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I think the hand and forehead piece has some reference to the Shema. Deuteronomy 6:4-8. “Hear, O Israel: The LORD is our God, the LORD alone. You shall love the LORD our God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your might. Keep these words that I am commanding you today in your heart. Recite them to your children and talk about them when you are at home and when you are away, when you like down and when you rise. Bind them as a sign on your hand, fix them as an emblem on your forehead.”

I think the number, there are a few theories I've read, one being the way in which you can connect 666 to Nero. I've found a more interesting, I think, explanation in connecting this moment back to 1st Kings 10:14-15. In that story, every year, Solomon weighs his gold, and every year it comes back the same, 666 talents. The point of the Kings narrative is that Solomon was moving the heart of the people away from God toward wealth and idolatry. Since 666 is an intensive symbol for incompleteness, idolatry, judgment, non-fulfillment, evil itself raised to the third power. The message is, no matter how many times you try to add up the life of the “empire” it always brings about incompleteness and destruction.

In Revelation, I'd argue John has some of that in mind. I think John writes Revelation in a really political way against empire. Earlier in the book he talks about the people of God being marked by the lamb. If you're not marked by the lamb, you're marked by Empire. I think the marking is then a way for John to say, those who are marked by the 'beast' (empire) live in a life that falls short of true life given to those marked by the lamb.

That's just the brief version, I pulled a lot of this from Unveiling Empire as well as some other great books on Revelation.

/u/w_v writes here,

>> At the end of Enki and Ninhursanga is a pun-filled section where eight deities are extracted from eight body parts—each body part sharing a core syllable with the deity's name. Ninti (whose name means Giver of Life) comes from Enki's rib because ti is also the word for rib.

>> This pun is completely lost in Hebrew which is why Eve's creation is such a head-scratcher for those who don't read Sumerian literature. The mystery disappears when you understand Eve as a demythologized Hebrew Ninti.

>> The following quote is from Janet Smith's <em>Dust or Dew: Immortality in the Ancient Near East and in Psalm 49</em>:

>>> “Eve has subsumed Ninti's identity as the Mother of all the Living [but] it would be an error to think that a simple borrowing has occurred here. The borrowing is polemical which deliberately modifies the old tradition in order to establish a new paradigm. It is unique to Israelite theology that Eve is a human, representing Yahweh and is no goddess.”

>> These traditions may represent some of the narrative commitments that the authors of Genesis were saddled with when crafting the Adam and Eve story.

Getting out of a western mindset is a step in the right direction, but the Bible is not the product of an eastern culture either. This book certainly makes the basic mistake of not putting the Bible in its ancient Jewish context, so I'd say that's the more fundamental issue to tackle first.

Check out Kugel's How to Read the Bible: A Guide to Scripture, Then and Now for a more academic take on this topic.

I have always been attracted to Robert Eisenmann's view that James was the real heir to the Jesus movement. His James the Brother of Jesus: The Key to Unlocking the Secrets of Early Christianity and the Dead Sea Scrolls (1998) was a good read, even if I am less than convinced Paul mucked up the whole Jesus thing. I realize it is not as fringy as Buddhist Jesus.

This seems to be the position put forward by Richards in Paul and First Century Letter Writing.

He helpfully points out that in the ancient world, you could think about "authorship" as a sliding scale from 1-10.

At 10, you have something that the author personally wrote with their own hand. At 1, you have forged documents, claiming to be from someone but really there is no connection. Maybe at 2 you would have disciples carrying on their teacher's legacy and writing in their name. At 8 you would have verbal oral dictation. At 6 you would have a scribe significantly helping the dictator frame arguments and sentences. At 3 you might have something like a request to a scribe "Send a letter back home from me and tell them what I've been doing". The authority is still from the person even though the author isn't the person.

He supports this view by reviewing first century writing practices in the Roman world, from famous and known Roman officials.

As you've already noted, however, the case against Pauline authorship for the pastorals isn't purely on linguistic grounds. Other arguments range from a more developed church structure being present to the letters being responses to heresies that primarily appear in the second century.

Bayes Theorem's application depends entirely on how precisely the parameters and values of our theoretical reconstruction of a real world approximate reality.  With a historical question, Carrier is forced to think up probabilities for each parameter he put into the equation.  This is a purely subjective process - he determines how likely or unlikely a parameter in the question is and then decides what value to give that parameter.  So the result he gets at the end is purely a function of these subjective choices. 

In other words: garbage in/garbage out.

So it's not surprising that Carrier comes up with a result on the question of whether Jesus existed that conforms to his belief that Jesus didn't - he came up with the values that were inevitably going to come up with that result.  If someone who believed Jesus did exist did the same thing, the values they inputted would be different and they would come up with the opposite result.  This is why historians don't bother using Bayes Theorem.

So what exactly is Carrier doing by applying this Theorem in a way that it can't be applied?  Apart from being incompetent, he seems to be doing little more than putting a veneer of statistics over a subjective evaluation and pretending he's getting greater precision. 

Not surprisingly, despite his usual grandiose claims that his use of Bayes Theorem is some kind of revolution in historiography, his book <em>Proving History: Bayes's Theorem and the Quest for the Historical Jesus</em> (2012)   has pretty much sunk without trace and been generally ignored by historical Jesus scholars and historians alike.  His failure to convince anyone except a gaggle of historically clueless online fanboys means that Carrier is most likely to remain what he is: an unemployed blogger and general nobody in academia.

Larry Hurtado argues in his book Lord Jesus Christ that the expression Marana ta μαράνα θά (1 Cor. 16:22 BGT) (1Cor 16:22) is very old (not necessarily the oldest).

This expression is usually translated "Our Lord, come!" This is in Aramaic. Still, Paul expects his Greek readers to understand the expression. This is likely because it was already a standard liturgical expression at the time of writing. A little bit like the Hebrew word "Hallelujah" that is still in use in many Christian circles

Paul is unlikely to be the source of an Aramaic liturgical expression. The argument is therefore that it goes back to very first Christians in Jerusalem who were Aramaic speakers

It can't be confirmed, but I really like the hypothesis that the Exodus tradition originated with the Levites, who did leave Egypt and then syncretized their deity, Yahweh, with the Israelite/Canaanite high god El.

I literally just watched (like, twenty minutes ago, seriously) this short presentation by Friedman on this hypothesis, in which he lays out some of the textual evidence for it and explains why archaeologists who have been looking for evidence of a "mass exodus" wouldn't find any.

Now I want to pick up his new book on the topic, <em>The Exodus - How It Happened and Why It Matters</em>. Has anyone here read it and want to offer a short review? It sounds like a pretty compelling hypothesis (at least to a layman like me).

One thing to keep in mind is that the Genesis stories share common origins with other ancient near-east myths.

In the Sumerian story of the gardens of Dilmun, <em>Enki and Ninhursanga</em>, Enki eats of the eight forbidden plants so as to gain knowledge of them (a.k.a. “determine their destiny,”) and Ninhursanga curses him with these words:

> “Until his dying day, I will never look upon him with life-giving eye.”

That doesn't mean he died that day, but that he was stripped of his immortality that day, of which Ninhursanga was responsible because as long as she looks upon you with the life-giving eye you will not taste death.

In the Genesis version, to “surely die” could mean to be stripped of your immortality, in which case they would actually die at some point in the future, the countdown of which would only begin on the day they bite into the fruit.

For more information I highly recommend Janet Smith's <em>Dust or Dew: Immortality in the Ancient Near East and in Psalm 49</em>.

Bart Ehrman is very representative of mainstream New Testament scholarship and literally wrote the textbook that is currently used in many university intro classes on the New Testament. I've never heard of Barnett, but looking at his book on Amazon, it appears to be an apologetic work, not an academic one. I can say that the answer to question in his title gets a hard "no" from all but the most theologically committed of credentialed scholars.

What class requires you to read apologetics? Are you at a private school?

In addition to u/AZPD's comment above, I would James Kugel's How to Read the Bible and Dale Allison's The Historical Christ and the Theological Jesus. Both address the struggle to engage critical academic scholarship while maintaining faith in their tradition (Kugel is Jewish, Allison a Protestant Christian).

> Is this a good book for a lay person for an introduction to the origins of yahweh / the major monotheistic religions?

No.

> By “good” I mean is it held in good/ high regard among scholars?

I'm fairly certain that it is not.

You'd be better off reading The Early History of God: Yahweh and the Other Deities in Ancient Israel & Michael Heiser's work on the Divine Council.

EDIT: grammar

The Origin of Satan by Elaine Pagels addresses this topic quite well. I'd try to summarize it here, but as a non-academic I'm afraid I'll distort a fairly complicated (and certainly arcane) subject. It's an enjoyable read, too and well worth your time.

A History of the Devil is a much more colloquial, less rigorous, and more opinionated book that I personally loved, but would be wary of ever using in citations. We're not taking Graham Hancock territory, it's just less serious than the Pagels book. It is also much broader in scope.

Samaritans number at most, 1,000-2,000 people. They are not strictly speaking "Jews" because they claim descent from Northern Kingdom Israelites--i.e not "Judeans." Samaritans and Jews are both Israelites though.

Samaritans are not considered Jews in modern day Israel. Most live in Palestine/the West Bank. There are very few Samaritans left so I think they are considered more of a "topic of interest" and relations are not strained or considered very seriously in Israel.

The biggest difference between Samaritans and Israelite belief is that Samaritans believe that the "place that God will choose" mentioned in Deuteronomy is Mount Gizrim in modern day Palestine/West Bank, while Jews believe it is Jerusalem. Because the "place that God will choose" is the only place Israelites can offer sacrifices but the Jewish "place of God will choose"--i.e the temple mount in Jerusalem--is inaccessible only Samaritans still offer sacrifices. That is the biggest "theological" difference--where is the "place that God will choose."

The Jewish and Samaritan Torahs are almost identical. Samaritans consider the Torah/Pentateuch (their version that is) holy. They also have post Torah writings, including a book of Joshua and other books explaining post Israelite conquest history. The Samaritan Torah is very similiar to the Jewish Torah, here are some notable differences: --In the Samaritan Torah, Terah is told to leave his home land but dies on the way --The "bridegroom of blood" from Exodus chapter 4 story is more metaphorical (Tziporah has to 'circumcise her heart') --The Samaritan ten commandments (in Exodus at least) have a tenth commandment of setting up an altar on Mount Gizrim.

Here is a Hebrew and English Samaritan Pentateuch online: Eng: https://www.stepbible.org/version.jsp?version=SPE

Heb: https://www.stepbible.org/version.jsp?version=SP

Happy comparing!:)

> In Paul’s view the kingdom of God would have nothing to do with the righteous reign of a human Messiah on earth, and the status of the Twelve or any other believers was to be determined only by Christ at the judgment. Paul understood the kingdom as a “cosmic takeover” of the entire universe by the newly born heavenly family—the many glorified children of God with Christ, as firstborn, at their head. Paul taught that when Christ returned in the clouds of heaven, this new race of Spirit-beings would experience its heavenly transformation, receiving the same inheritance, and thus the same level of power and glory, that Jesus had been given (Romans 8:17; Philippians 3:20–21). This instantaneous “mass apotheosis” would mark the end of the old age that began with Adam, and the beginning of a new creation inaugurated by Christ as a new or second Adam (Romans 8:21). This great event, the most significant in human history, would signal the arrival of the kingdom of God of which nothing flesh and blood could be a part (1 Corinthians 15:50). The group of divinized, glorified Spirit-beings would then participate corporately, with Christ, in the judgment of the world, even ruling over the angels (1 Corinthians 6:2–3).

• Paul and Jesus: How the Apostle Transformed Christianity

There is evidence that earliest Israel was a decentralized confederation of tribes each run by chiefs or judges. A good book that constructs a theoretical model for this period based on the Amarna texts is Benz, The Land Before the Kingdom of Israel.

https://www.amazon.com/Land-before-Kingdom-Israel-Archaeology/dp/1575064278

Two good resources that I have on Nephilim are:

• The Origin of Evil Spirits: The Reception of Genesis 6:1-4 in Early Jewish Literature
• Fallen Angels and the History of Judaism and Christianity: The Reception of Enochic Literature

If there were any archaeological record of Nephilim, then I'm almost certain that most people in the scientific community would be aware of it.

If you can read French, I can't advise you enough the reading of Le Coran des historiens. There's nothing like that in English, and even maybe in Arabic: 3408 pages of purely academic studies on the origins of Islam and the formation and original meaning of the Quranic text, with a history of the studies themselves, wrote by 30 internationally recognized scholars.

But it's not cheap (and it seems to be worst in America, in France it's “only” €59/≈ $66), maybe you can find it in a library (maybe not just now as the book was published in November).

Christianity reconciling itself with great wealth predates Capitalism by 1400 years. Between 350 and 550 AD Christianity went from being a critic of wealth to falling all over itself in it's rapacious quest for gold.

Peter Brown, who's pretty much the greatest scholar of late antiquity to have ever lived, wrote a magesterial work on the subject:

https://www.amazon.com/Through-Eye-Needle-Christianity-350-550/dp/0691161771

The word translated there as "sexual immorality" is πόρνοι (pornoi), which literally means either "male prostitutes" or a man who has sex with prostitutes ("whorers," "whoremongers"). This often referred to temple prostitutes, but not necessarily. The words translated as referring to passive or active homosexuality are malakoi and aresnokoitai which are disputed as to meanings but most likely do not refer to homosexuality in a broad way, but to male prostitutes and their patrons. Corinth was specifically known for prostitution. It was kind of the Vegas of its day, a port city known for vice and particularly known for prostitutes and slaves (and many prostitutes were slaves). This is the immediate environmental context of Paul's audience, so he was likely talking about sleeping with ether male or female prostitutes.

In The Corinthian Body, Dale Martin says that sex was seen by Paul as something that made people vulnerable to spiritual "pollution" even among married people, so sex was something that had to be at least minimized if not avoided completely. This wasn't a moral issue in the way that people think of it now, but an issue of perceived ritual purity.

I'd recommend reading <em>The Corinthian Body</em> for a detailed overview of Paul's views of sex.

I googled it.

How To Understand Your Bible: A Philosopher's Interpretation of Obscure and Puzzling Passages by Manly P. Hall. It was originally written in 1942.

> On a related note - when you see someone make a click-baiting claim only to leave the meat of the argument behind a paywall do you frown upon that or is this a necessary part of how you get paid? My first reaction was that this was a crummy thing to do, but then I realized I have no idea how Biblical scholars make a living.

His peer review paper is up on Academia for free if you or anyone wants to read it. You have to make an account there (free) then you can download any papers you find on there that are provided by their authors.

(edit to clarrify for /u/BibleManDann)-

> Edit 2: /u/aractusp pointed out the article the author links to is not behind a paywall, see comment below. Removed/changed the parts where I incorrectly stated you had to pay to get it.

He does link to the Paywalled version, you'd hardly begrudge him for that. However I was just letting you know he has also made it available for free on Academia.

> First, he opens with “No text has had a greater influence on attitudes toward gay people than the biblical book of Leviticus”. The claim intrigued me because growing up in a fundamentalist church I rarely - maybe never? - heard Leviticus mentioned from the pulpit in relation to homosexuality.

Yeah I agree with you, and also his claim that:

> > "Before Leviticus was composed, outright prohibitions against homosexual sex — whether between men or women — were practically unheard-of in the ancient world."

Seems quite suspect as well.

As I understand it, the divine council, or "Council of El" as the Hebrew more literally reads, was essentially the pantheon of Canaanite gods who were subservient to El (the seventy "sons of god" also alluded to in the LXX/DSS version of Deut 32:8–9). This psalm is a mythic depiction of the other gods being judged for failing in their duties. El's verdict is to take away their immortality and make Elohim/Yahweh the ruler of all nations.

For a more in-depth analysis, I suggest this paper by Daniel McClellan:

https://www.academia.edu/395686/An_Exegetical_Reading_of_Psalm_82

> Roman slaveholding was not always as brutal as, say, the American slave trade, and it’s usually an error to import our modern notion of slavery into the Roman context.

The idea that Roman slavery was not as bad or brutal as US slavery is a common trope among readers of the New Testament. If I can be blunt, it is entirely false. Yes, forms of slavery differ throughout history (and within the same cultural contexts - e.g., there was no single form of US slavery; the enslaved experience differed radically depending on what crop and where in the US South). But slavery in the Roman empire was dehumanizingly brutal. For an excellent discussion of this (along with critical interrogation of why so many NT scholars repeat this problematic trope about Roman slavery), I strongly recommend Jennifer Glancy's, Slavery in Early Christianity.

I'd recommend The Exodus by Richard Elliott Friedman (Amazon). He makes a great case that there is a historical kernel to the Exodus story, but that kernel was agrandized and turned into a national myth far beyond what really happened. Before reading that, I was basically convinced that the Exodus never happened. I came away with a greater appreciation for where the story came from.

Do you understand that myths are often created to unify a weakened social structure? To bring a weakened people together, to strengthen them against their enemies, myths are implemented by the powerful among them. It should not come as a surprise to anyone familiar with the Kings stories in the Bible that there was a time when a national myth could have been very useful. Specifically, the time of Josiah's reforms, when he was attempting to justify his killing of the priests of the various religions in deference to the One God that he insisted that everyone worship (at point of death). It was very convenience that the Torah was "found" in the ruins of the temple during his time and that Joshua just happened to have a name so similar to his own and that Joshua also went through and killed the people who lived in Canaana (if he really did such a thing). A national myth is completely understandable in such a historical context.

NT Wright (former Anglican Bishop of Durham) has addressed this quite a bit. Here is a shorter treatment. His book Surprised by Hope is fairly accessible yet scholarly.

In summary, the rapture comes from a series of Scriptures strung together from Daniel, 2 Thessalonians, Matthew, and Revelation. None of them are overtly about a bunch of people suddenly going missing while the Earth goes bonkers. Rapture is primarily a Western concept that had a few pockets of belief until it was popularized in the 19th century. It has never been embraced by Catholics, Orthodox, Methodists, Anglicans, and other major denominations.

Most of what Scripture suggests about the future is centered around the Resurrection, which is overtly discussed in multiple places. Wright suggests Resurrection is the great hope of Christianity.

This came up, but as textual study on critical levels of the Qur’an has been a slow moving matter, it may be quite some time before an honest look comes that doesn’t stir backlash.

>I'm not sure where he's at with it now, but Bart Ehrman has written favorably about Susan Garrett's argument that Paul viewed Jesus as an angel.

It should be noted that it's perhaps a little misleading to present this view with Jesus as "an angel". That might come across as Paul believing that Jesus was one of many. Paul did not believe that. I think this view (of Jesus as an angel) more closely ties into the "Two Powers in Heaven" concept that was floating around at the time. This view did ascribe full Deity to two distinct Beings that occupied the office of YHWH.

> Paul is enunciating a thesis against fornication and harlotry, which he regards as a sin against the human body, because that body has a special relationship to “the Lord,” the risen Christ, and to “God,” because from Him that body has become “the temple of the Holy Spirit.” In this way Paul has enunciated a thesis about sexual ethics and a sexual asceticism, but here in chap. 6 it is discussed only in terms of fornication or harlotry. In chap. 7, when he begins to answer questions that Corinthian Christians have asked him in the letter mentioned there, he will continue to apply the thesis to other matters, to marriage and to celibacy…. The “stomach” (koilia) is indeed part of the body, but a human being is not all “body” (soma). The physical body of a human being is indeed involved in and even intended for sexual intercourse, but not for porneia, because that mode of free intercourse is now seen to be contrary to the destiny of a human being; although its generic sense of sexual promiscuity might seem to be meant here and is often so taken (e.g., RSV, Gundry), it soon becomes clear that the specific sense of “fornication” or “harlotry” is intended (vv. 15–16), i.e., casual coitus with a prostitute.

• First Corinthians : A New Translation with Introduction and Commentary

Exactly. The Bible is comprised of many different documents written by different people at different times and for different purposes.

Incidentally, my example is stolen almost directly from Jaroslav Pelikan's book Whose Bible Is It? (amazon link)

> …the several major investigations of Simon Magus traditions show that almost every question associated with this figure remains open. It appears that there may have been some sort of cultic veneration of Simon in second-century circles, but claims that such veneration of Simon characterized a first-century following and that such a group is indicative of Samaritan spirituality must be treated as speculative.

• One God, One Lord: Early Christian Devotion and Ancient Jewish Monotheism

> It is harder to say positively what Jesus meant by 'kingdom of God'. Intensive efforts over the last hundred years to define the phrase have left the issue more confused rather than clearer. There are, however, two meanings that would have been more or less self evident given standard Jewish views. One is that God reigns in heaven; the 'kingdom of God' or 'kingdom of heaven' exists eternally there. God occasionally acts in history, but he completely and consistently governs only heaven. The second is that in the future God will rule the earth. He has chosen to allow human history to run on with relatively little interference, but someday he will bring normal history to an end and govern the world perfectly. Briefly put: the kingdom of God always exists there; in the future it will exist here. These two meanings are perfectly compatible with each other. Anyone could maintain both at the same time, and in fact millions still do.

• The Historical Figure of Jesus

To 1. - That’s true, but it was being extended to provincials as a ‘special concession’ in many documented cases. Here is an article which argues that he was, in fact, a citizen, and hypothesizes that citizenship to his father or grandfather may have been granted by Pompey.

His reading of Acts is very selective and credulous: Saundra Schwartz does a good job demonstrating that Luke-Acts' trial scenes follow the basic model of trial scenes in the Greek novels: https://www.academia.edu/2503338/The_Trial_Scene_in_the_Greek_Novels_and_in_Acts

Acts is notoriously unreliable historically. Compare, for instance, the tensions (or even contradictions) it has with Paul's letters: "Saul" seems to be a Lukan invention, Paul's Roman citizenship is almost certainly a Lukan invention, the "basket lowering" episode is wildly different between Acts and Paul, Paul's level of education is wildly different between the two, Paul never writes a letter in Acts, Paul exclusively preaches to the Gentiles in his letters (but always seeks out Jews first in Acts), the Jerusalem council looks quite different, etc., etc. The idea that Luke-Acts would preserve the proceedings of these events, while making up a historical Jesus - as Carrier would have it - stretches credulity to the limit. It's stuff like this that makes it difficult to take Carrier seriously.

Nope.

Oxford: Old English, from Latin sabbatum, via Greek from Hebrew šabbāṯ, from šāḇaṯ ‘to rest’.

Merriam-Webster:We tend to think of sabbatical in academic terms, as a school year free from teaching duties that can be devoted to research, travel, and writing. Traditionally, this occurs every seventh year. Because of this scholarly context, we may easily miss what is hiding in plain sight: that sabbatical is related to Sabbath, which refers to the Biblical day of rest, or the seventh day. We trace the origins of both sabbatical and Sabbath to the Greek word sabbaton. Sabbaton itself traces to the Hebrew word shabbāth, meaning “rest.”

The Old Testament refers to God’s “day of rest” most famously in Genesis, but Sabbath referring to an entire year of rest is mentioned in Leviticus (25:3-5):

Six years thou shalt sow thy field, and six years thou shalt prune thy vineyard, and gather in the fruit thereof;

But in the seventh year shall be a sabbath of rest unto the land, a sabbath for the LORD: thou shalt neither sow thy field, nor prune thy vineyard.

That which groweth of its own accord of thy harvest thou shalt not reap, neither gather the grapes of thy vine undressed: for it is a year of rest unto the land.

Sabbatical is also used as an adjective to refer specifically to the rules governing the observance of the Sabbath, as in “sabbatical laws.”

TL;DR it's by textual analysis and one of the best treatments of your particular inquiry is from Bart Erhman's Forged: Writing in the Name of God--Why the Bible's Authors Are Not Who We Think They Are.

You should be able to attain a copy through inter-library loan. If not, I've got a digital copy that I may consider sharing with you.

From the Jewish annotated NT:

>The juxtaposed parables of the lost sheep and lost coin that immediately precede this parable suggest that it is about something more or other than repenting (despite the assertion in 15.10), for neither sheep nor coins repent. The focus of the first two is on the search for the lost and the joy of the finding. Jews would likely identify with the younger son (recalling Abel, Isaac, Jacob, and Ephraim). However, this younger son makes a rude, presumptuous request (see Sir 33.20–24) and then shames himself by dissolute practices. Listeners are thus shocked into the possibility of identifying with the elder son. Although many interpreters see the younger son as repenting, the text does not make this point. The prodigal’s motive for returning to his father may be economic need rather than theological recognition. Other interpreters see the father as symbolizing God, the son’s comment in 15.18 suggests rather a distinction. Incorrect is the common view that the father’s generous response to the prodigal—whether the father is seen loving parent or representative of God—would be surprising to Jesus’ Jewish audience. Jewish tradition sees fathers as loving their children (see 8.42n.), and God as always reaching out to bring the sinner home.
A third common reading is the identification of the older brother as the recalcitrant Pharisee, who refuses to welcome sinners. However, if the father is seen as God and the elder as the Pharisee, then the parable necessarily sees the Pharisees as heirs to God’s promises (15.31)

You should read the Catechism of the Catholic Church and Catholicism by McBrien, it will be incredibly hard to unpack Catholic tradition and theology from just the Bible itself.

The relevant scholarly source (to my knowledge) on how the Jews treated slaves is 'Jewish Slavery in Antiquity' 2005 by Catherine Hezser (link to the book's introduction). The author has also put some of the material from the book up on academia.edu, such as this paper (that's the peer review paper that serves the basis of one of her chapters).

What strikes me after reading a couple of her chapters is that we don't know how ancient Jews treated their slaves. We're only given limited information in the bible, and it's certainly not a complete picture. Individual slave owners would have varied in their treatment of their slaves quite greatly.

Carrie L. Bate's paper <em>Gender Ontology and Women in Ministry in the Early Church</em> is a good read that touches on the trend you mentioned. Hopefully someone knows of a paper that addresses your question more specifically.

There's many reasons for it, and I wouldn't presume to provide the reason for it. I am the furthest thing from a scholar on the subject, so please take my following answer with a heaping of salt.

What we do know is that many of the early Christians (and indeed, many Christians today, such as those within the Orthodox Church who try to hold to a more patristic view of the world) viewed sexual desire and even sexual reproduction itself as a consequence to the fall. The femininity of this was inferred from the Genesis curse related to sex and reproduction was bestowed upon the woman, and God's own consistent portrayal as a more male-like being (though Christ himself was at times portrayed with more feminine attributes) contributed to this.

Christianity, and eastern Christianity in particular, promised its adherents the ability to transcend the weaknesses of human nature, the weaknesses which it either inherited from Judaism or it itself identified, and that they could return to the originally intended state of mankind (and even become greater than that in the eastern traditions). So when it was established that the woman's sexual desire for the man and the resulting childbirth was a curse or result of the ancestral (and later original) sin, the tendency to portray holy women as somehow transcending their cursed sexuality would make some sense. In fact, if we did not see these stories present this transcendence of (a sort of ancient stereotypical) femininity, that would make far less sense to me.

>I would like a better understanding about why Paul seems to be fixated on sexual purity already at this early stage, which prior to this class was something I thought had entered into Christian thought later with Augustine of Hippo.

Honestly I think the best point of entry into this topic is in noting that (the regulation of) proper sexual behavior is virtually a cultural universal -- or at least ubiquitously present in the Mediterranean and ancient Near Eastern world.

Even among some of the societies who have a sort of a reputation for sexual debauchery, there were still many norms about who it was proper to have sex with, and in what situations, etc. (Of course many of these were blatantly patriarchal, and not infrequently homophobic, too.)

This is more of a philological study than anything, but this article goes into some depth about the origin and evolution of the main word translated as "sexual immorality" in the New Testament (and in other Hellenistic Jewish literature). You might also look at my comment here.

To oversimplify, Paul inherited both Jewish ethical norms (about sexuality), and Greco-Roman ones as well; and there are many points on which these actually agree... though there was certainly some disagreement about things like pederasty, etc.

Based on what we know from the Hebrew Bible, there was no concept of heaven and hell in ancient Israel.

There is, of course, the concept of Sheol in the OT, a dark place that everyone goes to irrespective of whether they were sinners or saints. The word was translated different from the Hebrew in different places. Bart Ehrman notes for example:

> in Psalm 6:5 the word Sheol is translated as “grave” in the KJV; but in Psalm 9:17 it is translated “hell.” So too in Proverbs 1:12, it is “grave,” but in Proverbs 5:5 it is “hell.”

And

> It is often described as a place of deep darkness (see Job 10:20-21); sometimes it is thought of as the watery netherworld where everyone goes (Job 26:5-7). In Sheol one is cut off not only from the light and life but also from God himself. God is not there. Nothing is there. It is simply the place where everyone goes, whether they are good or bad, righteous or unrighteous, faithful or unfaithful. God doesn’t help the people there, and the people there cannot praise God (Psalm 88; 115:17)

Johnston is a good reference.

Views on the subject evolved in the Second Temple period and considerably more so in the Rabbinic period.

Dishonor them? How? What? No.

This seems to me to be a very modern perspective, and one which we don't really apply with much consistency. People in the past had no problem adapting names to their culture and language.

I said "modern", but this was still common practice until the mid 20th century in some parts of the world.

My favorite recent example is extremely non-Biblical, but as we are talking of names... in Italy people referred to "Giuseppe Stalin" instead of using the transliteration of the proper Russian name Iosif. See for instance (this book)[https://www.amazon.com/Giuseppe-biografici-ALESSANDROV-GALAKTIONOV-MOCIALOV/dp/B005WVRLE0], which was written by Russians and printed in Moscow for the Italian audience.

(Also, let's face it, the French were usually worse as they adapted also the family name - the French wikipedia page is still titles "Joseph Staline").

By the way, you are aware, aren't you, that the first to "disrespect" Jesus in such a way were the early Christians, right? All NT writers call Jesus "Iesou" - together with calling most characters with Greek names (for instance, Ioannes instead of Yohanon, and so on).

Anyway. Do you think that Paul, Mark, Matthew, Luke and John were disrespecting Jesus when they called him "Iesou"?

Here is the concluding paragraph to a scholarly review of Bauckam's book "Jesus and the Eyewitnesses". His arguments strikes me as of the form--it is possible that the stories were based on relatively accurate eyewitness accounts, therefore I will claim it is probable:

> In the end, the thesis is that “the Gospels put us in close touch with the eyewitnesses of the history of Jesus” (472). Yet while Bauckham keeps insisting that eyewitness testimony is a way to break down the barrier between the “Jesus of History” and the“Christ of faith,” this is not quite what happens. Rather, the work is an(other) attempt at a “Christ of history,” i.e. an(other) attempt to authenticate the Christ of the author’s faith. Like other “Christs of history,” Bauckham’s is generally of interest only to Christian insiders who already pit the gospels against historical criticism to a certain extent; those who differentiate sharply between the Historical Jesus and the Christ will find little here to convince them otherwise. Had the book not been framed and marketed as a victory between these “sides,” its valuable work (e.g. on Papias, testimony in Greco-Roman historiography and the gospels, and Palestinian-Jewish names in general) would surely have reached a wider audience.

> This, in my view, is one of the problems with some (not all) applications of redaction criticism - an assumption that ancients were just a bit dumb and not able to perceive difficulties in the text.

There certainly are cases of clumsy redaction or harmonization, but my impression is that scholars increasingly believe the final redactors/editors were fully aware of the contradictions created by including multiple sources, and were not bothered by it. Some go so far as to suggest that the contradictions are deliberate and meant to be noticed by the reader. (For an example of this approach, see Jan-Wim Wesselius)

It appears to be a synopsis of this book of his: https://www.amazon.com/End-Biblical-Studies-Hector-Avalos-ebook/dp/B003N642CK/

There is a reasonable auto-generated transcript available on youtube if you're interested enough to scan through one of those, instead of taking a large amount of time to listen/watch.

Edit: I read the transcript. Not a very good talk. He bookends with brief talks about relevance, but the core is about how archaeology has just kept shrinking the possible historical truths of the Bible down. Primary discussion is on the "Gates of Solomon". A couple shitty examples with things like Leviticus' agricultural laws for the relevance thing, some mention of people whitewashing the Bible or skimming over many sections in sermons, and a bit about how little people actually read it. Mostly about the gates, though.

> Asa'el is first encountered as one of the leaders of the Watchers who swear an oath with Shemihazah to go down to the earth and enter into relations with the daughters of men. He is introduced in I Enoch 6.7 as the tenth angel identified as a leader of the group of two hundred angels. Some debate exists about whether the angel named in 6.7 is the same angel later identified as Azazel (Ethiopic) in 8.1. Here he is an angelic figure associated with the Asa'el tradition, which will be discussed in some detail below. This angel is accused of teaching humanity what is initially called the "eternal secrets of heaven" (9.6), which are later described as a "worthless mystery" (16.3). The secrets that Asa'el taught included the making of weapons of war and teaching women the art of painting their faces in order to appear more beautiful (8.1). Asa'el would be bound and cast into darkness until the Day of Judgment along with the others (10.6). Some scholars are of the opinion that Asa'el was connected to Azazel the demon in the desert in Leviticus 16.

• The Origin of Evil Spirits: The Reception of Genesis 6:1-4 in Early Jewish Literature

One of my favorite books is Robert Price's The Case Against the Case for Christ. Here. It was referenced, with two other books, in the celsus . blog article linked by others as an additional critical review of Strobel's book. Dr. Price wrote his book in direct response to what he saw as Strobel's misuse and abuse of Biblical scholarship which Price sees as nothing more than a rewrite of Christian apologetic. Dr. Price in no way attacks Strobel's religious beliefs nor his right to believe whatever he wants to believe.

From the Amazon site:

> Leading New Testament scholar Robert M. Price has taken umbrage at the cavalier manner in which Rev. Lee Strobel has misrepresented the field of Bible scholarship in his book The Case for Christ. Price exposes and refutes Strobel's arguments chapter-by-chapter. In doing so he has occasion to wipe out the entire field of Christian apologetics as summarized by Strobel. This book is a must-read for anyone bewildered by the various books published by Rev. Strobel.

I will add this, if you want to read a classic book on the politics of Judea before the war, get a copy of Richard Horsley's Bandits, Prophets, and Messiahs: Popular Movements at the Time of Jesus. One of the best books on the topic,

The New Testament In It’s World is considered an introduction to Wright’s work for students. My wife read this as a starter book. She found it interesting enough to continue on into Wright’s Christian Origins series.

If you're genuinely interested, I recommend either The Origin of Satan by Elaine Pagels. Or if you want something a little less dry and academic, then check out A History of the Devil by Gerald Messadie.

But briefly, I would say that the "Christian cults got the notion that he's the 'enemy of God'" through the New Testament. 2 Corinthians 11 and Mark 3:25 are two quick examples of this.

Apocalypticism could be a response to dissonance between what a group of people believe should happen and what actually happens, in this case a very real and also ontological trauma. This is at least a thesis in David M. Carr's <em>Holy Resilience: The Bible's Traumatic Origins</em>. Apocalypticism, in this case, is perhaps an attempt to compensate for the trauma by investing in another world. Things might not be as hoped for or expected, but God will put them right in a final conflagration and in the world made new. Specifically, Carr argues there was what was perceived as the continued delayed fulfillment of a promise concerning David, Jerusalem, and Israel, as well as continued perceived humiliations and abominations that cause desolation by foreign and heathen powers.

In their book, <em>From Gods to God</em>, Shinan and Zakovitch uncovers several traditions of Jacob defeating a divinity, including the story you allude to. Here is just one example they find in Hosea:

> We return now to the words of Hosea: "In his vigor, he strove with God. He dominated over an angel and prevailed. He wept and implored him, at Bethel he met him and there he spoke with us [him]" (12:4-5). In these verses, which mention or allude to all three of the names for the cultic site at Bethel, the words "he dominated over an angel" appear to have been added secondarily. This was done in order to blunt the controversial element at the story's crux, according to which a struggle with God occurred, a struggle that ended with a human victor. It appears that, originally, the verses read: "In his vigor he strove with God and prevailed, He [God!] wept and implored him." The words "He dominated over [va-yasar'el] an angel" were inserted in order to depict a match involving only an angel and to exchange God's tears with those of the angel's.

Thanks for the plug - Ched Myers presents brief arguments to the same conclusion in Binding the Strong Man, 421-423! I don't think I've heard Alexandria from any modern scholars, but that doesn't mean no one has done so; there are three regions that people normally suggest: the environs of Rome (the traditional location), southern Syria, and Palestine. My impression is that the field is split roughly evenly between Rome and Syria-Palestine. If anyone is interested, I just published an article on this broader question about the regions where Mark may have been written and the author's use of Latinisms: https://www.academia.edu/34924189/Loanwords_or_Code-Switching_Latin_Transliteration_and_the_Setting_of_Marks_Composition

In short, Mark's use of Latin is typical of post-War Palestine or Syria, but pretty incompatible with Rome/Italia.

As I recall, /u/zeichman had a paper on the Capernaum theory. Here it is. In regards to Alexandria, I think your advisor's source might have been Patristic (unfortunately I don't have a more particular source at the moment). It may be relevant that St. Mark is traditionally thought to have started the Coptic Church, in Egypt. In the Patristic texts, there was also a, possibly more prominent, tradition concerning Mark being composed in Rome. I more strongly associate the Alexandrian traditions with heretics, for whatever reason.

A few things: 1) Carrier is difficult to take seriously. He is extremely uncharitable with people with whom he disagrees (see, e.g., his blog post about Q), so one would probably have to verify every citation of another scholar. Also, there is the lovely prospect of him writing up a blog post insulting you on a personal level for daring to disagree with him.

2) I can't think of anything less interesting than reading about Bayes Theorem. Since it has been used by apologists to show the likelihood of Jesus' resurrection and Carrier to show the likelihood of his non-historicity, I am deeply suspicious of its utility for NT scholarship. Personally, there's about 1000 things I'd rather read about that Bayes and would find more insightful for biblical scholarship.

3) Who cares? Carrier isn't participating in any ongoing debates within NT scholarship, as far as I can tell. He has done very little with how this might illuminate things that scholars are actually writing about. The same can be said of other people publishing books on Jesus-myth stuff: it rarely fits into ongoing debates, instead preoccupied with a wholesale upending of biblical scholarship.

4) His case is built upon a great deal of special pleading: he dates any contrary sources late, asserts that various passages that would complicate his argument are interpolations, etc.

5) I'm not really interested in validating the scholarship of a man who has been accused of being a serial harasser of women.

6) For what it's worth, I published an article on the use of Q by Doherty and Price a decade ago. https://www.academia.edu/34646389/Fear_and_Loathing_in_a_Lost_Gospel_A_Response_to_Some_Radical_Uses_of_the_Sayings_Gospel_Q_with_a_Focus_on_Its_Formative_Stratum

Here's an article talking about the Persian Gulf as a population refugium during the last Ice Age: https://www.academia.edu/386944/New_Light_on_Human_Prehistory_in_the_Arabo-Persian_Gulf_Oasis

The author doesn't come right out and link it with the Garden of Eden, but it's implied by the geographic description in the myth.

The two volume set edited by James Charlesworth is probably the best collection of the pseudepigrapha in English. Each entry contains an intro with more into on the books included. It was published in the early 1980s so its a bit dated but a good point of entry into the literature.

You're welcome! On a related subject, the new book Heaven and Hell: A History of the Afterlife by Bart Ehrman is a very engaging and interesting read

It goes through the development from the Jewish belief in a meaningless afterlife for everyone (Jews and non-Jews) alongside the widely-held belief by Jews and Romans that there was no afterlife at all, to the belief in Apocalyptic Judaism of a bodily resurrection on Earth (and later, heaven) at the end-times, to the Christian belief in an immediate resurrection into heaven after death, and finally, the introduction of the controversial idea of hell as a place of eternal torment - which is not found in 1st-century Christian writings. Highly recommended!

> I've heard it argued that they're descended from the Hyksos

It's, also, argued that Israelites descended from the Hapiru/Apiru.

The foremost theory is that Israelites emerged from Canaan. On the other hand, the debate continues.

There are plenty of pesharim found within the Dead Sea Scrolls as well as writings of Jews like Philo of Alexandria that find their home during the Second Temple period.

A good overview of Second Temple interpretation that quotes from these sources extensively and would act as a great starting point is:

How to Read the Bible, James Kugel

I would highly recommend it.

I really enjoyed Introducing the New Testament by Powell. It was the textbook in my New Testament Studies class but it’s very readable for a textbook.

Nongbri's first paper is essential reading, as is his most recent. Bagnall's book on 'Early Christian books in Egypt' is also invaluable.

> I think this might be what I was referring to. I think I misremembered it, come to think of it, it just confirmed that the society of King David was somewhat urbane and so led more credence to the biblical narrative of a city-based king than the theory that David was more of a nomadic tribal leader.

As an alternative to Pat Robertson's website, you can read a more realistic and scholarly analysis here: Khirbet Qeiyafa: An Unsensational Archaeological and Historical Interpretation. The site has no connection with King David.

> The latter! There we go, that's something.

Well, pick whatever topic or Bible book interests you. Almost all the stories a modern reader might consider "historical" were written long after the fact, for purposes quite different.

Personally, I find historical anachronisms and other such errors a fascinating topic. A favourite of mine is in Acts 5, where Gamaliel gives a speech mentioning the revolt of Theudas — which didn't actually happen until about ten years later.

> most of the archaeological discoveries tend to lend more credence to the traditional biblical narrative than the alternatives presented by academics

I'm not sure what you're getting at here. Academics are the ones who make and interpret the discoveries. Most Christians I've encountered tend to be badly misinformed about the findings of ANE archaeology.

>Yea and most of the disciples were executed themselves.

Not that I'm a huge fan of Sean McDowell or would consider him a scholarly source, but he wrote a book a few years back that I believe was an extension of his PhD dissertation called <em>The Fate of the Apostles</em> -- though he generally writes as an apologist, he showed that due to late and often legendary attestation, in his opinion, for the majority of the apostles, we pretty much don't know what happened to them. Though, for him, that still doesn't change his theological stance.

Don't get me wrong, I'd have a tendency to agree with your assessment about early church martyrdoms, especially those of Jesus' inner circle, namely that they wouldn't die if they knew something was false, but most apologetics resources have a tendency to substantially overstate what we know about what happened to high profile members of the early church in the first century. Frankly, that was why I found the McDowell book at least a, somewhat, refreshing read.

Everett Ferguson

Baptism in the Early Church: History, Theology, and Liturgy in the First Five Centuries

https://www.amazon.com/Baptism-Early-Church-Theology-Centuries/dp/0802871089/ref=mp_s_a_1_7?dchild=1&amp;keywords=baptism+theology&amp;qid=1624140953&amp;sr=8-7

Right. I have the digital copy of The Handbook for the Study of the Historical Jesus. It is 3,740 pages in length. If you were to purchase this through Amazon, then it would cost you $1,295 and would come to you in 4 volumes.

Queens of Heaven and Earth: Women and Goddess Worship In Pre-Exile Israel and Judah

These and similar questions have attracted Pauline scholars for quite some time now. Most recently, the collection of essays in As It Is Written: Studying Paul’s Use of Scripture, ed. Porter and Stanley, 2008 tries to address these questions from different contexts. Christopher Stanley, one of the editors, also has some thought provoking books of his own on this topic. And myself, I have recently made public my own contribution to this collection of essays here https://www.academia.edu/23020449/_Biblical_Narratives._In_As_It_Is_Written_Studying_Paul_s_Use_of_Scripture_edited_by_Stanley_E._Porter_and_Christopher_D._Stanley_59-93._Society_of_Biblical_Literature_2008

The latter half of this rather long article (starting at p. 75) discusses the questions you've posed about Galatians, as well as Paul's use of the Old Testament in 1 Corinthians 10, and Romans 4. The first half deals with the use of the Greek term τύπος in early Christian literature and Paul's alleged creation (as the secondary literature claims) of typological exegesis, which I try to textually illustrate that Paul did no such thing.

Oh I just wrote an entry for the Encyclopedia of the Bible and its Reception - Funerary Inscriptions: Second Temple and Hellenistic Judaism.

>Any thoughts?

The Case Against the Case for Christ. A New Testament Scholar Refutes the Reverend Lee Strobel. Dr. Robert M. Price. Amazon link.

This book is a response to Strobel's book, showing Strobel's book to be a repackaging of old Christian apologetics. You may disagree with the conclusions of the book, but the book does an excellent job of showing the difference between Christian apologetics and academic Biblical historical scholarship. It's not just a matter of believing or not believing supernatural claims to be real. Christian apologetics and academic Biblical historical scholarship use different criteria, different uses of evidence, and very different goals.

If you are interested and do not want to read an entire book, just go over the rules of this sub and compare the rules with the article by Christopher Wright. The rules are a reflection of academic Biblical scholarship. Christopher Wright's article is Christian apologetics. To include a phrase from Israel Finkelstein, academic Biblical historical scholarship tries to understand the evidence and make probabilistic and provisional claims about what happened in the past. Christian apologetics "sprinkles evidence" on top of already existing religious faith.

I think you may find what you are seeking in S. G. F. Brandon's The Fall of Jerusalem and the Christian Church: A Study of the Effects of the Jewish Overthrow of AD 70 on Christianity, 2nd Edition. Brandon's broad topic is the early Jerusalem Jesus movement from somewhat after the death of Jesus until well into the second century CE. The Amazon listing ls

https://www.amazon.com/Fall-Jerusalem-Christian-Church-Christianity/dp/1608997472/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&amp;ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1492121769&amp;sr=1-1&amp;keywords=Brandon%2C+the+fall+of+Jerusalem

I'll use this discussion to let everyone know that on coursera there is a very nice course on Jerusalem from the assyrian to the persian period, although focusing mostly on the babylonian one.

https://www.coursera.org/course/jerusalem

The production quality is not always amazing (some videos lack subs, some videos havent been properly edited, the quizzes are uselesss) but it is rich on informations. Also the books by prof. Lipschits can be found online aswell (not legally of course).

The 3% literacy rate is the lowest possible literacy rate (Bar Ilan), and those studies were, well, problematic (although important), others push the rate as high as 10%. Wise recently has pushed the general literacy possibility even higher, as there's multiple ways to assess literacy. The problem is that written sources tend not to last very long unless preserved in the desert, so the actual number of documents from which to gauge literacy is quite small. If Matthew was tax collector, then he would have been literate in Greek, but that doesn't necessarily connect the writer of Matthew with the person of the same name. The short answer is that there is no way to tell for certain- you can only argue that the disciples were illiterate statistically, which isn't the same thing as knowing whether they were, and that only deals with the 12 - the gospels report that Jesus did have other disciples at various points.

>But I think there is a problem with trying to accurately remember long speeches and expect them to be passed along orally with a high degree of accuracy.

This isn't particularly difficult (most memory techniques are Greco-Roman), Lynn Kelly has a recent book that looks at that, but linking that to the gospels is the problem.

On a slight tangent to your question, Godfrey has had a recent look at an older idea that Mark was using pre-written gospels but doesn't necessarily answer where they came from.

If you're interested, I wrote a brief article on a THIRD early account of Judas' death, that of Papias of Hierapolis (c. 110 CE): https://www.academia.edu/672785/Papias_as_Rhetorician_Ekphrasis_in_the_Bishops_Account_of_Judas_Death

Audible has some great lectures through the Great Courses series (they come with the class notes pdf too, which are phenomenal resources, like abbreviated textbooks, with references). I really liked Amy-Jill Levine's material, but if you search Great Courses on audible, there will be a ton of great options.

> Should we read the Torah literally.

Absolutely not.

> And is the book of Leviticus written by one author or by different people in different times.

I'd recommend reading about the documentary hypothesis.

I was tickled to death to wake up this morning to receive an email notification of an academic paper that has just become available on The Grammar and Meaning of the Leviticus Texts on Same-Sex Relations.

You can download a pretty good, if rather old (1921), book on the issue from archive.org: The Problem of the Pastoral Epistles

For a more recent treatment, Forgery and Counterforgery by Bart Ehrman is a very clear and readable book.

Didymus the Blind, Jerome, and Augustine can hardly be seen as early witnesses to the existence of the passage as they are 4th century: I would view early as 'early-mid 2nd century'.

There is no evidence the Adulterae passage/pericope was present in first editions of the Gospel of John or originated in an early version of John. It is not in P^66 or P^75, both assigned to the late 100s or early 200s. Nor is it in two important manuscripts produced in the early/mid 300s, Codex Sinaiticus and Codex Vaticanus. The first surviving Greek manuscript to contain the pericope is the Latin/Greek diglot Codex Bezae, produced in the 400s or 500s (but displaying a form of text which has affinities with "Western" readings used in the 100s and 200s). Codex Bezae is also the earliest surviving Latin manuscript to contain it.

> Papias (circa AD 110) refers to a story of Jesus and a woman "accused of many sins" as being found in the Gospel of the Hebrews, which might refer to this passage or to one like it. In the Syriac Didascalia Apostolorum, composed in the mid-200s, the author, in the course of instructing bishops to exercise a measure of clemency, states that a bishop who does not receive a repentant person would be doing wrong – "for you do not obey our Savior and our God, to do as He also did with her that had sinned, whom the elders set before Him, and leaving the judgment in His hands, departed. But He, the searcher of hearts, asked her and said to her, 'Have the elders condemned thee, my daughter?' She said to Him, 'No, Lord.' And He said unto her, 'Go your way; neither do I condemn thee.' In Him therefore, our Savior and King and God, be your pattern, O bishops." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jesus_and_the_woman_taken_in_adultery#Textual_history

Have you read The Historicity of the Pericope Adulterae (John 7:53-8:11) by Darren M Slade?

Apart from the Alanis Morrissette level of domain name irony, it's important to differentiate between what you're saying and what the adversus blog is saying. You've lumped 'Classical historians' together, when the blog actually mentions only about 3 or 4 historians. 'High standards' also doesn't mean 'accurate' or 'correct'.

It is true that Livy is careful with his language, but Livy is also often dependent on Polybius for his information (and sometimes fails to acknowledge it The only accounts of Hannibal's crossing of the Alps is down to these two, who disagree on the details of the event. Sound familiar?

There's a complete absence of any mention of Antias who was considered a terrible historian and yet wrote 75 books, (none of which survived), the errors of Tacitus, Sallust, etc., and as Mellor says in his The Roman Historians "For Roman historians the important issues were always political and moral, not the accuracy of names and dates," a point which I think Michael Grant would echo. There is at least one classicist who pokes around on this board who might be able to confirm (or deny).

So while some historians may have been more careful than others, this isn't a guarantee of accuracy - I can be scrupulous and wrong. Neither does it mean that they're free from bias or ideology.

This book doesn't really answer your question directly, but it is a really interesting exigetical analysis of the idea of hell. https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00BOGLM3S/ref=dp-kindle-redirect?_encoding=UTF8&amp;btkr=1

Also, I'm remembering vaguely from seminary the argument between Abelard and Anselm in the 11th century regarding the purpose of Jesus' death on the cross - that would also, I think, inform Christians idea of who went to hell and why, and that it probably wasn't settled even then.

https://www.amazon.com/Jesus-Talmud-Peter-Sch%C3%A4fer/dp/0691143188

This is an excellent and well-argued book, IMO. His thesis basically is that the Talmudic and midrashic references that may refer to Jesus are (0) intended as references to Jesus in almost all instances, (1) ahistorical, and (2) intended to convey arguments against Christianity and in favor of Judaism.

Don't Sleep There are Snakes by Daniel Everett

Dr. Everett went to the Amazon jungle in the 1970's to learn the language of the Piraha people in order to put their language into writing and then translate the Bible into that language. He eventually got his PhD in linguistics.

The Piraha people have so sense of time - no past or future. They only use "within our senses" or "not within our senses". If something is not within their sight or sound or smell, it doesn't exist for all intents and purposes.

Dr. Everett may be a good place to find more information for your research.

edit: spelling

>If that's the case then we should be expecting to see writings (that aren't interpolations) about a figure who supposedly made such a stir much sooner than the Pauline epistles (which I'm not sure of a date, but I from my understand they predate the Gospels but are still at least decades after Christ), and much much sooner than 90(ish)AD for Mark (the date that I find most acceptable for it given its use of Antiquities).

1. How many messiah claimants do we know about?
2. How much do we know about those messiah claimants?
3. When do we know about them?
4. Who wrote about them?
5. What writings do we have from Palestine in toto from the 1st century apart from Christian writings?

Then compare to whatever information you have about Jesus. The short answer is that we know virtually nothing about most of the messiah claimants, who were written about almost solely by Josephus, on average at a distance of 50 years after the event, some who died many years before Josephus was born (handy list here.) Even going through Stern's Greek and Latin Authors adds virtually no information beyond Josephus and Christian writings.

Not the person you replied to, but I believe they may be referring to this

The Date of Mark’s Gospel Apart from the Temple and Rumors of War: The Taxation Episode (12:13–17) as Evidence

I'm pretty sure Baal was the storm god. Any storm-god-like qualities that Yahweh exhibits are likely assimilations of Baal thanks to the influence of the Yahweh-only cults/ movements.

Thank you, that means a lot coming from you. I wasn't referring to our respective geographical positions, rather to this subreddit. Your commitment to unbiased scholarship is admirable, I try to do the same. I'm pleased we share Christian convictions though.

That's impressive, as a young man heading into undergrad myself, I hope my understanding is enriched. May I ask where you studied? In my view, Rabbinic literature, though integral to Jewish spirituality and instructive as to beliefs in Jesus' day, it may not always be the best for determining the original intended meaning of a text.

I did some cursory research while waiting for you to respond, I found that the Persian Creation Myth includes a Tree of Life in the literal sense. You may be pleased to hear that I found a paper you might not have seen on Academia.edu by Ronald A. Veenker on sexual metaphors in the Eden narrative.

Thank you for your sources, I was familiar with Walton but will look into the others.

Besides Goldberg's article there is also Ken Olsen's 2013 chapter-article arguing for Eusebius to have 'influenced' the TF - <em>A Eusebian Reading of the Testimonium Flavianum</em>

I'd say that, without a doubt, this is simply the common name Χρήστος (Pauly's Realencyclopädie [III.2] has a list of people of this name).

But more importantly, γόης here is probably being used as a sort of formalized "profession" (I'm not sure we can really say anything about a negative connotation here); and I think διά + genitive here indicates that this is a gift. This article discusses similar bowls (and their uses); and e.g. one is inscribed ΔΙΑ ΦΑΝΤΟΚΔΕΟΥΣ ΤΟΥ ΜΕΡΙΔΑΡΧΟΥ.

Stephen Shoemaker has a book about this: The Ancient Traditions of the Virgin Mary's Dormition and Assumption. He argues that the assumption of Mary first emerged within Gnostic Christianity in the third century.

Adele Berlin's JPS Torah Commentary: Esther is altogether excellent.

Berlin asserts that Esther is intentional farce.

Check out James Kugel's How to Read the Bible: A Guide to Scripture, Then and Now which compares the differences between ancient biblical interpretation and modern scholarship and provides an academic approach to understanding the text as a whole.

You can get it pretty inexpensively on Amazon:

https://www.amazon.com/Enoch-Hermeneia-Translation-George-Nickelsburg/dp/0800699106

It is the most up-to-date translation you can find. The Hermeneia commentaries are also top-notch but that would cost you a lot more.

I never got around to reading it but I would check out "God in translation" by Mark Smith.

here's the amazon page.

Richard Elliott Friedman, Who Wrote the Bible, p. 259:

"Exodus 21:1–27; 22:1–30; 23:1–33

The Covenant Code is a legal text that may not have been composed by the author of E, but was rather a source that this author wove into the narrative."

&#x200B;

There's the evidence that 22:29–30 is earlier than the other texts. Better start wiggling.

Also, I'm not a fan of Friedman. E and J weren't full sources. See here for more info.

The idea that the author of Luke was a doctor has been long discredited. This was most notably demonstrated by Henry Cadbury in The Style and Literary Method of Luke in which he showed that the alleged "medical" vocabulary of the author of Luke-Acts was no more extensive than other ancient writers like Josephus and Lucian who were definitely not physicians. The author of Luke-Acts shows basically an average medical knowledge of an average educated person. Cadbury earned his PhD with this dissertation and the saying is that "Cadbury earned his doctorate by taking Luke's away."

Moreover, the only time Paul ever mentions traveling with anyone named Luke is in Philemon (1:24), where he's just a name on a list and Paul doesn;t say he was a physician. That identification comes from Colossians, which is pseudoepigraphical.

So yes, we can tell the author was an educated Greek. I'd hardly call that an identification, though.

How long is a piece of string you say?

Best bet is to read the latest from this list and see where we are (Streit and Hoflmayer can be found on here). The short of it is that it can't decide much as a) the margins of error are too big to settle the heart of the debate, and b) it's all circular anyway (cf Streit et al). RC may have narrowed the margins (cf Mazar, 2013) but it's not settled anything and doesn't look like it will either.

https://ehrmanblog.org/guest-post-dr-brent-nongbri-on-how-we-date-manuscripts/

https://www.academia.edu/6755662/The_Limits_of_Palaeographic_Dating_of_Literary_Papyri_Some_Observations_on_the_Date_and_Provenance_of_P.Bodmer_II_P66_

Yet these texts are 3-4 generations later. Tacitus & Pliny don't mention the name Jesus.

And Josephus is largely agreed to be an interpolation;-

• Ken Olsen's 2013 <em>A Eusebian Reading of the Testimonium Flavianum</em>; and

• Paul Hopper (2014) “A Narrative Anomaly in Josephus: Jewish Antiquities xviii:63,” in Monika Fludernik and Daniel Jacob, eds., Linguistics and Literary Studies: Interfaces, Encounters, Transfers, (2014: de Gruyter), pp. 147-169.

Hopper noted that

>" ..the uses of the Greek verb forms such as aorists and participles are distinct in the Jesus passage from those in the other Pilate episodes, and that these differences amount to a difference in genre. It is suggested that the Jesus passage is close in style and content to the creeds that were composed two to three centuries after Josephus."

See http://earlywritings.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=3&amp;t=1237&amp;sid=3d5a1db4d04b1190c47792897d9dce15#p27374

I have a friend who recently completed his dissertation on Jacob of Sarugh. You may find this database of his helpful, if you're doing much work on the topic: https://www.academia.edu/10220509/A_Brief_Guide_to_Syriac_Homilies_-_Version_3_updated_4_March_2016_