Biblical Criticism & History Forum - earlywritings.com

Hi Outhouse, Thanks for this. Neil Godfrey gives an excellent and very fair review. I agree with just about everything in it. I did find the book boring at times, primarily because I knew a lot of the history in it, but I can well imagine a lot of people with no or little knowledge of history receiv...

Hi Stephan huller, I'm afraid I have to agree with Andrew Criddle on this one. It seems to me that Tertullian is talking about Marcion's Christ as a totally other Christ. He says, "I will grant to them that the Creator has given us no signs of the cross of his Christ; but they will not prove fr...

Hi All, A while ago, I saw an article about this recent book that intrigued me. It said that the author argued that Jesus was a myth and offered a list of 126 writers who should have written about Jesus but did not. It seemed to be based on serious research.I was excited about reading it. Unfortunat...

Hi maryhelena, Thanks for this. As far as modern findings, one has to be sceptical. a nail from ancient Rome would be relatively common and worth perhaps $50, but a nail from a crucifixion would be extremely rare and worth perhaps $500,000. There are all kinds of pressure on archeologists and instit...

Hi Adam, In 1992, Geoffrey Mark Hahneman argued for a fourth century dating (The Muratorian Fragment and the Development of the Canon [Oxford: Clarendon, 1992]. In 2008, in an article in Vigiliae Christianae, entitled "Victorinus of Pettau as the Author of the Canon Muratori," J.J. Armstro...

Hi maryhelena, People end up at the hospital everyday with nail puncture wounds. It does not mean they were crucified. I am sure that people were as clumsy back then as now and dozens of people died from nail accidents every year. There were also any number of reasons people might nail a dead body -...

Hi Kapyong, This is very helpful. Thank you. In the Symposiacs by Plutarch, I found these two metaphorical uses of nail in book VIII: For the nail of pain and pleasure, that fastens the soul to the body, seems to do us the greatest mischief, by making sensible things more powerful over us than intel...

Hi All, In researching crucifixion, I have never found any evidence of anybody being actually nailed to a cross. I don't count the idiotic nonsense of the foot found with a nail in it as evidence of anything. None of the gospels mention it when describing the crucifixion. The only mention of nails c...

Hi Adam, You're talking about the Muratorium Canon that has recently been redated from the Second century to the Fourth century. Why should anybody believe that this fragment contains any reliable information about events in the First or Second Century at all? Warmly Jay Raskin That puts an end to t...

Hi John T, I am not quite getting the logic here. How does not believing in God make one religious or part of a religion? If I don't pray to Allah, does that make me religious? If I don't collect butterflies, does that make me a collector? If I don't play tennis, does that me an athlete? If I don't ...