Biblical Criticism & History Forum - earlywritings.com

http://www.firstthings.com/article/1996/04/002-are-the-gospels-mythical "This is the contemporary intellectual situation Christian thinkers face as they read the Scriptures. The Cross is incomparable insofar as its victim is the Son of God, but in every other respect it is a human event. An ana...

The seven letters have far more personality than all the remaining NT letters. I will grant that. They don't appear to be smooth, literary set-pieces like 1 & 2 Peter. This, I suspect, is the main reason why people are willing to believe them authentic. And they may indeed be authentic. But the ...

Of course several of the epistles are authentic. Carrier has presented a few extremely strong arguments for that, and IMO only someone with an emotional connection is unable to see how strong those arguments are. Basically he is arguing that the likelihood that anyone would be motivated to create t...

Given that the gospels are not written by the authors ascribed, 7 of the supposed Pauline epistles are not by the author ascribed, and none of the other letters in the NT are by the authors ascribed, I think the "prior probability" of anything in the NT being actually written by the person...

Given Mark's penchant for inventing symbolic geography, I'd say "best disciple town" is the most likely explanation.

Good to see the little-discussed "Coptic Apocalypse of Paul" aka "Visio Pauli" (not the Nag Hammadi book of the same name) getting some love in this thread. I came across it today in E.A. Wallis Budge's "Miscellaneous Coptic Texts in the Dialect of Upper Egypt." It's re...

But it does seem stupid. But looks can be deceiving. Sorry that I am a busy attending to the duties of a life not in its twilight. In order to keep track of your selective citations of obscure books and journals I should have to become a librarian like you. But then libraries are also in their twil...

"Ancient Assets Investments." Where is the barfing emoticon when you need it?

Here is the video.

http://tfs.site-ym.com/blogpost/889184/ ... rrier-Ph-D

Carrier starts talking about Matthew as Chiasmus at 57:36.

But what would be that camp in the early first century? Hebrews 13.11-13: For the bodies of those animals whose blood is brought into the holy place by the high priest as an offering for sin, are burned outside the camp. Therefore Jesus also, that he might sanctify the people through his own blood,...