Biblical Criticism & History Forum - earlywritings.com

Writings such as Hegesippus were extant in the 17th century, yet still have been lost. What do you mean by that? The term extant seems to refer to physical documents rather than words transcribed through the centuries. Are you saying documents have been cited in the 17th century as having allegedly...

Your assumption that the ancient church had the capability to preserve any document it wanted to is absurd. This argument has been trotted out for a long time, but it's born out of desperation and does not sound plausible. Can you explain why that argument isn't plausible? Writings such as Hegesipp...

Minus all the technical minutiae, what is actually being asserted about the manuscript? Not in terms of symptoms, but causes?

Is the entire manuscript alleged to be a 19th century fake?

We can exclude this hypothesis of "our gospels" only, as we have seen from the only time that Justin actually quoted something from a gospel that he himself identified as "written", which was from the "Gospel" of Marcion Simply untrue, Ulan. Justin says... And when it ...

BTW my use of foursome did not mean to imply all four Gospels. It was more meant "our Gospels", not some other hypothetical Gospels that hypothetically have been lost.

Justin Martyr directly equated his "memoirs of the apostles" with the Gospels, however some critics believe that clause to be an interpolation. Not sure who they are, but it's a very weak case. I think you're correct to call them out on it. So let's assume the "which are called Gospe...

Contrary to Ehrman, I think the intent to deceive is a pretty bold criticism of a document written two millennia ago, that we have very little data on with respect to its production. What do you think of the Epistle of the Apostles, written in the first person plural as if penned by them? What abou...

Thanks Ben. Sounds like Ehrman is very selective in his assessment of what you can and cannot assume about the motivations of a first century author. Apparently you can know with certainty that the "we" passages are an ingenious and intentional literary deception, but any other interrogati...

Acts is told in the third person, except in four passages dealing with Paul’s travels, where the author moves into a first-person narrative, indicating what “we” were doing (16: 10– 17; 20: 5– 15; 21: 1– 18; and 27: 1– 28: 16). That was taken to suggest that the author of Acts— and therefore of the...

I'm far from convinced that it's a mistranslation. Mark 8:35 doesn't make much sense whichever reading of ευαγγελίου you apply (the sake of the gospel / the sake of the good news). I'd have to defer to experts in biblical Greek to argue the merits of that particular problem. I don't think there's a...