Posts

Notes On The Peshitta Manuscript

By -
"The Peshitta is a collection of Aramaic manuscripts of the Bible. Aramaic was the most common “shared language” among people of the Near East and Middle East for many centuries. This includes the years immediately before and after the earthly ministry of Jesus. For this reason, the Peshitta was an important early translation of the Bible, widely distributed and widely used. The earliest available manuscripts date to the AD 400s.

The Peshitta is the primary text used in Syriac churches, which use the Aramaic language during religious services. These churches are often accused of holding to Nestorianism, though that description is often disputed.

Based on manuscript and language evidence, scholars are overwhelmingly convinced that the Peshitta dates from well after the time period of Jesus and the apostles. The Peshitta’s language obscures certain types of metaphor or wordplay. This is common in translated texts but is abnormal in an original manuscript. The particular dialect of Ar…
Post a Comment
Read more

Apologia Mark (Answer to Bob)

By -
Image
Bob left this on comments last week so I answer:


Bob said...I thought it would be interesting to look at the evidence for the Resurrection of Jesus from the orthodox/conservative/evangelical Christian stand point, excluding, however, baseless assumptions. I am excluding fundamentalists in this discussion because fundamentalist Christian views are so extreme that it would be hopeless to try and reconcile them with the actual evidence. Some fundamentalists would probably believe that Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John sat down and wrote their gospels within ten minutes of the Ascension.Hinman: That;s really a contradiction since conservative evangelicals are fundamentalists.

A. The Gospel of Mark
Bob: So, let’s start with the first gospel written, as almost all scholars agree: the gospel of Mark. Most scholars believe that it was written sometime between 65-75 AD. So let’s accept an earlier date for the writing of this gospel: mid 60’s, prior to the destruction of Jerusalem.Hinman: That is wron…
50 comments
Reactions:
Read more

Can We Know The Exact Date That Jesus Died?

By -
"In our new book, The Final Days of Jesus: The Most Important Week of the Most Important Person Who Ever Lived, we assume but do not argue for a precise date of Jesus’s crucifixion. Virtually all scholars believe, for various reasons, that Jesus was crucified in the spring of either a.d. 30 or a.d. 33, with the majority opting for the former. (The evidence from astronomy narrows the possibilities to a.d. 27, 30, 33, or 34). However, we want to set forth our case for the date of Friday, April 3, a.d. 33 as the exact day that Christ died for our sins.

To be clear, the Bible does not explicitly specify the precise date of Jesus’s crucifixion and it is not an essential salvation truth. But that does not make it unknowable or unimportant. Because Christianity is a historical religion and the events of Christ’s life did take place in human history alongside other known events, it is helpful to locate Jesus’s death—as precisely as the available evidence allows—within the larger context o…
Post a Comment
Reactions:
Read more

Note to Bob

By -
I will answer your comment next Monday. I decreed to just make it the main blog piece.
Post a Comment
Reactions:
Read more

Messiah is Divine and Premundane in First Century Judaism

By -
Image
ancient synagogue in Hamat Gader 1st century
Christians, Modern day Jews,and everyone really seems to assume the  Jews of Jesus day understood Messiah as any ordinary man who God called to liberate  His people. This is what most Christians think the Jews expected. The Jew's expectations about Messiah were more diverse,however,  employing a few quasi divine attributes.  This post (and it's related discussion) will deal with two of those attributes, it will not stray from that field:The notion of divine Messiah, and that Messiah was premundane,or that he existed before the world.

They did understand Messiah to be born of woman, as a man, and to live  a normal life as a man. But at least some of them also understood that before that the Messiah existed  in haven with God. They had two versions of this idea. Some thought he was an actual entity. Some thought it was  the idea of Messiah, That does open interstice questions about Plantonism in Hebrew thought, but that is for Another T…
28 comments
Reactions:
Read more

The early Christians Did not believe in adoptionism

By -
Image
Pixie said: "The early Christians believed Jesus was adopted as God's son, not born that way (though Paul believed that happened at the resurrection). His childhood was relatively normal, born to two Jewish parents, the oldest of four brothers and some sisters too."[1] There is no historical basis for that belief.There is no document that says  this. Adiptionism arises in the second century there is no recognized bastion of that view in the first century.[2]


The only basis anyone has is gained by interpreting passages in Mark and written by Paul to seem to take an adoptionist view.[3] Of course they have to ignore the testimony of the church in all it's many facets.It is not hard to imagine that before the creeds and the controversies that shaped Trinitarian doctrine the average Christian probably did understand something like an adotionist view. That does not mean that the Gospel of Mark  or Paul taught this view.

There is no passage in Mark that says Jesus began as a…
82 comments
Reactions:
Read more