Biblical Criticism & History Forum - earlywritings.com

And yet the two, passion and apocalyptic fall of Jerusalem, are disconnected in the story-line. i.e. JC being crucified years prior to 70 c.e. They are certainly connected by common imagery and the implication of cause and effect. The gap years is part of the story line as much as the wilderness ye...

It is the whole body of early Christian literature, not just Luke and Acts, that contributes to premise #2. Maybe your perspective is that Christianity started out as something other than a cult and became a cult? My argument is about plausibility, so how is your model plausible? What is the closes...

Apocalyptic narratives in the gospels could have been added post 70 c.e., an update of sorts; a story-line development. The gospel JC story is not dependent upon such apocalyptic narratives. The apocalyptic prophet interpretation of the gospel JC is not the only possible interpretation of this figu...

. . . I disagree with one thing: that the event has to be coded out of fear of the authorities. I know that's very popular among apologists because of Revelation, especially, but I think it's far more likely that symbolic and cryptic language was used to convey "the mysteries of God" only...

Much also depends on our analysis of the literary form of the gospels. If we conclude that the gospels (let's stick with Mark) are a novella-like apocalypse*, a variant of writings like Daniel, then Mark cannot have been written before the fall of the temple in 70. This is because the apocalyptic fo...

Don't you think there was plenty of written and oral tradition before the temple fell? "Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent." - Ludwig Wittgenstein, Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus If there were plenty of written and oral tradition before the first gospel were written and ...

Tim Widowfield has decided to address some of the arguments in Casey's book and so far has three entries. (Okay, they're on my blog, but I'd be drawing attention to Tim's articles wherever they were -- I have found his contributions are always very well informed and insightful, and he takes special ...

Perhaps what critics need to do is to move the forum from the history department to the philosophy department, given the large number of people who are professing to do history while actually intending to lay the groundwork for faith-based apologetics , which should fall under philosophy of religio...

I have emailed Carrier to warn him against continuing with his logicide or to produce an explanation. After Carrier, perhaps we can be freed to turn our attentions to New Testament scholars who indicate they do not understand basic terms like "Messianic Secret" or the "Documentary Hyp...

Now this is potentially interesting. (Potentially -- one swallow and all that.) It is not that difficult to argue that the Gospel of John is a reworking of the Gospel of Mark. Yet though the Gospel and the Johannine epistles have significant differences, they do clearly belong to a "single scho...