Biblical Criticism & History Forum - earlywritings.com

I am aware that there is controversy over what Paul means by "I received/took over", παρέλαβον. The most straightforward way to construe it is as reciprocal to παρέδωκα, i.e. "I handed over to you" what someone else handed over to me. Paul effaces the identity of this someone el...

I am not at all denying what the reading of our 'received' texts indicate, that being that all these persons did with their eyes actually see a visible apparition 'figure' of the resurrected Christus Iesus. That is what the text now states. No argument there. Hello Sheshbazzar, since I think we're ...

I respect you and your erudition, Sheshbazzar, but I don't agree with your conclusions about I Cor. 15. A text that says that so-and-so ὤφθη, first to A, then to B, then to various groups, last to the writer, is most simply taken to mean that so-and-so appeared to, or was seen by, these people. Why ...

Genre, I think, is at best only a general guide to authorial intent. We will always have the questions surrounding parody, deception, etc where quite often we need some information external to the text itself to alert us to what extent we can take it at face value. (There is the added difficulty wi...

Hi LC, by "historical" I take it you mean "actually lived/occurred." But don't you need some further distinctions within "'Post Resurrection' appearance"? Depending on how you define it, I would think both John T (you can chime in for yourself here if I get your belief...

My hypothesis is that it is fact that Paul et al. experienced mental events that we can call visions. I consider those mental events "historical," in the sense that Paul, whom I take to be an actual guy, writes about his visions; they entered history. If the Pauline epistles are forgeries...

@ficino, Richard Carrier would say that Jesus never existed at all therefore, no physical resurrection. As far as I can tell, Carrier's current bizarre theory is that; Paul invented his own version of Christianity based on other religious astrological models and that Jesus is a mythical figure that...

Hi LC, by "historical" I take it you mean "actually lived/occurred." But don't you need some further distinctions within "'Post Resurrection' appearance"? Depending on how you define it, I would think both John T (you can chime in for yourself here if I get your belief...

Now, back to the my original argument, that is, Paul converted to Christianity within a couple of years of the crucifixion of Jesus (30 A.D.) and decades later he wrote in 1 Cor 15:3-7 (approx 55A.D.) that he still believes as he always did, that is, Jesus was resurrected. So, you can safely infer ...

Excluding the fence sitters who are balanced on the 50% assessment, the above groups total the entire population of possibilities. Group 1): Jesus was historical, his "Post Resurrection" appearance was historical. Group 2): Jesus was historical, but his "Post Resurrection" appea...