Biblical Criticism & History Forum - earlywritings.com

The phrase “looking up to heaven” is a strong indication of the astral meaning of the story. Looking up to heaven has no astral associations anywhere in Mark. They are all imported into the text by the interpreter. The heaven in the text is the place of God and original home of the holy spirit (Mar...

Jehovah’s Witnesses and Mormons all argue that the foundations of their faith can be found in empirical evidence -- just like you do. That comparison of what I have presented to Mormon and JW thinking is breathtaking in its ignorance. Critiques of Mormonism, such as the great book by David FitzGera...

[Regarding an alleged 'social contract' in the Bible,] Jeremiah 7:3, is entirely one-sided. God alone has all the power and lays out the terms. The other party has no rights and no say in the matter. They are dictated to by God: xenophobes, money-lenders, landlords, robbers are told to refrain from...

I still have no idea what Atwill has to do with any of this. Atwill is simply the most prominent advocate of the Caesar-Christ idea, which you say you find just as plausible as the astral allegory I argue for. Your "precision and detail" is just as meaningful, just as valid, just as subje...

Are you really saying that Platonic theory of ideas is indeed true and "absolute knowledge"? Plato was revered as divine among the Gnostics, and his dialogues were found among the Nag Hammadi texts. Some of Plato’s ideas are indeed true and absolute, although obviously ideas about the goo...

I was not talking about the social contract when mentioning parallels. I should have separated the paragraphs. I simply used social contract to mean a requirement for rule by consent, as seen in Biblical ideas such as covenant and discussed in Plato’s Republic. Amos and the other prophets are full ...

Here is what I believe to be the essence of valid and invalid parallels, Robert: “Detailed study is the criterion, and the detailed study ought to respect the context and not be limited to juxtaposing mere excerpts.” (p. 2, Sandmel) Your interpretation of the loaves and fishes appears to be a class...

Maunder's argument is found in Astronomy of the Bible Maunder is saying that the constellations were devised 2,000-3,000 BCE and hence long after 13000 BCE when the sun was in Aries at the autumnal equinox. According to Maunder, if the constellations had been devised at a much earlier date they wou...

Dupuis's "method led him to the conclusion that the constellations must have been devised when the sun was in the constellation Aries at the autumnal equinox, i.e., about 13000 B.C. The evidence afforded by the unmapped space round the south pole proves that he was ten or eleven thousand years...

…tablets called MUL.APIN, which describe the star constellations that are associated with months of the lunar calendar (the Babylonian calendar) around 1,350 BCE. In these, there is an asterism near the pole, encompassing stars that are partly in the later Greek constellation Ursa Minor (Little Bea...