Biblical Criticism & History Forum - earlywritings.com

Also the Gospel of the Hebrews says no such thing. This is what we have from a *summary* (so not the actual text) from much later: "Also the Gospel according to the Hebrews, lately translated by me into Greek and Latin speech, which Origen often uses, tells, after the resurrection of the Saviou...

Also, the Gospel of Hebrews is a second century text, so we can't exactly argue it reflects earliest Christianity nor can we anachronistically implant it on our interpretation of Paul.

(1) The mere fact that there is a theological reason for mentioning Jesus as "born of a woman" does not in any way invalidate it as historical evidence. That historical datum are used for theological purposes does not invalidate them. Thus, it is not a contradiction. This also makes the co...

Btw, just want to thank you for this really delightful conversation. Not often I get to have an unheated and just nice back and forth in mythicist debates anymore.

"only in opposition to people who denied the birth" That is a presumptive argument with no justification. As a case in point, shall we then declare that all statements about birth of Julius Caesar were because people denied his birth? No. This argument is purely an invention to fit your ag...

Yeah. There is honestly a lot of stuff wrong with the argumentation. I'm just wholly unconvinced that the Gospels can be used as sources to validate anything specific about Jesus' life, just because of our epistemic limitations in all our methods. While I'm convinced they have history in them, I don...

The Gospel of Thomas has been well known to have been reliant on the Synoptic Gospels and so is a much later transformation. So its information is, at best, unreliable and specious about Christian origins. Also, where in Mark's Gospel does Jesus deny his Davidic line? That again sounds like somethin...

Why do they have to be interpreted literally? You are just projecting gnosticism back onto Paul and saying it "must" be done, but that is anachronistic at best. And this does not explain why he would say Jesus is a descendant of David, Abraham, Jesse, or why he had a mother, a brother, a b...

So we are just ignoring 1 Thess. 2:14-16, 4:15, Gal. 1:18-19, 3:16, 4:4-5, Rom. 1-3, 9:3-5, 15:8, 15:9-12, 1 Cor. 7:10-11, 9:14, 11:23-26, I mean I could go on and on and on. There are numerous times where Paul mentions a historical Jesus, and all the hypotheses I've seen to explain these away have ...

The problem is that none of that is actually invalidating of a historical Jesus, either in Paul. As with the Valentinians, both can be true, and thus a historical figure Jesus exist. Thus, your view actually is not a counter to historicity. It is actually completely compatible with it and, in fact, ...