CADRE Comments

    "I charge you in the presence of God, who gives life to all things, and of Christ Jesus, who in his testimony before Pontius Pilate made the good confession, to keep the commandment unstained and free from reproach until the appearing of our Lord Jesus Christ, which he will display at the proper time—he who is the blessed and only Sovereign, the King of kings and Lord of lords, who alone has immortality, who dwells in unapproachable light, whom no one has ever seen or can see. To him be honor and eternal dominion. Amen." (1 Timothy 6:13-16)         This passage clearly has Jesus Christ as its focus. He is said to be the King of kings and Lord of lords. He is said to be the blessed and only Sovereign. Christ alone possessing immortality and dwelling in unapproachable light refers to His mediating the divine glory. Paul thereby equates Jesus with God Himself. Christ is life. He furnishes us with life. Steven J. Cole gives the following  commentary  on 1 Timothy 6:13:  

My argument "Community as author" postulates that if we don't know the individual authors of the gospels we can still look to the communities that produced the gospels as the authors because they contained not only the actual authors/redactors but many eye witnesses, to the events of Jesus' life.  Modern scholars are now more likely to  think  in terms of communities producing Gospels rather than  in terms of individual authors.  Communities Sprang up quickly. As Luke Timothy Johnson puts it, " Acts shows how rapidly the message spread across vast geographic areas. Within seven or eight years separate communities existed in Jerusalem,Judea, Sameria, and Syria. In 20 years there were communities in Cyprus and Asia Minor...." [1]   One school of Scholarship which might take this view of community authorship is the "form critics." Form criticism is a philosophy and methodology of Biblical criticism, "Criticism" in relation to the

"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

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