Biblical Criticism & History Forum - earlywritings.com

Well, ok that is a better example but from your example I can speculate that the reason had to do with the desire to introduce racial diversity - a clear trend in media and society as a whole in the last 20 years. In the cases I've mentioned there is so little information provided about a couple of...

Your second example - everybody knows Superman and Supergirl aren't real. But they are important. Again, completely different from the case here where the characters that changed have no real importance to the story, but they do have importance to those who would want to perpetuate a brand new hist...

We know the heresies understood Simon to have been crucified in the place of Jesus. They couldn't have had a gospel narrative with the wording of Mark 15:22 in it: A certain man from Cyrene, Simon, the father of Alexander and Rufus, was passing by on his way in from the country, and they forced him...

IF THE CRUCIFIXION NEVER REALLY OCCURRED - WHY SUCH DIFFERENCES?: Mohammed tells the story of Moses like 30 times in the Koran. And there are plenty of inconsistrncies between his various tellings. (Not to mention the inconsistencies between the Koranic versionS of the story and the Biblical versio...

As many of us know, the idea that 'Jesus' and 'Christ' were two different entities, two different 'persons' is quite old - as old if not older than our oldest explicit identification of them as properly referencing the same person. So I asked myself after I looked at 1 Corinthians - what's the olde...

Could also be a copyist was harmonizing in his head and thus "we" got in there.

...But clearly at least now that we see Jesus isn't Christ EVER for Celsus this might be part of the solution.... No! What Celsus is saying is that he believes all demi-god stories are myths, e.g. Perseus, Aeacus, and Minos. The virgin birth story of Jesus makes him a demi-god and by default a frau...

The story cited in the letter sounds like a rough draft for the story of Lazarus. That suggests authenticity (in the sense of being ancient at least) because I can imagine 'John' (Cerinthus) further developing this secret Mark story. The other way around would seem weird. Why create such a secret st...

Ephesians 2:3 Among these we all once lived in the passions of our flesh, following the desires of body and mind, and so we were by nature children of wrath , like the rest of mankind. "Wrath" here seems to be a designation for the OT god, as "angels" is in Galatians 3:19. It ex...

We've already noted that the first book of Against Marcion begins almost begins with this lengthy comparison of the Marcion and the Marcionites to the Scythians of Pontus: The sea called Euxine, or hospitable, is belied by its nature and put to ridicule by its name. Even its situation would prevent...