How do we know when the Gospels were written? I have recently received two questions about this matter on the blog (from two different people, within minutes of each other!); I answered the questions as usual in the Comment section, but thought the issues were [...]
In my previous posts I explained how American scholar of early Christianity, Morton Smith, claimed to have discovered the Secret Gospel of Mark in 1958. Now I’ll discuss how, once he discovered it (assuming he did – some scholars think he actually forged it…), how [...]
Can we trust a source such as Papias on the question of whether our Gospel of Matthew was written by the disciple Matthew and that our Gospel of Mark was written by Mark, the companion of the disciple Peter? It is interesting that Papias tells [...]
I have begun to discuss the evidence provided by the early church father Papias that Mark was actually written by Mark. He appears to be the first source to say so. Does he? And if so, is he right? Here’s how I begin to discuss [...]
In my previous posts I have talked about the Martyrdom of Polcarp, our first full account of a Christian martyrdom (outside the martyrdom of Stephen in Acts 8). But is it an authentic account? It claims to be written by an eyewitness. Was it? I [...]
Here I continue the "Introduction" to my translation of the Martyrdom of Polycarp in my two-volume work, The Apostolic Fathers for the Loeb Classical Library, vol. 1 (Harvard University Press, 2003). It is giving a bit of harder hitting scholarship (though completely accessible) and includes, at [...]
In my previous post I talked about a textual problem in the early Christian writing, "The Martyrdom of Polycarp." To my surprise, I've never talked about this intriguing text on the blog before. It's time I did! This is one of the books of the [...]
Outside the New Testament there are some truly terrific early Christian writings, including accounts of early martyrs. And sometimes we know know what the authors of these texts actually wrote, because our surviving manuscripts have differences. Sometimes rather bizarre differences. There are lots and lots [...]
Readers of the blog will know that I've talked a lot about scribal changes in the writings of the New Testament, making it difficult to know what the author originally wrote. Which in turn makes it difficult to know what a translator should translate. Which [...]
Publishing a translation of an ancient text ain't at all like writing a book about the text. When the editor at Harvard Press asked me if I would be interested in doing a new edition of the Apostolic Fathers for the Loebs, she wasn’t offering [...]