Biblical Criticism & History Forum - earlywritings.com

I wonder if material went missing from Mark chapter 1. This is purely speculation from looking at an English translation. I don’t know enough about the Greek to really look into that, but the verses I’m looking at are 13 and 14. Mark 1:14 (NASB20) Now after John was taken into custody, Jesus came i...

Apparently Russell Gmirkin has idiots who haven't read his books shrieking on the internet. Internet winner, obviously. I’m not quite sure what you’re referring to here. I haven’t read his books because I have not had the time or money to do so recently. I don’t particularly have a strong opinion o...

It’s getting close to that time when the manger scenes will be out and the many carols about Bethlehem are sung. Which got me thinking… I’ve heard the hypothesis of the Bethlehem birth narratives (which are very interesting in how Mt and Lk differ in their own rights) being a later tradition and tha...

I certainly love reading Gmirkin's books; new arguments for new hypothesis always perks my interest. But sometimes I do regret that he writes these ginormous tomes, and it does seem a bit like "proof by exhaustion". Certainly very informative and provocative, but after a while, I find mys...

... Where it really feels clunky to me is going from verse 29 to 30 (Mark 6). Verse 30 is a very natural follow up to verse 13, and if you were to cut out 14-29, it reads very smoothly I think. So how would you dramatize the passage of time between the dispatch of the disciples (6:11) and their ret...

I’m not nearly as knowledgeable about these topics as the average person on these boards, so a lot of my observations will inevitably be from my own speculation more than not. That being said, Mark 6:17 and following, now that you mention it, has also always seemed extremely clunky in the text to m...

I haven’t had the chance to read through this whole thread yet (I’ve gotten to page 12 so far), It hasn't. I'm glad you found these ramblings worth reading. In any case, the centurion gets it. So Mark is not ending his gospel with the secret staying completely hidden, I don’t think. Its kind of amb...

I was remarking with RG Price on one of his threads how dark Canonical Mark is. I don't want to derail that thread to much, but I do want to say a bit more about it. It reads like a total failure of Jesus's program: 1. His original 12 disciples never seem to get it. They are a complete disappointme...

I'm not sure why you have a problem with 2 Isaiah being from the Hellenistic era, or really all of Isaiah for that matter. Isaiah 30-45 discuss relations with Egypt extensively. Does this not fit into the Hellenistic era with the conflicts between the Ptolemies and Seleucids? Of course its all veil...

Ben Smith wrote about it as one of several indications of reader knowledge being presumed (and don't forget "Let the reader understand"): https://earlywritings.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=3818 That knowledge could have come in different ways (as Ben outlines). Or, as you suggest, the text m...