A Virtual File Cabinet for Our Studies of Christian Origins & Hebraic Faith
From ChatGPT on 12/4/2025. How did Marcus Borg use the flatlander analogy to talk about God? Short Answer – He did not. I found no direct evidence that Marcus J. Borg ever explicitly invoked the classic “Flatland/Flatlander” analogy (2‑D beings perceiving a 3‑D reality) in his published works or known lectures. What I can show […]
Continue ReadingNOTE – For a non-theological explanation and analogies of the Flatlander concept, go to https://davisinterests.com/ and click on pages under the top-line menu item “Flatlanders”. From ChatGPT on 12/4/2025. Here’s a one-sentence summary of this post: Critical scholars use the Flatlander analogy to show that biblical texts reveal only partial “slices” of God’s higher-dimensional reality—like […]
Continue ReadingFrom ChatGPT on 12/3/2025. Below is a historical-critical explanation of why the Gospel of John omits a birth narrative, using the work of major scholars (Brown, Bultmann, Koester, Schnackenburg, Culpepper, Martyn, Dunn, Bauckham, and others). Citations appear within the text itself, as you require. 1. John’s theological agenda makes a human birth narrative unnecessary John’s […]
Continue ReadingFrom ChatGPT 11/26/2025. Below is a clean, practical side-by-side comparison table of the three versions: Matthew 6:9–13 (NRSV), Luke 11:2–4 (NRSV), and Didache 8:2–3. All quotations are shown directly in the table. Side-by-Side Comparison of the Lord’s Prayer Versions Line / Element Matthew 6:9–13 (NRSV) Luke 11:2–4 (NRSV) Didache 8:2–3* Address “Our Father in heaven,” […]
Continue ReadingThis is a follow-up post to the one immediately before this one here. That post was becoming too long and this one “chases a specific rabbit.” Scroll down for a related prompt: Which scholar said something like “Scholars emphasize that in antiquity, “faith” did not mean “believing ideas in your mind.” It meant embodied loyalty.” […]
Continue Reading11/21/2025 – In the BSA General discussion forum, Bobby Lane began a conversation titled I’ve misunderstood faith, literally. Many interesting comments ensued, pointing out differences between the ancient Hebrew understanding of faith, the early Christian view, and the contemporary Protestant view. I asked ChatGPT and Claude.ai about differences and how they evolved using the same […]
Continue ReadingFrom ChatGPT on 11/19/2025. In mainstream critical scholarship, the poetic prayer is understood to be the entire psalm in Jonah 2:2–9, with Jonah 2:1 and 2:10 treated as prose framing from the narrative. The prayer itself is widely regarded as a later insertion because its style, theology, and vocabulary match the Psalms rather than the […]
Continue ReadingThe page contains Claude.ai’s summary of an article, Pelagianism: History, Definition, & Beliefs (Heresy Series) written by Marko Marina, Ph.D. and published on BartEhrman.com on November 13th, 2025. It also contains extracted paragraphs and a table from the article below the summary. Summary: Pelagianism – History, Definition, & Beliefs This article provides a comprehensive historical examination […]
Continue ReadingSummary of Nestorianism: History, Definition, & Beliefs (Heresy Series) at BartEhrman.com by ChatGPT on 11/17/2025. Summary of Nestorianism: History, Definition, & Beliefs (Schachterle, 2025) The article traces how Nestorianism—a label applied by its opponents—emerged from early Christian debates about who Jesus was and how his divine and human aspects related to each other. 1. Nestorius […]
Continue ReadingThis post resulted from a post in BSA/Nerds that mentioned the author, Charles Bledsoe, believed in a “theism without supernaturalism. That idea intrigued me, and I commented that the concept would make a great thread/conversation. So, he started one, and that post is pasted below as the last part of this post. His perception of […]
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