Biblical Criticism & History Forum - earlywritings.com

Consider these two proposals: Mark: 1 The beginning of the good news of Jesus Christ. 2 As it is written in the prophet Isaiah, “See, I am sending my messenger ahead of you, who will prepare your way, 3 the voice of one crying out in the wilderness: ‘Prepare the way of the Lord; make his paths strai...

Hi Randy. If we think first about a collection of Paul's letters, before anyone has written any stories or anything extensive at all about Jesus, then the logical narrative that would initially be associated with the letter collection is a narrative about Paul himself. A few things stand out. First ...

I think its no different than the efforts to explain the development of life on earth. There were many proposals that attempted to replace the Biblical account of creation for centuries prior to Darwin. Many people got the details wrong, but they were all making proposals because they could see that...

For this position to exhibit coherence, Mark must be Marcion. As your opening paragraph grands the founding of Christianity to Mark, while your closing paragraph grants the same to Marcion. Well, I'm saying on the one hand you could say that the writer of the first Gospel (which I believe to the &q...

I would say that the real "founder" of "Christianity" was the writer of the Gospel of Mark, because Christianity as we know it is rooted in the Gospels. Or perhaps even Marcion was the founder of "Christianity". What Paul was engaged in was not truly identifiable as &qu...

There seems to be two diametric views of Roman Provenance theories. Either they are right on or they are total nonsense. I've come around to a position that accepts elements of Roman Provenance, while rejecting other aspects of it. Valliant and Atwill basically claim that the development of Christia...

Of course, the historicity of Jesus already enjoys near-unanimous acceptance among experts [Christian theologians]. "Flipping" that situation would be a hero deed. This thread was not about the historicity of Jesus. It was about whether the Gospel of Mark was an allegory that was misunder...

In this case we would know that the story was fictional. (Although there might have been a man called James who was killed for opposing the Romans.) There are several lives of the Saints that are clearly fictional because they are rewrites of an earlier life of another Saint with new dates names an...

I'm not going to argue over the definition of allegory. I'm not the arbiter of literary terminology. No, every story is not an allegory. I'm not even sure what the point is of arguing over the definition of allegory. Animal Farm is an allegory, Charlotte's Web is not. These are not my terms, they ar...

Is Star Wars an allegory? I don't think so. I mean I have never seen anyone claim that Star Wars, the first movie, symbolizes some current political situation. The Empire doesn't represent the Soviet Union or America. Who are the rebels? They align to no current political or national group of the 1...