Biblical Criticism & History Forum - earlywritings.com

* The extent to which GLuke's Q material inherits from a separate source or from some redaction of GMatthew. I also have a detailed answer to that, with some remarks dealing with Aramaic: http://historical-jesus.info/q.html Cordially, Bernard Thank you. This is a painstaking analysis. I'm disappoin...

Some scholars and even humble lay people do, you know, follow the evidence and come to conclusions against their own personal preferences and pet-theories. (The leading popularizers of mythicism since late last century are actually staunch defenders of the Q hypothesis, by the way.) This is exactly...

I offer it here merely for discussion: ... Pappias apparently describes GMatthew as "loggia". According to some scholars but not all, "loggia" could well mean "sayings". IF -- IF -- it does mean that, then that's very odd. GMatthew, as we know it, does not just consist...

One thing's clear: It isn't brain surgery to see that any mythicist is going to automatically side with Gentile here against those challenging him! This is because mythicists will naturally be delighted to think that all the Q sayings originate solely with GMatthew, since it accords with their lock...

Up until Mark Goodacre's work, the 20th-century scholarly consensus was that the church's general (though not uniform) prioritizing of GMatthew for the parallel-sayings or "Q" material was wrong-headed. The scholarly consensus bucked most of the worship traditions of a hundred years back ...

Peter Kirby wrote:I sincerely hope that you don't mind, but I do believe this deserves to be the start of a new thread.

O.K., but I don't like the title. I'd prefer something like "Earliest Jesus stratum?"

Thank you,

Stone

You mention several interesting and contentious topics: * The possibility of detecting particular textual strata in the source materials. * The significance of possible Aramaicisms or lack thereof. * The extent to which GThomas might be especially early or especially late. * The extent to which GLu...

As a matter of fact, the latest scholarship for both canonical and non-canonical texts allows scholars to place certain reflections and actions that have been traced to Jesus along a sliding scale from most likely to least likely. This sliding scale is not geared to vague preferences for one idea o...

Bernard has certainly spotlighted many salient characteristics in this earliest stratum -- thank you, Bernard -- and it helps underscore just how distinct is this layering from the largely woo-driven frame that kindergarten teachers habitually stress. In addition, while these following links hardly ...

Peter, thanks for such an informative and thoughtful response. It's the kind of info I need to help provide a perspective on the 'sheer volume' argument. I've long favored the "Jesus lite' theory of origins, with mythological development and know that strong arguments can be made in favor of t...