The Pokey Finger of God

Since discovery of PRF Brown’s site[1], I have burned a good many hours both reading and thinking. It’s clear that the “Eusebian Fiction Postulate”[2] has forced me to re-examine what I thought I understood about early church history. I have been relatively pleased, so far, to find that it seems to make more sense, given [...]

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I just got pointed to P.R.F. Brown’s amazing site. He has posted quite a bit of research to his site — including a few projects I had started myself and am right glad I don’t have to finish them, now, like the list of all known writers in the ancient Western world, categorized and dated. [...]

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Two famous biographies are here summarized to make a point about a significant problem in the art of archaeology. The question is whether one can even determine if the character of some ancient story actually lived when all you have are the written records that tell the story.
My first subject has defined an entire school [...]

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Above all other things, this blog exists to capture my meanderings and ruminations regarding religion and politics. While I am a pagan[1], my studies and writings tend to orbit about Christian history as the most significant movement across Western culture. My goal as a writer is to make this material as accessible as possible to [...]

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At the root of Judaism is a written history of people to whom Yah has spoken. These people, we are told, had direct, immediate, and personal knowledge of God. They spoke with him. He answered. His words became the driving force for their actions.
This is exactly the sort of individual congress with the divine that [...]

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Two significant news items regarding some really old writings.
The first is the Revelation of Gabriel, which is a singular slate of stone covered in ink, using an ancient hand. Although the piece has been in a private collection for years, only recently has the text been translated. Dr. DeConick has a handy index of relevant [...]

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Philip occupies a rather unusual corner of the canon. On the one hand, he’s one of the first people Jesus recruits[1] and he’s shown recruiting other apostles[2] as well as bringing the early Church to Samaria[3]. On the other hand, he’s very much a bit part: he does not appear as a significant actor in [...]

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Almost immediately after the last post, I realized that a “part two” would be in order.
First off, there’s the whole issue of how the Gospel of John has a totally different take on the whole baptism thing than the synoptics. Obviously, the Gospel of John has a special place for the Baptist, and his role [...]

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In reviewing some historical material, specifically the Prophets of the Old Testament, something new occurred to me. On one level, the Prophets of Ancient Israel and Judah were the real standard bearers for the Yah cult. Some of the kings seemed to like it, perhaps because they imagined that they could somehow politically reunite the [...]

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