relating to the fire 3. that the first ancient writer who wrote about a perse...

Again, I think the real question, and more interesting one is: how and why did the Jesus of the gospels get created. Further.... and this is one of the core things to the religious experience, there doesn't have to have been any historical Jesus for Christianity to exist, since Christianity is buil...

Dear Dr. DiMattei, since your blog is in the public domain, it never occurred to me to let you know that I had brought your entry on mythicism to the attention of this forum. I brought it here because the topic receives a lot of discussion, and I have not made up my own mind on the "historical ...

Very interesting database, thanks for the link. So, I searched under "Nazareth." What comes up? One inscription, seems it's from an ossuary in Jerusalem, dated betw 20 BCE and 70 CE, provenance unknown. It says "Yeshua son of Yehosef." WHAT? Is this a forged ossuary of Jesus? I d...

Thanks for these citations, Robert. I've read Salm's website over the last couple years but have not read his book. One question: if Vardaman forged the Caesarea inscription, as Salm claims, and was banished by the Israeli authorities from the investigation, as Salm claims, why did the supervisor of...

I haven't formed a view on the question. I think, though, that some opposition to the non-historical view amounts to argumenta ad ignorantiam.

Pro-tip: Just because Tacitus has been "discussed" doesn't mean that it should be ejected entirely. You know, because skepticism applies both ways. Why shouldn't the persecution of christians part of Annales 15.44 be ejected? Several of us presented arguments and cited published treatment...