Biblical Criticism & History Forum - earlywritings.com

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...

I suppose the most that can be said is that this can be argued, probably, to be in error, but, if so, it means nothing more than that Tacitus may have been guilty of an anachronism. It's easily understood as such whether stemming from Tacitus or an interpolator. Rubbish, Peter. Tacitus clearly unde...

From my reading of Fergus Millar's first article, Carrier's got nothing to support his views. If you regard the question as inconclusive, then I believe it has to be dropped as an argument against the authenticity of the passage. You require the conclusion that to call Pilate a procurator was a mis...

Crossan thinks that "secret Mark" was the original Mark's gospel, which included the two passages noted by Clement of Alexandria, and ending at 15:39 (I do not agree with that, I think "secret Mark" was an elaboration of canonical Mark). Right. You seem to have represented him f...