Biblical Criticism & History Forum - earlywritings.com

War 6.5.4: The Jews took this prediction to belong to themselves in particular, and many of the wise men were thereby deceived in their determination. Now this oracle certainly denoted the government of Vespasian, who was appointed emperor in Judea. My view is that, like the early Christians, Josep...

My personal theory is that, contra Origen, Josephus was a "low-key Christian", and that the Testimonium Flavianum was real. To answer the OP, Joshua/Jesus was a quite common name at the time (like John and James/Jim today), so the frequency of the name in Josephus didn't catch my eye. But ...

Right, thanks. Google Translate is awful for Greek. Another translation issue that came up was what it says after six days Jesus did. The translations says instructed, commanded, or (per Morton Smith Iirc) told him what to do. This confused me, because I didn't get why Jesus would wait 6 days before...

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The Greek text of the relevant part of "Secret Mark" says: και εξελθοντες εκ του μνημειου ηλθον εις την οικιαν του νεανισκου· ην γαρ πλουσιος· και μεθ ημερας εξ επεταξεν αυτω ο Ιησους· και οψιας γενομενης ερχεται ο νεανισκος προς αυτον, περιβεβλημενος σινδονα επι γυμνου, και εμεινε συν αυτ...

Mara Bar Serapion means Mara, son of Serapion, and his letter to his son Serapion refers to the Jews' wise king, whom they killed. Some scholars think that this is an allusion to Jesus. You can read Mara Bar Serapion's letter here: http://www.earlychristianwritings.com/text/mara.html (Question 1: SE...

How many 1st to 2nd nonChristian writers who mentioned Christians described them as odd? How many did not? Peter Kirby writes: If there is one impression that we can gather from the references to Christians in our non-Christian sources, one common theme that that runs through Tacitus, Suetonius, Pl...

I respect the careful research that you put into this. Robert Price wrote, as quoted earlier: All careful readers know that Revelation is not simply an eyewitness account of a series of mind-blasting visions. How can one prove definitively that this text was solely like a Christmas Carol, a careful...

I did inform you that I did understand about life expectancy and it was implied in the original comment. I pointed out a life expectancy average of 30 and 35. I pointed out that with this average life expectancy few people would live past the age of 54 (reached in 50 CE).'' Hello, Michael. My quest...

I respect the careful research that you put into this. Robert Price wrote, as quoted earlier: All careful readers know that Revelation is not simply an eyewitness account of a series of mind-blasting visions. How can one prove definitively that this text was solely like a Christmas Carol, a carefull...