Biblical Criticism & History Forum - earlywritings.com

Backtrack. For most myths, oral teaching is probably a generation or two (30-75 years) before the script begins to circulate widely. Whichever (re-copied) fragment survives -in the future!- is not likely the oldest but rather the newest or from the 'early popularity' of the work's dissemination, sa...

Hanilai and Asinai ruled a large portion of Babylon for a brief time, and Josephus attributes the flight of Jews from Babylon (at least, Seleucia/Ctesiphon) due to the aftermath of the rule of Anileus. We know just a little about the two brothers: Now there were two men, Asineus and Anileus, of the ...

My general hypothesis about Christian origins is that Bazeus Monobazus of Adiabene was identified as the "Prophet Elchasai". Although in the West, post-Christian sects changed this historical incarnation of the blessed one back into a mythical figure, in the East there was a continuation o...

Right. Jewish factionalism was rife, but both Josephus and Philo pretend it's non-existent in Egypt. The Sicarii infiltrate Alexandria 73 AD to kill their enemies: Roman-Jewish elites, anti-Zealot Jews opposed to Total War, and perhaps to eradicate the vestiges of the Melchizedek cult? The universa...

All this also presupposes many father-warriors raised sons to be soldiers. Perhaps. If so, my Melchizedekian thesis looks iron-clad: Battle-God Melchizedek as a Divine Warrior-Intercessor (c.275 BC) morphed into a Logos-Saviour Cult (100-75 BC) about 3-4 generations later. These Roman Egyptianized ...

The Saviour-Revealer was Melchizedek (for Alexandrian Jews), abstracted as "Logos" for far-flung communities purchasing Egyptian books (sermons, hymns, etc.); even in Egypt, Melchizedekianism (relic military cult; Intercessor for Jewish warriors, c.250 BC = Saviour) was on the wane 100 BC...

this means that the theology of redemption by sacrifical death of the Son ...is ... Jewish in essence, but born in reaction to a previous theology of the salvific Revealer. The Christos (viz. Jesus) replaced the Logos (viz. Melchizedek) Doctrine as a hot trend in Diaspora synagogues c.55-75 AD, yes...

In Eisenmann's view, Agabus symbolizes the royal house of ... I had to chuckle a bit when I read your opening line here. Just a few days earlier I was tempted to respond to one of your previous posts with something along the lines of --- 'like Eisenman on acid' Eisenmann's principal flaw is his Zio...

If the dating of the text (around 130 CE) would be accepted, this would mean that under the Emperor Hadrian we still had groups of followers of Jesus who believed in a mythical Jesus without still a Gospel connected to him. Which means that the 130 CE is the terminus post-quem for the writing of a ...

So I would rather like to say (like the Dutch philologist SA Naber) that all Pauline letters ‘ortas esse in Cerdonis vel Marcionitarum scholis’, that means: they had been written in Marcionite/Kerdo’s school and firstly collected by ‘schoolmaster’ Marcion. In commenting on Eph. 5:19, Dr. (Woolsey) ...