Biblical Criticism & History Forum - earlywritings.com

to Neil, I don't follow how this can be understood as a description of a post 70 reform of Judaism by the Pharisees. That was not my main point in quoting this passage from Josephus and making my prior claim: "And gMatthew was written when Pharisees were turning into rabbis and well esteemed by...

to Neil, If you were more familiar with apocalyptic literature you would see why. We read there that God has already come down to earth in clouds to judge and rescue and the stars have already fallen to the earth with the fall of other great cities. Where does that come from? Apocalyptic literature ...

To Neil, What Doherty and Carrier do is propose hypotheses and then make predictions on those hypotheses to test them. What kind of methodology is that? Anyone can propose hypotheses, and then make predictions on those hypotheses when it is known already that these predictions are realized (most of ...

It was an argument of Bernard IIRC, I'll try and track down the full context. ETA: Bernard Muller wrote: And gMatthew was written when Pharisees were turning into rabbis and well esteemed by Jews, allowing them to reform Judaism and end the time of distress which originated with the fall of Jerusal...

to Neil, What you are doing with dating the gospels is not a prediction at all. It is simply an assertion with no means of verification. I verified the dating of gMark by external evidence provided by 1 Clement, Q, gLuke & gMatthew. For each of these texts, I also provided internal and external ...

to Neil, I said it is not valid to say "If someone wrote about X (e.g. destruction of Jerusalem) and not about something else then we know he wrote in or around the year Y." He wrote about something else. That soon after the fall of Jerusalem, the advent of the kingdom with many concrete a...

to MrMacSon, A significant problem is that nuance of the topic changes, depending on the current discussion. Reading sites like yours, and trying to put things in context, is hard work. It was much harder work for me. I think the blog posts I proposed about dating are 100 % relevant to this discussi...

to Neil, Sorry for persecuting you by asking you for a simple answer to a question. I don't want to read a lot of stuff with you simply saying how passages X, Y and Z prove the document was written in such and such a time. I asked for a statement of principle. You obviously cannot give it and have n...

to Neil, No, Bernard, I'm not going to look up some stuff on your website. If you can give me a simple outline of an answer here then good. If not I can only conclude you are less interested in discussion than trying to get us to boost hit counts on your webpage. I am very tired now after these disc...

to Stephan,
I have to let you with your shadows of evidence requiring heavy interpretation to suit your case.
And Mani, a 3rd century Mesopotamian who "arose" well after Tertullian is evidence for you, so be it.
Cordially, Bernard