Biblical Criticism & History Forum - earlywritings.com

The birth stories of Matthew and Luke are clearly late and reactionary additions to earlier narratives that gave no account of a birth of Jesus. They are specifically anti-docetic inventions. The case that the birth accounts are late anti-docetic inventions is very strong. So much has been done on ...

I agree that the birth stories are late additions. I think this really be beyond question at this point. I have come around to the idea that the first Gospel was simply ambiguous about the origins of Jesus, but likely inferred that he was indeed a person, not that he descended from heaven. But it wa...

What is this evidence? I am not inclined to take your word for it. I don't feel like hashing this out again, so I'll just say that there are many papers written on this topic Which do you have in mind? It's an interesting topic. Here's a simple example: https://www.logos.com/grow/when-mark-goodacre...

Yes, Celsus makes some claim about the "real" biography of Jesus, but it is evident that these supposed "real facts" about Jesus are themselves just alternative imaginings derived from the Gospels. "Let us imagine what a Jew- let alone a philosopher- might say to Jesus: 'Is...

What is this evidence? I am not inclined to take your word for it. I don't feel like hashing this out again, so I'll just say that there are many papers written on this topic, which argue that Matthew used Luke, not the other way around, and a lot of linguistic work has been done to show that Luke ...

i think it looks like the gospels are being massaged to fit in with the Pauline narrative rather than they (or their sources) not existing prior to the epistles. why did Acts take pains to introduce Paul out of nowhere, because he wasn't originally there? My personal thesis is that all of the mater...

I'm going to be radical here, and says it's possible Mk, Mt, Lk were the authors of the original gospels bearing their name. Or rather they may have been earlier versions of which they were authors. Irenaeus has no reason to make up Mark and Luke as authors. Cause they weren't disciples. Arguably t...

While we don't have the writings of the heretics themselves, we can get an idea of what the heresies were about from the early apologists. No-one as far as I know (purpose of this thread) ever questioned the historical existence of Jesus. There are some interesting passages that have been brought u...

Just want to point out that wile Irenaeus railed against these people who claimed to have attained "perfect knowledge" of God, he also claims that the Gospels he possessed were written by people with "perfect knowledge". We have learned from none others the plan of our salvation,...

When it comes to the four canonical Gospels we of course know their names, the Gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. All of the orthodox claims about where these Gospels came from and who wrote them are extremely consistent, to the degree that it appears really one person came up with an explanat...