Biblical Criticism & History Forum - earlywritings.com

Contra Celsum After these matters this Jew of Celsus, instead of the Magi mentioned in the Gospel, says that Chaldeans are spoken of by Jesus as having been induced to come to him at his birth, and to worship him while yet an infant as a God, and to have made this known to Herod the tetrarch ; and ...

I tend to believe that Morton Smith is right....because the librarian of the Patriarchate of Jerusalem took the extraordinary steps of cutting Clement's letter out of the codex....and "losing" it. If it were obviously fake that would be the dumbest thing possible to do. Much better to let...

Provisionally, about dating, though not a simple subject--nor is naming unnamed ancient authors!--I note that it is rather widely agreed that Celsus used a previously-written Jewish source about Jesus, and it may turn out that some baraitot (early traditions) are relevant. Celsus' Jew according to ...

............................................................................ This was also something that followers of Pseudo Dionysius in the 4th century were said to do, to experience God's "essence." This has been discussed in BC&H before. I think Dan Merkur (sp?), a practicing MD ...

Does this idea require a relatively early misdating of Jesus ?
If Jesus was first misdated to the time of Jannaeus in say the late 4th century CE would there be surviving traditions about the Teacher of Righteousness to assist such misdating ?

Andrew Criddle

The middle (Greek) recension reads like real letters with personal details irrelevant to a later redactor. The short (Syriac) recension leaves it unclear for example where Ignatius is writing from.

Andrew Criddle

AI reconstruction so far: "The undersigned Archimandrite Kallistos, Librarian of the Central Library of the Holy Community, provides the book of Saint Sabas the Sanctified, Amsterdam edition of 1646, bearing the notation 'Epistles (61) of Saint Ignatius', which includes the endings of the 'Con...

The claim that Christians taught in secret something which contradicted the public doctrine need not (and probably does not) imply that in secret the historicity of Jesus was denied. Celsus might be implying that in secret Christians taught a position on moral behavior very different from their pub...

Papias on Matthew

Matthew put together the oracles [of the Lord] in the Hebrew language, and each one interpreted them as best he could.

may imply teaching by Jesus in Hebrew or Aramaic collected by Matthew and then translated by others into Greek.

Andrew Criddle

The claim that Christians taught in secret something which contradicted the public doctrine need not (and probably does not) imply that in secret the historicity of Jesus was denied. Celsus might be implying that in secret Christians taught a position on moral behavior very different from their publ...