Biblical Criticism & History Forum - earlywritings.com

My "extremist" approach is to analyse the source material (gospels and other) with the same analytical questions brought to bear upon source documents by other historians in any other field of history. These are the same methodological principles one can find in basic handbooks of histori...

Possibly very relevant background reading to the "history" of Alexandria in the 2nd and 3rd centuries CE http://www.mountainman.com.au/essenes/Early%20Alexandrian%20Christianity%20Robert%20Grant.htm Early Alexandrian Christianity Robert M. Grant Commences .... Eusebius and the Life of Ori...

Still, I think Musurillo said that burning alive became a punishment later than the time of Paul, but I may have gotten this point wrong. I have read that the laws for burning people alive were brought in under Constantine. EG: Codex Theodosianus 16.8.1 dated 315 CE .... " Any Jew who stones a...

This is a little odd. The basis for book 10 is the 5th century Saint Victor manuscript of all 10 books. Don't you mean a 12th, 13th, 14th or 15th century manuscript? This was discovered at the renaissance, taken to Italy and used by Aldus for his edition. It was then dismembered, as so many manuscr...

Later than Constantine. Uses Ammianus Marcellina. See Ammianus and the HA Thanks Andrew. Would you not agree that the consensus is that the HA is "probably" later than Ammianus. That is to say, we need to deal in probabilities, not "certainties". Momigliano provides a review of ...

What is not made explicit in the OP is the inference that the authors of the Gnostic material were not Christians, but pagan academics and theologians (Platonists, etc) in the generation who witnessed the supremacy of Constantine, the Council of Nicaea, the very first widespread publication of a sta...

How likely do you think it is that in the context of early Christianity "christos" was used as a reverse abbreviation for "archiereus megistos"? I think one needs to first search the evidence to determine when the terms "Chrestos" and "Christos" first appear ...

theo, I just see this as 4th century Christians wanting to associate generally famous persons with themselves if only on the basis that they shared a name with a Christian author. I think it is more than that - the 4th century Christians wanted to associate themselves with a lineage of philosophers...

(2) Various datings of fragments of Gnostic Gospels to before 325 CE. For a tabulation of papyri see: http://www.mountainman.com.au/essenes/Apocrypha_NT_papyri.htm The contention here is that these palaeographical assessments may be viewed as having error bounds (like C14) that accommodate a later ...

It is interesting to note that JC bribed his way into the role of "Pontifex Maximus" ... "JC"?? if so, "bribed his way into the role ..."?? Julius Caesar saw that it was politically expedient for him to be able to assume the role of "Pontifex Maximus". He bri...