Biblical Criticism & History Forum - earlywritings.com

Hi, I am still alive. I have a webpage on Revelation, which goes much deeper than what Carrier wrote: http://historical-jesus.info/rjohn.html It has been mentioned that 'Revelation' is the result of Christian additions on a thoroughly Jewish text: - "the main [part of the] apocalypse [of John]...

The 1906 Jewish Encyclopedia Online claims that the first strata of Revelation is pure Jewish Apocalypticism. It finishes with these words: The Epistles are, like the Gospel, Pauline in spirit and written for Pauline churches; the Book of Revelation remains, under its Christian cloak, a Jewish docum...

To me it reads a lot like Clement in Secret Mark, when he proclaims: To them, therefore, as I said above, one must never give way; nor, when they put forward their falsifications, should one concede that the secret Gospel is by Mark, but should even deny it on oath. For, "Not all true things ar...

In all seriousness though, what sort of an answer are you looking for? Rome was the the capital of the Roman empire and the conceptual center of the known world. The Acts of the Apostles is sometimes described as a story of how the Holy Spirit moved from Jerusalem to Rome. It's sort of hard to imag...

The reason why Acts has Paul go to Rome in the flesh is to explain away how Marcion 'effectively' (as well as originally) brought him to Rome. And to push back the timeline for Paul in Rome. And to thereby usurp ownership of Paul and diminish the roll of (and significance of) Marcion.

Did Marcion go to Rome simply because he thought he could buy the Papacy? What other than this goal might have motivated him to go to Rome, if he ever factually did so?

I think you are clearly onto something there. It indeed seems that as you have presented it Marcion had adequate motive. Who then was the first to conceive that the spiritual Christ of Marcion descended upon the human Jesus of the Jews at a baptism staged for this seemingly Catholicizing/unification...

DCH, are you still of the opinion that the earliest core of Paul's letters knew nothing of a Jesus or a Christ? I recall that years ago you attempted reconstructions of the letters which eliminated all reference to Jesus Christ.

As to John 1:12-13, I clearly see the concept of being "born again" as well as the concepts of rising from Hylic to Psychic and from Psychic to Pneumatic within these verses.

Some Gnostic's appear to have held to a hierarchy for mankind wherein there were nominally three core types/states: 1) Hylic (or Somatic) man, who was matter bound and effectively thereby 'dead'. Dust you were, and dust you will become.... 2) Psychic man, who possessed a soul, but still apparently f...