Biblical Criticism & History Forum - earlywritings.com

^I don't think there's much "wrong" with that idea. They're all just hypotheses at the end of the day. The Farrer hypothesis seems to be making something of a comeback recently. Here's some of the reasons why many scholars tend to favor Q over the Farrer hypothesis: http://en.wikipedia.org...

^?? But what difference would that make though? Whether or not ancient theologians did or didn't "simply write things out of their imaginations" makes no difference as to whether or not there was a Q document. Like Peter Kirby said, it's simply a hypothesis to explain the verbatim agreemen...

So 9 out of 10 of these are pretty common knowledge. The idea that Paul and Simon Magus were the same person is highly speculative and not really worth considering beyond mere speculation IMO. This point spoils what is otherwise a pretty good article. "The recovery of Q led researchers to a str...

^Sometimes I imagine Paul as something of an L.Ron Hubbard-type character - an extremely intelligent masterful charlatan. I.e. Paul saw the gullibility of gentiles who were attracted to this new form of Judaism and exploited it for all it was worth and effectively started his own cult. I can't say t...

^Yeah it is. For a good cause though. It all goes to charity. Last I heard he had raised over $60,000 from the blog. $25 for a year's membership gets you access to well over 300 blog posts, many of which are highly informative. Can't complain. I've learned a lot from his blog.

^Bart did end up doing a full review of Aslan's book. He posted about 6 blogposts on it. Probably later last year or early this year. I forget.

^Well, it's implied in the references to Jesus having "died". So the belief went that Jesus had died, but he was to come again descending from heaven on the clouds to gather his elect...

^https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?s ... rsion=NRSV

http://books.google.com/books/about/Marcion_and_Luke_Acts.html?id=MU2U08v6aq0C I'm adding this to my wishlist. Thanks for the link. I haven't looked into this question at any depth, but I think Ehrman's dot points make a pretty good, if not definitive, case for these early verses being an addition ...

I lean towards the view that there was a historical figure. I think it's the most reasonable explanation as to how Christianity got started - the crucifixion of some Jewish cult leader whose 'story' started to get out of hand once some of his followers started thinking he had been raised from the de...