Biblical Criticism & History Forum - earlywritings.com

Sid Martin (Secret of the Saviour: The Myth of the Messiah in Mark) suggests that Simon of Cyrene is an oblique reference to the revolt of the Jews in Cyrene, North Africa. Perhaps Alexander and Rufus are allusions to some work or event we no longer have a record of. Josephus does mention two men na...

It's true that Vaticanus and other early witnesses have IS instead of Iesous (like all early NT manuscripts), but Huller has never explained his idea of the Ish in a way I was capable of comprehending. @Arnoldo: Yes, that's one of Ory's main points — that Jesus was a preexistent deity of some kind i...

Matthew's story is so bizarre. Does he think the dead were raised at the moment of Jesus' death but didn't come out of the tombs until the resurrection?

Thanks for the exhaustive analysis, Peter.

The Ory quote is part of a passage in which he explores the possibility that Joshua was already understood as a god in some Jewish traditions, and was associated with some of the symbology (e.g. a cross) that forms the basis of Christianity.

Yeah, that's how Vaticanus Jude 5 reads. Is Ory's interpretation incorrect?

I'm still translating Ory's book from French, and he writes (my translation): An older version of the Epistle of Jude (verses 5 and 6) gives the following text: I want to remind you, though you know already, that this Jesus (i.e. “Joshua” instead of “the Lord”) by saving his people out of Egypt a se...

What point was Ory trying to make with this reference? He is trying to show that there was an early Jewish sect known generally as "Galileans" that eventually became conflated with Christians, but wasn't originally. Some early writers (including secular writers like Epictetus) knew of the...

What does it say a little further along about Jesus?

Hi Neil. I'll be exploring these issues in some future blog posts. My preliminary observations and research suggest: 1. Yes, Matthew seems to fit in between. Matthew supplemented Mark with material from proto-Luke. Matthean material and harmonizations were later added back into Evangelion and Cathol...

Thanks for the detective work, Peter.