Biblical Criticism & History Forum - earlywritings.com

Jews were exiled again in the 1st and early 2nd C; I often wondered if that diversified their beliefs & practices and caused some exiled-communities to focus on traditions practiced before they were exiled in those latter times.

Wouldn't literary criticism be more a tool for glimpsing at who wrote the texts?

Does the question of the historicity of the gospel come down to a question of whether the text originally intended to portray an earthly or heavenly stranger? If we acknowledge Joseph was a very late addition then a mother specifically named 'Mary' was yet another layer of the same onion. While Luk...

... First, I deny that we have any idea what "early Christians" did or did not believe. There is no record of what second century CE folks thought about anything, let alone the nascent new religion, Christianity--the very word did not exist until the fifth century, correct me if I err. It...

it fails to account for the many odd and unnatural details of the event, why these details are changed for its second telling, and what was its point in relation to the similar miracle by Elisha. A reason that can account for all of these has to win over one that is as generalized as saying it's a ...

I think the proposal for a 2nd coming is tied to the proposal there was or would be a resurrection.

Commentary on Gospel Texts on Loaves and Fishes Collating the text on the loaves and fishes from all four gospels there are about 2000 words, nearly 100 verses. The feeding of the multitude is the most prominent miracle in the Bible, appearing six times compared to three for the resurrection, but i...

The Gospels are a fleshing out of the epistles, breathing life and engagement into the dry bones of Paul's cosmic vision through imaginative fiction. It is not necessary for the Pauline epistles to precede the Gospels for that to happen; they may have started existing concurrently; they may have de...

^ "Bart'd sooner believe Carrier was dishonest and unprofessional than that he - Bart? - might have been mistaken or misinformed for assuming that the Casey's ?? book was not yet published" ??

The Jesus narrative is likely to have been developed over many generations - a century or two, even.