The Secular Frontier

The Biblical Studies Carnival is out today and I have a contribution  in it.  Check it out: https://readingacts.com/2025/09/01/biblical-studies-carnival-228-for-july-and-august-2025/ ... Read Article

Previously: Announcing A New Blog Series: THE QUEST FOR THE HISTORICAL PAUL Now the conclusion (I will be adding the reviewed essays to the above page as they are published). The earliest reception history for the Gospel of John,  John 21 which ... Read Article

Previously: Announcing A New Blog Series: THE QUEST FOR THE HISTORICAL PAUL The Corrupt Trial of Jesus and Paul Let's try to resolve an apparent contradiction between the Gethsemane prayer in Hebrews and the one in Mark.  We read: 7 In t ... Read Article

Previously Lot’s Angels and Jesus as a Great Angel in Paul Eusebius of Caesarea, a 4th-century Christian historian, attributed the destruction of the Temple in 70 CE and the Jewish loss of land following the Bar Kokhba revolt (132–135 CE) to div ... Read Article

Previously: Announcing A New Blog Series: THE QUEST FOR THE HISTORICAL PAUL Paul and the Churches: From Corinth to Rome The Jews believed that God actively governed history, using tragedies to discipline and restore His people.  With the des ... Read Article

Previously: The Incarnation in the Prologue of the Gospel of John and Paul’s letters The communities of the letters may be idealized as to the length of Paul’s reach, like the seven communities of Revelation represents universality, not literal ... Read Article

Previously: Announcing A New Blog Series: THE QUEST FOR THE HISTORICAL PAUL The notion of the incarnation is well known from the Gospel of John.  We read The Word Became Flesh (John 1) 1 In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was w ... Read Article

I'm doing a series of 4 articles on the historical Paul based on my 8 post blog series. A PhD specialist is looking at the articles to make sure there are no egregious errors. Here is the first one: https://infidels.org/library/modern/quest-for-histori ... Read Article

The Heidegger Circle welcomes submissions on any topic in Heidegger scholarship for its annual Satellite Session at the Central Division of the APA. The Central Division Meeting will be February 18th to 21st at the Palmer House Hilton, Chicago, Illinois. ... Read Article

Last Time: THE QUEST FOR THE HISTORICAL PAUL (Part 7/8: Paul and Salvation by Any Means Necessary) Hermann Detering and others argue for a significantly later date for the composition of the Gospel of Mark than the mainstream scholarly consensus, wh ... Read Article

Last Time: THE QUEST FOR THE HISTORICAL PAUL (Part 6/8: The Dog Who Stopped the War) Now: (Introduction) If the Gospels, Acts, and Pauline letters are fictive 2nd century writings, the Q source would then be our only early source about Jesus.& ... Read Article

Last Time: THE QUEST FOR THE HISTORICAL PAUL (Part 5/8: Literary – Beyond the Historicism/Mythicism Debate) Now To recapitulate, while Paul is written in role as an early 1st century apocalyptic Jew, the apocalyptism to the contrary also makes ... Read Article

Last Time: THE QUEST FOR THE HISTORICAL PAUL (Part 4: Paul and the Schools) (Intro) One popular debate right now is the historicism/mythicism debate in New Testament studies - the historicity of Jesus or whether he was originally believed to exis ... Read Article

Last Time: THE QUEST FOR THE HISTORICAL PAUL (Part 3: The Coming Kingdom of God on Earth and the Unnecessary Jesus and Paul) One thing I note in these posts on Paul is that Paul seems to be briefly summarizing complex theological themes worked out i ... Read Article

Last Time: THE QUEST FOR THE HISTORICAL PAUL (Part 2: Jesus, Paul, and Plutarch) Now: (Introduction) We’ve been thinking about how an early date of Mark or Paul’s writings would be useful for historical mining reasons but may just be wishf ... Read Article

PREVIOUSLY: THE QUEST FOR THE HISTORICAL PAUL (Introduction with Prof Nina E. Livesey) Last time we levelled the playing field and established a spectrum of interpretation of Paul from the far right of Christian fundamentalism with a very early date ... Read Article

Previously: Announcing A New Blog Series: THE QUEST FOR THE HISTORICAL PAUL The Letters of Paul in their Roman Literary Context: Reassessing Apostolic Authorship (by Nina E Livesey, Peer Reviewed Cambridge Press, 2024) (INTRODUCTION TO THIS S ... Read Article

Conversion on the Way to Damascus, a 1601 portrait by Caravaggio (wiki) I'm excited to announce my new blog series on The Quest For The Historical Paul! This hub page will have a continuous rollout of links to the posts as I make them. STAY ... Read Article

LAST TIME: Ehrman’s New Free Lecture on the Historicity of Jesus Now, Carrier Responds! 1. The Article Bart Ehrman’s Latest Weird Attempt to Refute Mythicism 2. The Podcast https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UWWNTmTAqnA ... Read Article

The Texas flood and the children it killed has shocked the world. But why? Childhood death has been the historical norm, and makes it obvious to atheists there is no caring creator. We must question why others imagine otherwise.  So what do Americ ... Read Article

*Slides were provided for free to all listeners! Ehrman gave his lecture today on the existence of Jesus on earth in history contra mythicism, so here are a few of the new takeaways you may not have heard before. So what's kind of new here is po ... Read Article

Ehrman's new lecture is coming this Saturday, and he shared some free resources as supplements: Free Articles: 15 Historically Accurate Facts About Jesus Josephus on Jesus: What did Josephus Say About Jesus? Teachings of Jesus: 10 Messages Je ... Read Article

see: Trump’s religious liberty commission might be the end of religious freedom for all ... Read Article

Canada and the USA were the best of friends and now Canada is terrified of Trump's tariffs putting our economy into recession or worse so he can annex us. ... Read Article

As I work away revising my three Paul essays, largely influenced by Prof Livesey's work, here is a recent interview of her by Prof M David Litwa. My biggest takeaway? I look a lot like Litwa, lol. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HZCr0AhG_AU ... Read Article