Biblical Criticism & History Forum - earlywritings.com

I see nothing wrong with regarding the Samaritans as sons and daughters of Israel, albeit with the caveat that they may not have as glorious a past as the Hebrew Scriptures would have us believe. What part of the "scriptures" would that be? The Samaritans only regard the Torah as authorit...

The typical Samaritan DNA profile from 1920 was way more "Semitic" than the typical Jewish DNA profile from Europe. But we accept one as "sons of Judah" but not the other as "sons of Israel" Well, the Samaritans were more insular and less prone to travelling than the J...

Honestly. Do you understand the concept of "being fair"? You can't say: 1. yeah there's a lot of evidence for Jesus being a historical figure, but fuck it. I'll take the position based on no actual evidence and say Jesus didn't exist. 2. ah, but there is too little evidence for acknowledg...

The thing again is that the Jews of the period didn't claim to be "the kingdom of Israel." The Samaritans do. Now the evidence comes from a later period than the Biblical books of Kings and the like. But I don't understand why anyone would start to try and "out cancel" the Jews ...

Prior to 722 BCE there was a kingdom of Israel but then it ceased to exist and its name vanished from the record for centuries. I too grew tired of this thread. In dealing with you I come face to face with egoism, unbridled. As noted you have constant double standards. With Christianity the "m...

When we first encounter the term Israel as an identifier of certain people it is in religious literature and has a variety of connotations that are sometimes contradictory -- it clearly did not originate as a neat ethnic reality. The Merneptah Stele identifies Israel as a people, but it is not reli...

In the lead up to the Bar Kokhba revolt, perhaps beginning with Hadrian's actions in Jerusalem, there was a renewed interest in Paul and the Pauline letter collection was formed. As a part of this process 2 Thessalonians was written and added to the collection, very likely by the person who made th...

I was aware of a fairly extensive collection of Platonic letters, which I have seen described in some tertiary sources (textbooks) but have also never read (in translation, of course). It does seem to be a truism that "the more one finds out, the more one realizes what has not yet been found.&...

Looks like a good time to acquire and process some of Xenophon's Socratic dialogues. I believe that one was "On Clouds" which at the time I heard about it I figured it was going to be a parody. Funny, though, is that normally - unlike some - I don't see parodies everywhere. DCH The Clouds...

If Marcion's Gospel was first, then his Gospel and his letters of Paul were independent of the Hebrew Scriptures, which suggests a Jesus that developed out of something else. What could that be? That's the question. Perhaps the anti-Roman firebrand Jesus whom we see in Revelation to John? Just thro...