A Virtual File Cabinet for Our Studies of Christian Origins & Hebraic Faith
Claude.ai’s Summary: The Martyrdom of Polycarp (Bart Ehrman) PDF is in his Dropbox directory. This piece is Ehrman’s introduction to his translation of The Martyrdom of Polycarp for his Harvard University Press collection The Apostolic Fathers. What the text is The document is presented as a letter from the church of Smyrna to the church […]
Continue Reading7/12/2026 – Below is a summary of a post by Bart Ehrman on his blog site here. A PDF titled 2 Clement.pdf of the article is in his Directory in Dropbox. Ehrman on 2 Clement Bart Ehrman’s piece (adapted from his Loeb Apostolic Fathers introduction) surveys 2 Clement, which he argues is the earliest surviving […]
Continue Reading7/6/2026: from Claude.ai. Be sure to read to the 2nd Prompt – What do critical bible scholars say is why the Gospel of Peter was not in the canon when it is clearly pro-Roman and anti-Judaism? 1st Prompt: Provide quotes and context about how the Gospel of Peter pushes anti-Judaism further. Cite all sources inline. […]
Continue ReadingChatGPT’s response to the Prompt: Are the writings by the apostolic fathers considered to be apocrypha? Short answer: No, the writings of the Apostolic Fathers are not considered “apocrypha” in the usual scholarly sense. They are a different category. What are the Apostolic Fathers? The term “Apostolic Fathers” refers to early Christian authors writing roughly […]
Continue ReadingFrom Bart Ehrman’s textbook The New Testament: A Historical Introduction to the Early Christian Writings (Oxford University Press). I now turn to the longest and apparently most widely read writing [of the Apostolic Fathers] in the collection, called The Shepherd, written by an otherwise virtually unknown Christian named Hermas. Like the book of Revelation in the New Testament, […]
Continue ReadingExtracts from Biblical Profile: The Birth of Noah by Jaap Doedens at BAR; Summer 2021. … During the reconstruction process, it was found that the fourth scroll contained stories, written in Aramaic, about the patriarchs known from the biblical Book of Genesis. The scroll enhances the biblical narratives with interesting details. Since the first parts of the […]
Continue ReadingExtracts from Bart Ehrman’s Blog post listed below. He takes info for the posts from his book Journeys to Heaven and Hell (Yale University Press, 2022); I discuss 1 Enoch there because it does indeed narrate a visit to the realms of the dead by a mere mortal – unlike anywhere in the Hebrew Bible. He uses […]
Continue ReadingThis page provides links to articles and extracts. “Lost Gospels”—Lost No More by Tony Burke published at BAR. See extracts below. The final shape of the canon was seemingly settled by 367 C.E. when Athanasius of Alexandria issued his annual letter for Easter. This 39th Festal Letter lists the 27 books of the New Testament as […]
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