Biblical Criticism & History Forum - earlywritings.com

It could be like modern associations with political parties... e.g. "Paul agrees with and typically votes for the Democrats, but is not a member of the Democratic Party". As always, it comes down to definition - does saying someone "is" a "Pharisee" mean they were a reg...

Yeah, so Tabor still thinks Pantera is Jesus' father? I read The Jesus Dynasty and his argument for Pantera... but I wasn't convinced. I don't think his idea gets beyond the level of speculation. Is anyone convinced?

DCHindley wrote:The first five books translated were the books of the Law (Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers & Deuteronomy).

Ah... Suddenly things make more sense! I had always just assumed it was more than that. Thanks!

I'm sure some here know the answers to these somewhat specific questions: What books did the original Septuagint include? Did it include 1 & 2 Maccabees, Tobit, Daniel 13, 1 Enoch etc.? Similarly, was there any book in the Old Testament today that wasn't included in the Septuagint? What is the o...

I don't think it's that complex. There was an early Christian tradition of a metaphorical "door" which belief in Jesus somehow opens for people. Going through the door is a metaphor for accepting the Christian dogma, becoming "saved" or what-have-you. Hegesippus simply has the Ph...

The Trinity is one big embarrassing cop-out IMO. From my experience, when you ask the average self-professing "Christian" in the street how the Trinity works, they will tell you a view of it that would have been regarded as heretical in the days that it was being formulated (and probably s...

"the point is to smear the mainstream Q hypothesis with mythicist associations" I don't see that. Sounds a bit far-fetched to me. And nor does it sound like a particularly strong strategy if a deliberate smear-campaign was his goal, given that there's no direct correlation between mythicis...

^Well, I'm in agreement with Casey on that point: It is one thing to deduce a hypothetical source tradition that we call "Q", but it's another altogether to then try and distinguish its "layers" and use these layers' supposed silence to make positive arguments. Seriously? We are ...

Something else of interest: Casey is pretty scathing of Doherty's use of Q, and I was in agreement with him on a lot of that: Yes, there probably was a Q-like tradition (whether written, oral, or some combination) that Matthew and Luke were drawing from, but it becomes highly problematic when we try...

Slowly getting through this book. About 2/3 of the way through now. Thankfully I've found it has improved, after the scattery 'Introduction'. Like most of these books, I agree with some of his points, disagree with others, and others I find landing in the category of 'plausible but not sure'. Knowin...