The final work that “Christ Before Jesus” looks at is the Epistle of James. As with previous texts, Britt and Wingo again claim that it’s a second-century work, yet they don’t have evidence for that. As we’ve already seen, their stylometry evidence holds no actual water. Before we even get to the text though, we…
Mark 13 is sometimes known as the “Little Apocalypse.” It’s the chapter in Mark, as well as paralleled in Matthew 24 and Luke 21, that speaks about the destruction of the temple. Because of that, it has become an anchor point when looking at a possible dating for the Gospel of Mark. The question here…
Britt’s and Wingo’s finale is lackluster. After having built their arguments on extremely faulty ground, they begin their finale by saying that “this section will contain some of our most revealing finds and help us date a number of early Christian text.” They won’t fulfill those claims. They begin off by reviewing some of the…
Based on everything we’ve discussed this far in regards to “Christ Before Jesus,” it is probably no surprise that Britt and Wingo once again make the claim that the book of Revelation is a compilation, that it’s written by multiple authors. What may be surprising is their claim that Revelation is not originally a Christian…
One thing Britt and Wingo have managed to do consistently is show that they don’t know much about stylometry. Whether that is in regard to what constitutes proper methodology, or even how to read the dendrogram correctly. I realize that is blunt, but it’s what has been seen time and time again, and the discussion…
At this point, it’s been demonstrated thoroughly that the stylometric analysis within “Christ Before Jesus” is rather worthless. Not only is it based on flawed methodology, and virtually impossible to replicate (in fact, even running Stylo with their settings, and with the texts they suggest, their results could not be replicated), the readings and interpretations…
If I am to be honest, it was with this section that I lost all hope in this book. One of the things I’ve tried to do with this work, and these authors, is to err on the side of being as fair as possible. I’ve attempted to give the authors the benefit of the…
At this point in the critique of Britt’s and Wingo’s argument in “Christ Before Jesus,” I think it should be clear that we can generally ignore their stylometric analysis for a host of reasons, starting with the methodology being inherently flawed, to the actual results lacking the necessary data we need to fully analyze them….
One of the arguments that Britt and Wingo frequently come back to is the argument from silence. We’ve already discussed this previously, but another point we have to take into consideration is that we have few early Christian writers in general. Dealing with Acts specifically, Britt and Wingo attempt to build an argument that maybe…
I don’t want to suggest that Britt and Wingo are being dishonest in their research, or at least I didn’t when I started this critique. Just like I wouldn’t say most modern apologists are doing such. But regardless of their intention here, the outcome is the same. On page 232, I think this really comes…
