Biblical Criticism & History Forum - earlywritings.com

The claim that the forger confessed was made in 1390 in a report by bishop Pierre d'Arcis to antipope Clement VII. See notes 22 and 23 in the Wikipedia article: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shroud_of_Turin This is a very long article. On balance, it appears as though the radiocarbon dating is solid ...

... The main problem is that "christos" and cognate words in Greek mean "anointed one," and from the Persian period onwards until Hasmonean times referred only to the High Priest on his ordination. Previous to and from Hasmonean times it could also refer to the anointing of a ki...

I think Newton was looking around in history to try to get ten nations, and of course there's a way to interpret things so as to produce ten - esp. if details like even the ones in the article are fudged. I remember in the 1970s, the ten were interpreted by Hal Lindsay as the Common Market. There wa...

Yes, I saw that Wikipedia article - not crazy about it. Here's another from Patheos: http://www.patheos.com/blogs/faithpromotingrumor/2010/01/child-sacrifice-a-traditional-religious-practice-in-ancient-israel/ The author of the above concludes that it's likely that children were sacrificed to Yahweh...

Scholars debate the question, whether inhabitants of Canaan in the pre-exilic period - possibly including worshipers of Yahweh - literally sacrificed children to gods. There are scriptural references to this practice, but some authorities say that it did not actually occur. Does anyone have informat...

Understood, and agreed. My nitpicking was merely prompted by the thought that the C-14 dating at least establishes that the writing material is not modern. Not that that is such a weighty conclusion; I don't know whether any forger has concocted modern papyrus. Cheers, F

Stuff from Patterson fascinating - thank you, Andrew. Do you have a view on the GJW fragment? It seems to me that you may be overstating when you say that the C-14 dating is "worthless as evidence for the date of the text itself." Surely the C-14 date is one of the pebbles on the scale tha...

The problem with the C-14 dates for GJW is that the John fragment also has an early Islamic C-14 date for the papyrus but the writing is almost certainly modern. On what is the judgment based that "the writing is almost certainly modern"? Is this conclusion based on the match-up of lines ...

Actually, there is no present tense form in the Greek passage that Diogenes just quoted.

MF may want to say that you lack spine, Maximos, and that you lack the skill to engage him. But, like you, I think I'll also ignore. Life is short, and much awaits doing.