Biblical Criticism & History Forum - earlywritings.com

I agree that we can't say with any degree of confidence what Jesus did or did not say when it comes to specifics. But I think we can come to some basic view of the kind of things he probably said - i.e. I don't think it's unreasonable to say that he was probably a parabolist who spoke of the coming ...

How do the proponents of the Q document account for the fact* that the early church fathers didn't show awareness of/discuss/quote the purportedly independent Q document? It would appear to be a strange omission if such a document existed (and was available to atleast two independent authors 'Matth...

Sad news.

I finally got around to getting a copy of Casey's book. About 1/4 of the way through at the moment. Not really impressed so far. The entire 'Introduction' is like a vent of steam about all these disagreements he's had with bloggers. To an outsider like myself whose never read or followed Casey befor...

What are your thoughts on the Q hypothesis? Do you think it existed? How confident can we be in reconstructing it? Should it be used as a 'source' for the historical Jesus? What arguments for its existence do you find persuasive? What arguments against its existence do you find persuasive? My own th...

I think somewhere in the 70s is the best bet. Mark is the most thematically consistent and least convoluted of the canonical gospels. It was clearly the spinal source used by Matthew and Luke. I don't read/speak ancient greek, but scholars who do typically say that Mark's greek is the most primitive...

My analogy to Jesus would be a moment like that. A basically unknown figure who attracted imagination and sympathy for something but whose legend was virtually all invented. Just as a hypothetical, imagine that some kind of disturbance happens at the Temple during Passover. Somebody has to take the...

^MrMacSon, this is where I said Stevencarrwork misquoted Ehrman: It is slimey dishonesty to say there are no sources which mention Pilate... The point I was getting at is that we all make such mistakes. When Stevencarrwork said this, he failed to quote Ehrman correctly . In the Huff Post article, Eh...

I agree that Ehrman probably didn't spend much time on the Huff Post article. And I agree that I don't think it's fair to accuse mythicists as being in the similar category as Holocaust deniers (that said, some mythicist theories are trash). But making accusations of deceptive motive regarding the P...

^Would I be justified in accusing you of "slimey dishonesty" because in the process of summarising, you failed to mention that Ehrman said there were no "Roman" sources? You've just stated that Ehrman said there were "no sources" - that's not what he said - He said ther...