Biblical Criticism & History Forum - earlywritings.com

David C. Hindley has scanned the Latin text of Irenaeus, Adversus Haereses, which needs to be proofread. On his behalf, I am looking for volunteers to do the proofreading. If you'd like to help, let me know by reply here or by e-mail (peterkirby@gmail.com). Thank you.

Edmund Standing badly wants to refute the "position we have no adequate reason to believe that the gospels refer to a historical figure called Jesus at all." http://www.butterfliesandwheels.org/2009/against-mythicism-a-case-for-the-plausibility-of-a-historical-jesus/ What he ends up doing ...

I have floated the question of what arguments there are against the Historicity of Jesus over on JesusMysteries , the Yahoo! group, and I am indebted to the responses there for some more points of argument. (9) Roger Parvus argues for a modified hypothesis where Jesus descends to earth briefly, as l...

I just purchased Robert Eisenman's James the brother of Jesus; and it appears he writes to a more knowledgeable group of fellow bible scholars (feeling he must prove every point); and after just arriving at chapter 7 of this two inch thick monster; I wish he would turn it over to Bart Ehrman, to br...

Can anyone point to work on this issue? Dennis MacDonald attempts a discussion in the opening chapters of his book The Homeric Epics and the Gospel of Mark . One emphasis of his concerns the general plausibility that an author would choose the source work as a target for mimesis. If this is the kin...

the historocity of Jesus I can appreciate that it's a typo, but I just love the sound of "historocity". I think it might have a use to describe a specific situation we have to deal with. I see it as a portmanteau word made up from historical and atrocity and meaning those historical notio...

bskeptic wrote:One example of a possible criteria:

The criterion mentioned (profundity, diagnosis of human condition) is not really able to do anything more than confirm the cultural bias of the person applying it.

Celsus in Book Five seems to indicate the trinity was Platonic in origin and that this would account for the existence of the idea in Valentinus. Do you mean this? Origen, Contra Celsus , V.8, http://earlychristianwritings.com/text/origen165.html Certainly they say that the Cosmos taken as the whol...

stephan happy huller wrote:I was wondering whether stigmata and crucify might have been transposed at some point.

Could you explain?

New blog entry: http://peterkirby.com/the-threefold-nature.html In which I look at a reference from which many have said that Valentinus was one of the first "trinitarians." Introduction: The text attributed to the second century Gnostic Valentinus called “On the Three Natures,” known to u...