Biblical Criticism & History Forum - earlywritings.com

Useful to have this - thank you.

But it seems clear that there is no real reason to suppose that this is Christ at all, even if we mean by this "Christ depicted as the sun", rather than as Helios the deity. Hijman's comments on the other figures bear examination.

Once again we get into theories and hypothesizes derived from a variety of sources and cut-and-pasted into some conclusion presented by someone who may or may not have an agenda. Well and good. It is a free society and the internet is a great source for people to explore all sorts of interesting su...

What we need is data, and that says the contrary. It is impossible to see Acts as post 61; and with that, the composition of the synoptics, all clearly related, must be pulled back to that sort of period. I respect your position I just disagree with it. Let me assert another alternative. From my re...

No indeed. But arguing from that silence that this shows they were not seems rather brave to me! I didn't say that the lack of self identification is per se disproof that they were witnesses, but it places the burden of proof ... <snip> At this point I lost interest, I'm sorry to say. When we look ...

What identifies the Apollo Mosaic as Christ? That's the question that I asked. I never got a satisfactory answer. The answer may be that some Italian guidebook said so - I have seen this sort of dribbling across languages - and some of those are not of a good standard. 4th century iconography is a ...

Stephen Emmell, a very senior Coptologist, has also written in praise of Christian Askeland's work. His breakthrough, I think, was to realise that there was a bit of data nobody else had thought about. Another interesting angle that I read somewhere: Karen King may have been specifically targeted by...

It is impossible to see Acts as post 61 Impossible? The only way I can imagine it is "impossible" is by imputing into Acts our own notions of what it should be as "history" and without regard for the literary nature of the document as assessed by its literary context. I'm open t...

All this starts to go into an area in which I have only marginal interest, because I don't spend a lot of time on the subject. The historical record says what it says; over the last 2 centuries endless attempts have been made (and are still being made) to evade its testimony; the veriest nonsense ha...

You're welcome.

Papias is evidence ... why would he not be? Papias is not evidence because he described books which cannot be Canonical Matthew and Mark. Mark is not a memoir of Peter. Matthew is not a Hebrew Logia . I think this is to confuse evidence and inference; and it's so easy to do. We can see t hat Papias...