Ive learned recently that the Arian heresy has a surprisingly higher Christology than I thought it did. Take for example the following comments by Ulfilas (Wulfila), which I originally saw in this Twitter thread and tracked down to Uta Heil’s book Arianism: Roman Heresy and Barbarian Creed, pp. 106-107 (freely accessible here): “… I believe in God being one, the Father, the only unbegotten and the invisible one, and I believe in his only-begotten Son, our Lord and God, the creator and craftsman of the whole creation, there is not one similar to Him; therefore there is one God and Father of all ..read more

While I love r/AcademicBiblical, I have noticed some occasional group behavior there that I’m not the biggest fan of. Dan McClellan is an academic in the field of biblical studies, and his work is about as good as that of any other academic. But what distinguishes McClellan from most, and why he’s so popular online now, is because of his “Data Over Dogma” accounts on social media (mainly TikTok, Twitter/X, and YouTube). His choice of username is little more than performative identity politics, just like “RationalityRules” or others who use language to weave or presuppose the notions of being s ..read more

It’s widely accepted that the Gospel of Luke used the Gospel of Mark as one of his sources. Luke tells us a little about his sources in the intro to his work, to which we call the ‘prologue’. Luke 1:1–4: Inasmuch as many have undertaken to compile a narrative of the things which have been accomplished among us, 2 just as they were delivered to us by those who from the beginning were eyewitnesses and ministers of the word, 3 it seemed good to me also, having followed all things closely for some time past, to write an orderly account for you, most excellent Theophilus,&n ..read more

People who frequent here will notice that I have not posted in a long time! I’ve largely paused my reading into biblical (New Testament, Old Testament, etc) studies for the time being, but on occasion I return. I assume that I’ll get back into it in the level of detail I had been before. Nevertheless, a few people have updated me recently about some recent developments in the literature with respect to the dating of New Testament texts (specifically the Gospels: Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John). I thought I’d share some of this. Maybe most significantly is a new publication by Jonathan Bernier c ..read more

A few years ago, Matthew Hartke published a disastrous blog post titled Five Reasons to Doubt the Resurrection and I refuted it in detail. Hartke sure loves tweeting about his claims about this stuff but failed to give a response when I forwarded this to him. If someone has good reasons to doubt the resurrection, it clearly isn’t Hartke. Anyways, Hartke wants to try again now: “How Cognitive Dissonance Explains Christianity”. I’m not going to lie, even though his first one was bad, this one was an absolute disaster. According to Hartke, cognitive dissonance theory explains Christianity. I will ..read more

Some individual called “Non-Alchemist” has apparently argued that even if the resurrection happened, that doesn’t show Christianity is true! I might understand a bit if this sort of logic was advanced for purely hypothetical reasons, but the fact that any sort of reasoning along these lines is actually undertaken by some people is absolutely astounding. According to the Non-Alchemist, Deuteronomy 13 states that the God of Israel was willing to test his people with signs and wonders from false prophets. Therefore, it is irrelevant if any real miracles happened by Jesus because it could just be ..read more

Not too long ago, someone sent me this silly little article by some guy called “Christopher Kelly” trying to debunk the Christianity. Not just debunk it, but prove it’s a “fraud” per the title of his article: “The Trinity – Christianity’s Colossal Fraud”. I decided to take a few minutes out of my day to debunk it (by, at often times, simply pointing out the obvious). But before I do so, you might ask who this “Christopher Kelly” is. An expert on Christian theology? A historian of early Christianity? Someone with any evidence of formal competence on the subject? Nope. Not at all. For all intent ..read more

Up until 1922, the idea that the universe was eternal and static was universal among physicists. The idea of a beginning wasn’t even imaginable. But then, in 1922, Alexander Friedmann pioneered the theory of a dynamic universe (i.e. the idea that the universe is in motion) with a certain set of solutions to Einstein’s equations. He thought it began with a bang, expanded, and that it would end in a contraction and a crunch. Einstein immediately balked and wrote a mathematical response. Friedmann then proved to Einstein via personal communication that he got his math wrong, and so Eins ..read more

The following article is taken from this page at r/AcademicQuran. Qur’an 18:83-102 and the Alexander legend The Qur’anic pericope in Surah 18:83-102 describes a figure named Dhu al-Qarnayn. Dhu al-Qarnayn is not a name, but a title, literally meaning something like “The Two-Horned Man”. After being introduced as someone who God established on the Earth, this figure is described as having travelled so far that he reaches the place where the sun sets, finding that it sets in a spring of muddy water. He also is said to have found a people living there. Then, Dhu al-Qarnayn travels some more, appa ..read more

One topic frequently discussed when it comes to the morality of the Old Testament is God’s decision to have the Israelite’s wipe out all the people in several Canaanite cities (or more specifically Jericho, Hazor, and Ai). Interestingly, one of the most widely known historical arguments against the Book of Joshua is also that no such destruction layer is known from Jericho in the relevant period (13th century BC) at which the Israelite’s must have attacked it, after having left Egypt during the reign of Ramesses II. That conclusion concerning Jericho was the conclusion of decades of scholarshi ..read more