Scripture & RecordScripture & Record

Bible prophecy checked against the historical record

Book overviews

  • 2 Thessalonians

    2 Thessalonians: a warning against forged letters inside a letter many scholars think is forged, a timetable that contradicts the first letter, and how the argument on each side actually runs.

  • 1 Thessalonians

    1 Thessalonians as the earliest Christian text we have: how its date is fixed, the question about the dead that prompted it, and the civic title in Acts that a Thessalonian inscription confirmed.

  • Colossians

    Colossians: an authorship dispute argued from style, a heresy known only from the rebuttal, and the earthquake in the Lycus valley that complicates the dating.

  • Philippians

    Philippians: a warm letter from an imprisonment nobody can locate, the hymn in chapter 2 that predates the letter carrying it, and what excavation at a Roman colony contributes.

  • Ephesians

    Ephesians: a circular letter whose address is absent from the earliest manuscripts, an authorship question argued from style and vocabulary, and what Ephesus itself contributes to reading it.

  • Galatians

    Galatians: the sharpest of Paul’s letters, the autobiographical passage that is our best evidence for his early years, and the unresolved question of which Galatia he was writing to.

  • 2 Corinthians

    2 Corinthians: a letter that is probably several letters, a conflict with rival apostles, and the Gallio inscription — the fixed point that anchors the whole chronology of Paul.

  • Malachi

    Malachi: a disputation with a post-exilic community, dated by the Persian office it names and the temple it assumes, and what the Elephantine papyri show about the same decades.

  • Zechariah

    Zechariah as two books in one: dated visions from 520–518 BCE, an undated second half whose date is argued across four centuries, and why the seam matters for anything built on the later chapters.

  • Haggai

    Haggai: two chapters carrying five date-stamped oracles from 520 BCE, a temple rebuilding programme, and one of the few biblical chronologies that can be checked against an external royal record.