Biblical Criticism & History Forum - earlywritings.com

I guess my point is that with water sources proven, you would have to prove a negative to be convincing- i.e. dig up the entire city looking for unequivocal first century artifacts-arguing that Nazareth was a post-first century creation. I would bet that the Neanderthals probably had a settlement t...

I forgot to add Shahar's review of archeological research about camouflaged hideouts. He concludes that the archeology isn't clear either way on the time period of the hideouts; that's why he uses topographical criteria. Here are the notes I took on his review of the archeology: 224 at the time of h...

Update: Yuval Shahar, "The Underground Hideouts in Galilee and Their Historical Meaning," in Peter Schafer, ed., The Bar Kokhba War Reconsidered (Tubingen 2003), 217-40 concludes that the hideouts should be assigned to the Bar-Kokhba revolt. He bases this conclusion on the geographical dis...

First, that argument is akin to saying that a reference to Peliades is not a reference to Achilles. As far as I know, there isn't anyone else who was called "Christos/Christus". Second, I have indeed dealt with Tacitus in this very thread. Do reread. Finally, Pliny's evidence provides pre...

If we were to take the christian references in Annals 15.44 and Nero 16 as kosher, they would have no evidential weight , as they would certainly not be primary. That allows us to look at them and, as I have shown elsewhere over quite a while, they do not stand up as veracious. Link the three sourc...

@ Steve, OK, but again, what you say presumes that there was a Naz. in 66 - the point under discussion. Should I infer from your point about Sepphoris that the camouflaged hideaway reported by Yardenna Alexandre at Nazareth is likely to come from the time of the Bar-Kokhba revolt and not from c. 66-...

Spin, I presume you read the Avi-Yonah paper in Vardaman's collection, The Teacher's Yoke (1964), which DC Hindley quoted above? (Avi-Yonah had published a short report, which DC also quoted, in Israel Exploration Journal, and a longer one in Hebrew in Eretz Israel (1964). Did you notice the asteri...

Spin, I presume you read the Avi-Yonah paper in Vardaman's collection, The Teacher's Yoke (1964), which DC Hindley quoted above? (Avi-Yonah had published a short report, which DC also quoted, in Israel Exploration Journal, and a longer one in Hebrew in Eretz Israel (1964). Did you notice the asteris...

GakuseiDon wrote: Major mythicists like Richard Carrier, Doherty and Wells don't include astrotheology in their mythicist views.

Richard Carrier maintains that ancient astrology was so inconsistent that one can't demonstrate any conclusions about astrotheology:

http://freethoughtblogs.com/carrier/archives/4746

There is a lot, esp. about Tacitus, on the "when was the term 'Christian' first used?" thread.