Biblical Criticism & History Forum - earlywritings.com

The Jerusalem Post article he links to is a newspaper article about an unpublished, un-peer-reviewed talk at a conference and not even that article says any of the dss have been dated to 300 bce. John T presumably just made that up when he saw something in the article about a date range from the th...

I am not a supporter of Carrier, and as a real Buddhist (despite your paranoid assertions otherwise), my atheism is based upon a different paradigm than that favoured by typical atheists in the Anglophone world. I'll take that wishy-washy baby step confession that you are indeed a so-called atheist...

I don't understand. Why is everything Manichaean? There are brilliant people who get things wrong. There are complete morons that get one thing right in their life. Truth is a tricky thing. Just because you're smart doesn't mean you're never wrong. Look into the mirror and repeat that, often. :chee...

I was fully aware that fragments of most books from the Hebrew Scriptures (excepting Esther) had been found among the Dead Sea Scrolls, but I thank you for your cited claim that Nehemiah also was not found among them. However, this situation, as I pointed out, does not undermine Gmirkin's thesis fo...

With all due respect, though, the Dead Sea Scrolls are not the entire Hebrew Bible, not all portions of the Dead Sea Scrolls are dating back to 300 BCE, and the existence of independent, even genuinely ancient, shorter texts which were, c. 270 BCE, incorporated into the text which we call the Hebre...

There are experts on both sides of the issue. As I said scholarship isn't dogma. At best we strive for suggestions. Whether or not people take up our suggestions is out of our hands. Scholarship isn't religion. Stop moving the goal post, your going to throw your back out with all of your gymnastic ...

And if you really have identified clear evidence of biblical books prior to 270 BCE (I only noticed earlier that you said Paleo-Hebrew script was known earlier, a fact no-one disputes) then Gmirkin has made complete idiots of his reviewers and scholarship-specialist publisher. With all due respect,...

Let me ask SG. When does he think the first criticism of Morton Smith or Secret Mark was published WHICH WASN'T DEVELOPED FROM (a) personal animus or (b) motivated by a defense of 'the true religion'? When did 'good' research into the forgery of Secret Mark begin? It depends on your subjective use ...

Let me ask SG. When does he think the first criticism of Morton Smith or Secret Mark was published WHICH WASN'T DEVELOPED FROM (a) personal animus or (b) motivated by a defense of 'the true religion'? When did 'good' research into the forgery of Secret Mark begin? " I [ Harvard professor Helmu...

Let's see if we can figure this out. Based on excerpts from “‘Secret Mark’: An Amazing Discovery,” Biblical Archaeology Review 35.6 (2009): 44–46, 48. Morton goes and lives in the Mar Saba monastery (1941). He sees an old book that turned out to be a 1646 edition of the letters of Ignatius of Antioc...