Biblical Criticism & History Forum - earlywritings.com

Thanks for the explanation. I hadn't thought of seeing the DSS as being from different groups before we're may be coming from different angles in this on what Jesus was about! To me its likely the DSS community influenced the development of Christianity. I think the book of Revelation is quite remar...

OK I had to look up Eisenman. He takes the old Jewish Rabbi idea but makes him a political revolutionary as well. Its like anything. If you ignore the evidence you don't like, you can make Jesus into anything you want! But you have to justify why to ignore the parts you don't like In Jesus's case yo...

SA, the fact you can't tell whether the Odes are Christian or Jewish proves it's both. In the book I'm holding right here it dates it about 100AD and which scholar is going to ruin their reputation by blaspheming and actually dating anything to the 1st century? Have you read it? What is with the hom...

SA, the 1st century-ish Odes of Solomon is a connective tissue but it agrees with you in that it isn't strongly law observant, instead of building a wall around the Torah it spiritualises it in a lot of ways similar to Paul, eg circumcision is of the heart. I'm not saying I agree there never were la...

John, interesting. Although i'm having trouble seeing how those DSS folk could be Christians other than a source for certain concepts borrowed from them. They come across as ultra-orthodox. But they might have influenced some later Christian offshoot that wrote book of the Revelation or something li...

interesting he says 'churches' plural. I think there were multiple 'churches' with varying opinions, and really that's the best explanation for the differences in the gospels

One can argue that Paul is laying down a law, a new law of his gospel but laid over existing foundations. the Judaisers would then seem to be a foil of sorts to make it seem that the Christians already had a law based attitude.

I was merely using it as an example of a contemptible act or act done privately because of the inherent shame involve

the act of believing the church fathers is quite normal and most men do it

haha, ante-Nicene church fathers are not really erotic material though, I think everyone can at least agree on that!

that is a fair point, and the Valentinians might fit in with what your saying well however there is also some Gnostics that said there is only one God and they think YHWH is not accurate, because God is everywhere.. sort of pantheistic. Pantheism itself places limits on Gnostic dualism. The Gospel o...