Biblical Criticism & History Forum - earlywritings.com

This Nag Hammadi text doesn't seem to get as much attention as some of the others. All the gnostic texts are weird, but this one has some weird passages not found in any other text, as far as I know. Philip the apostle said, "Joseph the carpenter planted a garden because he needed wood for his ...

In his Facebook page, Prof Price calls apologetic the general trend to define Jesus as a Jew of Second-Temple (it seems that he wants to write a book about this titled "Judaizing Jesus"). I wonder about this because I have assumed always that there is no doubt that the Christian origins w...

The Iraq invasion worked out pretty good for these rascals. But quite frankly I'd rather have cuneiform in the hands of corrupt American evangelists than Muslim Iraqis who want to smash to bits all remnants of their "pagan" ancestry.

Early Christians seemed to be under the impression that the entire corpus of scripture was written for them in particular. "They're our scriptures, not yours." -- Justin Martyr, Dialogue with Trypho It's really not much different an attitude than, say, the Lutherans or Puritans in the 16t...

Margaret Barker spends the last five chapters or so of her book, The Great Angel , arguing that the ancient Israelite belief that Yahweh was one of the sons of El Elyon (= Most High God) survived well into New Testament times and beyond. She argues, among other things, the following about early Chr...

Paul's gospel doesn't tell us when, where, or why "the Lord Jesus" was crucified. So that's a bit of a shortcoming. Knowing Romans crucified Jews like we used hang up laundry to dry, there is no shortcoming here. Paul had to deal with the evolving theology, that was HIS communities import...

Paul's gospel doesn't tell us when, where, or why "the Lord Jesus" was crucified. So that's a bit of a shortcoming. That is true; there is very little location data in Paul's letters. Then again, the Pauline letters do not contain a huge amount of information about Jesus, they are more fo...

Paul's gospel doesn't tell us when, where, or why "the Lord Jesus" was crucified. So that's a bit of a shortcoming.

If Jesus = Paschal Lamb, then it follows that the original myth was that "the Jews" sacrificed Jesus. Romans don't sacrifice a lamb during Passover. But during the early second century, the de-mythologizing and historicizing phase began, Josephus was examined, and it was discovered that Je...

I think the Pauline authors believe that the Christ was crucified during Passover, but what year and why is the question. Why are these questions never addressed in the Pauline epistles? "In the pleroma of time, Theos sent a son, born of a woman ..." Why? Why did Theos do this?