Biblical Criticism & History Forum - earlywritings.com

Thanks, Andrew. That is indeed a helpful distinction to make. It makes clear both the possibility of more results (such as the no-history answer you mention) as well as the fact that some of the results involve a broader area than others.

I'm impressed with how thoroughly unloved this blog post became. My worst yet.

http://peterkirby.com/mission-impossible.html

Pro-mythical stuff gets ~50 shares, pro-historicity stuff gets ~50 shares, this stuff gets... 2!

They said the same thing about the four-minute mile. Fair enough, but even with an exceptional individual who is able to write what should become a consensus account of Christian origins on account of its proper treatment of the historical evidence, a sequence of historical events that are not at t...

It's kind of amazing how technology has made an ignorant newscaster's opinion relevant to millions of people, in a retrograde kind of way.

The main reason this position will never be popular is that people (either Christians, non-Christians, anti-Christians) are looking for more exciting solutions in relation with their belief, or lack of. Furthermore, this position will never satisfy Christians or anti-Christians. And non-Christians ...

Bultmann is the most famous example of the "bare historicity of Jesus." Thomas Thompson may be the contemporary example of "minimalist history." Their methods are largely the same. The major difference noted is that the former includes the historicity of Jesus and that the latter...

I think what he's saying is that non-historicist writers think about the documents but not about the communities behind them. If they thought about the communities behind them, they might realize why they are wrong about the historicity of Jesus. (Yes, not sure why, but that seems to be his point.) ...

It's posturing. First you'll need a Ph.D. to have an opinion, then you will need peer-reviewed publications, then you will need tenure, then you will need a headcount of like-minded peers, then you will need a session at the SBL for the subject, and then they'll slap you on the back and say you were...

Blogged this, with some changes of wording:
http://peterkirby.com/mission-impossible.html

We can easily distinguish between nine different and irreconcilable approaches to the study of Christian origins, characterized by the amount of intrinsic weight given to the two main sources of ideas that could guide and limit the multiplication of hypotheses: (1) Statements made by the Christian s...