Biblical Criticism & History Forum - earlywritings.com

One issue is that some of the allegedly parallel Pagan traditions are not clearly pre-Christian.

Do you wish to discuss any specific potential parallel ?

Andrew Criddle

I'm interested in how far back the tradition goes so if it goes no further back than Helena's claims, that would be significant to me. If it goes further back than I see those claims as largely if not completely irrelevant. Our earliest account is Eusebius Life of Constantine it appears to imply th...

One example may be DIAKONOS which originally meant a helper or servant but which becomes a technical term for a Christian official. In some NT passages it is disputed which of these meanings is involved.

Andrew Criddle

One issue is that doing Science (producing new scientific results) as distinct from learning the established wisdom seems to come to almost a full stop before 200 CE. This is probably too early to blame Christianity. One possible factor in the 3rd century and later is the hostility of the developing...

1) Yes, as Andrew noted, the lines on the first page--28 lines--and the lines on the second page--26 lines--compare in a way such that mastara use "does not seem to be true." 2) And prior to that is the question whether a mastara was typically used on an already-bound book. (In this case ...

Eusebius' reliability was brought up in a different thread (or countless different threads) What are the most convincing reasons for doubting the veracity of the "church history" recorded by Eusebius? I guess at the same time, what are the weaknesses in the argumentation around doubting t...

I'm not an expert here at all. But if a mastara was used it would IIUC leave marks that would be apparent on both sides of a page with the one ruling serving as a guide for writing on both sides. In this case one would expect the lines of writing on the first of the three pages to coincide with the ...

The paper that shook the world of scholarship in 1984 (the year Quesnell and Smith almost met in Jerusalem) https://www.jstor.org/stable/602175?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents Lieberman died in an airplane crash a few weeks later. Lieberman actually died in March 1983 (on an airplane but not IIUC in a...

The paper that shook the world of scholarship in 1984 (the year Quesnell and Smith almost met in Jerusalem) https://www.jstor.org/stable/602175?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents Lieberman died in an airplane crash a few weeks later. Lieberman actually died in March 1983 (on an airplane but not IIUC in a...

Jewish scholar Jacob Neusner died on Saturday
http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340 ... 10,00.html

Andrew Criddle