Scripture & RecordScripture & Record

Bible prophecy checked against the historical record

Roman

  • What Romans wrote about Christians

    Two Roman officials, writing sixty years apart, mention Christians in passing while explaining something else. Neither is sympathetic and neither is trying to prove anything — which is exactly what makes the two passages worth more than their length.

  • Jude

    Jude: a short polemic, an explicit quotation of 1 Enoch, a probable allusion to the Assumption of Moses, and what a canonical book citing a non-canonical one shows about how these categories formed.

  • 1 Peter

    1 Peter: suffering as the central subject, the Greek that complicates the authorship claim, Babylon as a codeword for Rome, and Pliny’s letter from the same provinces.

  • Philemon

    Philemon: a private letter about a runaway or reassigned slave, why nobody disputes Paul wrote it, and how a text that refuses to state a principle became central to a long argument.

  • Titus

    Titus: a short letter of church order for Crete, the quotation from Epimenides, and the same authorship question that governs the other two Pastorals.

  • 2 Timothy

    2 Timothy: a testament rather than a manual, the personal details that complicate the authorship argument, and what the external record can and cannot say about Paul’s death.

  • 1 Timothy

    1 Timothy: church order rather than argument, the vocabulary evidence behind the authorship dispute, and why the earliest Pauline manuscript does not contain it.

  • 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.