Biblical Criticism & History Forum - earlywritings.com

Well, but if he was Josephus' magician Simon, then he was a real person, like Theudas and Judas the Galilean. If. Reminds me of what the Spartans told Philip of Macedon, when he sent a message to the Spartans, "You are advised to submit without further delay, for if I bring my army into your l...

My guess is that the author of Luke/Acts knew Josephus and incorporated his "bad" guy magician Simon into his work, the same way they incorporated the "bad" guys Theudas and Judas the Galilean. Theudas and Judas remain "bad" guys in Acts and so does Simon. In a sense i...

But with Simon we are left hanging. I don't read it as hanging, the story has just come to its conclusion. The stars of Acts are Peter and Paul. The guest stars just come on for one episode, and then they are gone. I stumbled upon a book that aims to rehabilitate Simon's image ( Simon Magus, the Fi...

There's also Josephus, who I think mentions Simon Magus in Ant. 20, and he too appears to have a negative view of him ("a person whose name was Simon ... a Jew he was, and by birth a Cypriot, and one who pretended to be a magician") and says his influence came to naught (since the son Feli...

But Zedekiah asked Jeremiah to pray for him and he met a bad end. So if anybody prayed for by anybody they meet a bad ending? Surely if Simon Magus met a bad end Acts would have told us. Well, no, but I assume the author of Acts was aware of Jer. 37 and the stories seem very similar. A big shot (Ki...

I'm a sucker for happy endings, but he *did* ask for Peter to pray for him. The guy who Christ is building his kingdom on. The key holder. The first pope. And Faul's worst enemy :) If even handkerchiefs that Peter touched could cure cancer, I have to believe that--like a lost lamb to the fold, Simo...

What's Iraneus's chain of apostolic descent? Why does he tell us all about Marcion's, but nothing about his own?? It's in AH 3.3.4: 4. But Polycarp also was not only instructed by apostles, and conversed with many who had seen Christ, but was also, by apostles in Asia, appointed bishop of the Churc...

I knew I shouldn't have said "gnostic" for this very reason, but all I meant is "people who are generally called or associated with gnostics"/"people who came after James and corrupted the Church." And the portrait of Simon Magus in Acts 8 seems fairly harsh to me: 18Wh...

For me, Hegesippus makes it clear that Marcion was just another name on a list of gnostics who sprang up after James died. EH 4.22.4. The same author [Hegesippus] also describes the beginnings of the heresies which arose in his time, in the following words: And after James the Just had suffered mart...

I'm not sure if the Ascents of James should be in both options though, even after all you've said, since James doesn't die in that account. In all the other accounts (in both of your options) James dies. If there was an oral tradition that James was beaten to death that started it all, why did the A...