Biblical Criticism & History Forum - earlywritings.com

Seutonius is not good information - ... Suetonius considered Christ (Chrestus) to be a Roman rebel active in the days of Claudius, who reigned A.D. 41-54 : "Judaeos, impulsore Chresto, assidue tumultuantes (Claudius) Roma expulit". "Since the Jews constantly made disturbances at the i...

Y ou did a great job of providing evidence. Hats off great work. No real disagreement by me, nor should there be, by anybody. None of it is evidence: not one piece of literature. I think your personal interpretation of the evidence is a fine opinion, but one of many different credible opinion's ava...

Great article. I think Jesus existed. But I'm not as confident as people like Ehrman and Casey who seemingly do think it's a slam dunk. For me, I see lots of pointers in the direction of the existence of a historical Jesus. None are slam dunks, but it seems unlikely that all of them are flawed. eg....

. There is no primary source information: no suitable contemporaneous documentation of 'eye-witness' accounts; no archaeology sites * (for several centuries!!) no artifacts (no art; no objects of Christian practice; etc) All we have is vague, dubious narratives (Josephus, Tacitus, etc) written many...

... Apparently that claim [that the Serapis/Sarapis cult was a new religion invented by Ptolemy Soter] rests largely on very late sources such as Tacitus and Plutarch, and falls under suspicion of being ideologically invented as part of a propaganda war between the religious-political powers and tr...

http://mv.vatican.va/1_CommonFiles/media/photographs/MEZ/010_MEZ_22804_go.jpg Isis-Sothis-Demeter From Tivoli, Hadrian's Villa, Palestra (found circa 1550) Period of Hadrian 131-138 AD White marble Height120 cm. cat. 22804. Monumental bust of the goddess Isis-Sothis-Demeter, considered the bearer o...

http://mv.vatican.va/1_CommonFiles/media/photographs/MEZ/011_MEZ_22795_go.jpg Antinoo/Osiris From Tivoli, Hadrian's Villa, Pecile (1736 excavations) Period of Hadrian131-138 AD White marble Height 241 cm. cat. 22795. Statue of the divinity Antinous/Osiris in white marble, signifying Upper Egypt. Th...

http://mv.vatican.va/1_CommonFiles/media/photographs/MEZ/MEZ_sala03_2_am.jpg The Shrine of Serapis (Serapeum), which must have been a symbolic representation of the Valley of the Nile, was restructured after the journey of Hadrian in Egypt of 130-131 AD , during which the emperor'’s lover Antinous ...

http://mv.vatican.va/1_CommonFiles/media/photographs/MEZ/009_MEZ_22807_go.jpg Two-faced Osiris/Apis (Serapis) is born from the lotus flower From Tivoli, Hadrian's Villa, Canopus (1736 excavations) Period of Hadrian 131-138 AD Bust of Osiris who is born from the lotus flower, erroneously restored in...

From Temple to Church: Destruction and Renewal of Local Cultic Topography in Late Antiquity; edited by Johannes Hahn, Stephen Emmel, Ulrich Gotter