Biblical Criticism & History Forum - earlywritings.com

One of my main questions about the text is what status it had among the Jewish Christian church in Jerusalem in c. 135 AD. First, I should note that scholars have a 70 year period for its date of composition, c. 50-150, so while it looks like it was written before the 135 destruction, this is not cl...

“Now this is reported by Papias about Mark, but about Matthew this was said, Now Matthew compiled the reports in a Hebrew manner of speech, but each interpreted them as he could… and [he] had also set forth another story about a woman who was accused of many sins before the Lord, which the Gospel a...

I am pretty certain the Nazoraean gospel is indeed a version of canonical Matthew with some changes made and additions inserted. I am pretty certain the Ebionite gospel is a combination of Matthean and Lucan materials with tendentious additions and changes. What I am not at all certain about is tha...

Thanks for responding, Peter. Most scholars seem to pull out the middle of 4 Esdras and consider it non-Christian Jewish, while considering the beginning and ending to be Christian and naming them 5 and 6 Esdras, respectively. Based on this scheme, 4 Esdras would almost certainly come before the Apo...

maybe it was the other way around, and 4 Esdras was a Jewish Christian work that incorporated the Apocalypse of Peter I don't think so. Dear Peter , Can you please tell me why you think that the Apocalypse of Peter used 4 Esdras, instead of the other way around? I couldn't find any information as t...

In order to establish a date of authorship for the Apocalypse of Peter , some scholars, like C. Detlef Müller, as quoted on the Early Writings page (below), theorize that the Apocalypse of Peter used a quote from 4 Esdras . They conclude that since 4 Esdras was written about 100 AD, that the Apocaly...

K. Lewis, Since you have studied Revelation, I want to ask if you think the Book sets the End Time events, particularly Armaggedon as happening at a specific year. It describes armies on horses, so this implies some time when nations were still using horse cavalry, eg. before WWii. To give an analog...

Ben, I approach the issue of "Jesus Ben Damnaeus" as a mystery or a question. You mentioned one occurrence of a Greek name for a High Priest in the 1st century (Theophilus). This agrees with the idea that Jewish high priests tended not to have such names in the first century. What is its ...

A Jewish priest would tend not to take a Greek name.... Why not? After the Maccabean period we have Jewish high priests named Aristobulus, Alexander, Antigonus, and Theophilus: all Greek names. Right. Onias and Menelaus came to my mind when I wrote that. The position of high priest was a very impor...

To begin with, as a Jewish Pharisee who wrote derisively about all other messiah claimants, Josephus would have been unlikely to believe Jesus to be the Christ. However, even if he did come to that belief, common sense would tell us that he would dedicate a heavy portion of Antiquities to his Messi...