Biblical Criticism & History Forum - earlywritings.com

The first direct reference to a Gospel of Basilides is ... found in Origen (c.185 – c.254), who reports; The Church has four Gospels. Heretics have many. One of them is entitled ‘According to the Egyptians’, another is ‘According to the twelve apostles’. Basilides too dared to write a ‘Gospel accor...

The School of Gnosticism was divided into two major parts, commonly called the Syrian Cult and the Alexandrian Cult. These schools agreed in essentials, but the latter division was more inclined to be pantheistic, while the former was dualistic. While the Syrian cult was largely Simonian, the Alexa...

. There have been a few recent posts mentioning 'Basilides' [Greek - Basilides = King's son ] - http://www.earlywritings.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=2200&p=48961&hilit=Basilides#p48961 http://www.earlywritings.com/forum/viewtopic.php?p=49997#p49997 http://www.earlywritings.com/forum/v...

It might be possible to argue that 'Paul' was Marcion or even Simon based on the statement in Justin 1 Apology : And, thirdly, because after Christ's ascension into heaven the devils put forward certain men who said that they themselves were gods (Τρίτον δ' ὅτι καὶ μετὰ τὴν ἀνέλευσιν τοῦ Χριστοῦ εἰ...

... Carrier ... ... Many journals require us to write these statements. And indeed this was one such case: the article I submitted had no such section. The peer reviewers insisted that I write it . To oblige them, I did. This [is] the pertinent passage at the end of Carrier's article ... The signif...

More reviews of Carrier's use of Bayes Theorem - https://www.quora.com/What-is-your-opinion-on-the-use-of-Bayes-theorem-as-a-tool-to-discover-the-best-historical-explanation-for-the-data-we-have-as-outlined-by-Richard-Carrier http://www.patheos.com/blogs/exploringourmatrix/2012/08/review-of-richard-...

It's hard to say with absolute certainty of course. I've just stumbled across this now. But my sense is that, yes, it provides a historical foundation for 'mythicism.' .... the idea that Paul went up to third heaven and came back down as a missionary immediately following Jesus's heavenly ascension...

Apart from the fact that O'Neill seems to have muddled up the two Ananus figures, his basic argument is that the family of Ananus the Younger, via Ananus the Elder, payed some sort of restitution to the brother of the man his son killed - the brother ..being the new High Priest, Joshua/Jesus ben Da...

If, as I strongly suspect, Paul's ascent to Paradise/the third heaven is the 'call' which - on his return - leads to him preaching the doctrines of Christianity , it is difficult to imagine an equivalent 'historical narrative' to what is written in Acts. Did the world around him 'know' that Jesus w...

I never noticed this sentence before: Indeed, when I hear that this man was chosen by the Lord after He had attained His rest in heaven, I feel that a kind of improvidence is imputable to Christ, for not knowing before that this man was necessary to Him Denique audiens postea eum a domino allectum,...