On Creationism

I have been reading Robert Eisenman's "James the Brother of Jesus" recently. He makes the case that James was the leader of the Christian church after Jesus died, until his own death in AD 62. Since that time, however, his role got downplayed, as Jesus became ever more divine. It was awkward for God incarnate to have a brother, so James was redacted from the narrative. Eisenman draws on the Dead Sea Scrolls to a large degree, and this is generally regards as suspect, as he has to ignore the dating of the documents to make it work. Nevertheless, the rest of his argument seems to be well regarded, and I found it pretty convincing. Five years later (Jul/24): I now think Eisenman has it wrong. A better explanation: We have James, the Brother of John, who was an original disciple, and became leader of the church. Then we have James, the Brother of Jesus, a pious man who rejected Jesus claims when Jesus was alive, but became convinced later, perhaps after having a vision, and...

What did Jesus mean when he said: Mark 13:30 Truly I tell you, this generation will certainly not pass away until all these things have happened. 31 Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will never pass away. Mark was written around 70 AD; Jesus' generation was pretty much at an end. Note that pretty much every Bible translates it this way (all twenty eight of these ). Why did Mark have Jesus say a prophecy that was wrong? The destruction of the temple happened in 70 AD at the hands of the Romans in retaliation for the Jewish revolt. The author of Mark lived through that - though possibly at a distance. For him, the end of the world had arrived! He therefore had no problem putting words in Jesus mouth. The Previous Chapter We shall start with the previous chapter. In Matthew, Jesus spends pretty much all of chapter 23 saying woe to the Pharisees, accusing them of hypocrisy. The author of Matthew knew that woe would indeed come to them when the temple was destroyed. I...