Biblical Criticism & History Forum - earlywritings.com

Richard Bauckham and others go so far now as to write that the gospels are based not just on Christian communities but upon eyewitnesses. An example of the campaign being waged in Anglo scholarship for a (stronger) conservative/traditional point of view in the study of the New Testament, largely co...

This was the received Semitic creation story, a version of which is well-known from the Babylonian creation. In this latter version Marduk used the divine wind to hold the watery chaos dragon Tiamat 's mouth open so that he could thrust his sword into it. The Hebrew "deep" is the cognate ...

I am feeling Clintonian: "depends on what the meaning of the word 'is' is."

This thread has officially jumped the shark.

Faith, damned faith, and statistics. Air travel on commercial airliners in most countries has a pretty good record for safety.

Maybe this "does too, does not" debate could benefit from considering historical method as a subject as practiced in secular history. Historical Method Full disclosure: I wrote the (substance of this) article. http://www.christianorigins.com/2005/08/introduction-to-historical-method.html M...

Herod Agrippa II: He was friendly (Wikipedia says "intimate") with Josephus, which explains a lot I guess.

PhilosopherJay wrote:I actually agree that for the near future there won't be much chance for a consensus. However, I do have hope that a consensus towards historical skepticism will emerge as more rational people study the field and carefully weigh the arguments.

Fair enough. Cheers!

For the record, the historicity of some persecutions against heretics in the fourth century is not really in question, and assigning them more or less significance than the persecutions against Christians in the third and early fourth century seems to me to be subjective.

I'm not sure that a single, obscure text, completely unknown to rabbinical Judaism ("The Wisdom of Solomon"), can be used to broadly claim that "Judaism had already taken a turn for the Arian." Melito, I believe, classified it within the New Testament canon. People who think the...