Biblical Criticism & History Forum - earlywritings.com

Do you still support a Roman origin for Christianity? Twice a year, at Yom Kippur and Passover, Jesus and his Jewish followers saw or heard about the ram and lamb atonement/commemoration sacrifices and they thought: "We really need to start a new religion with repetitive atonement meals based ...

“Writing to the church at Smyrna, a major Christian center in Asia Minor, Ignatius condemned heretics who denied that Christ had an actual physical body… To refute them, Ignatius wrote “They [the heretics] even absent themselves from the Eucharist and public prayers [cf. Acts 2:42], because they wi...

In the modern scientific, materialist mindset, Jesus is not in Eucharist bread, because it would be an anti-materialistic "miracle" or anomaly. But in the ancient mindset, supernatural miracles do occur. So often what began happening at least in the late renaissance period is that once Cal...

We just do not have any early stories about the resurrection appearances to the disciples. Q doesn’t have any. Mark doesn’t give us any, except the clue that the disciples will see Jesus in Galilee and two possible resurrection stories that Mark or his early Christian community have reworked into J...

Please say which one you think is probably correct, and summarize 1-3 reasons why, as well as possible counterarguments to those reasons if you think of them. them. I am inclined to think that Matthew was written first, and then that Mark was a shortened version. I used to assume that the claims we...

Acts 15.30-41 describes what happens after the Jerusalem conference: 30 So when they [= Paul, Barnabas, Judas Barsabbas, and Silas] were sent away, they went down [from Jerusalem] to Antioch; and having gathered the congregation together, they delivered the letter. 31 When they had read it, they re...

Is there another resurrection appearance (one set on a sea) that Mark has moved back into the life of Jesus - Jesus walking on water (Mk 6:45-52)? And if so why? One theory I read was that the water appearances stories have been moved back earlier into Jesus' life before the resurrection (Mark 6) a...

The Transfiguration could be seen as a prefigurement of the resurrection. And since the Transfiguration was on a mount, perhaps the place in Mark could be on a mount too. Besides, in both Luke and Matthew, Jesus ascends or appears on some mountain, so the same could be guessed about Mark's expectat...

I read Russian and am Orthodox.
I trust Uspensky's honesty on theology and Biblical research if he is a Russian bishop.

theterminator wrote:

I am sure that Mark knew much more about the stories than he showed. He obviously knew about the resurrection stories

mark has told us in his account the difference between an angel and ordinary human.

Can you be more specific?