Sheshbazzar

Sorry, but I had to be away for a while, and first wish to thank those of you who have responded to Jeffrey in my behalf.
The problem here is that Jeffrey clearly misunderstood my statement;

"And yet "Christian history" as presented by the "Christian Fathers", revels in stories of these believers alleged martyrdom's"

By his introducing of his unwarranted idea that my statement was confined to "the writings of the pre-nicene fathers" whereas I had neither wrote, nor even implied any such thing.

The term "Christian Fathers" is quite inclusive, as it is, I did not even so much as designate "EARLY Christian Fathers", because I was referring to the so called history of The Christian Church, and of its martyrs, as it has been presented to the world by writings of The Christian Fathers during the first 8 centuries of the Christian Church.
(But by no means limited to the first 8 centuries, as we still have a line of "Christian Fathers" going on, and carrying forward these "traditions".)

Yet even The Christian Church itself admits that these stories are fables and fictitious fabrications, which certainly ought to cause any man to ponder the true character of all those previous pious frauds who were so lacking in integrity, and even reverence for the truth of their own religion, that they thought it good service to their gawd to pile up ever more lies on top of lies.
I am not going to provide the citations for all these hundreds of lying fictions that were penned by "Christian" hands, they were written, and they will ever remain as permanent witnesses against the integrity of the Christian Fathers, and of the Christian religion.

MarkA

Entire civilizations? Small groups of prehistoric hunter gathers and proto farmers have left this sort of evidence that has survived thousands of years.

Again why do you think persecuted sects and groups all through history have left such evidence behind except for the christians? Why no evidence on gravestones for instance when they were already dead and beyond persecution? Were the christians unique among Roman societies in that they did not provide for burials?

Why do you say we would not recognize them? Were there different symbols in use before the fourth century and what evidence have you for that?

Amaleq13

I already did (ie Pliny and Tacitus). Pliny, alone, establishes both since the whole point of the letter is what to do about alleged violators of the prohibition and he clearly knows very little about them. This wasn't a large, well-known organization if Pliny's letter is any indication. It was vaguely known and understood even by those whose job it was to prosecute them.

Amaleq13

Do you imagine the evidence to be representative of every small group of hunters or proto-farmers? Our discoveries and just a small portion of the total number of folks alive around at the time. It is only because there were enough people leaving enough evidence that some of it has managed to survive. It is a simple fact that we have lost far more than we have found. It is simply not reasonable to expect that every small group of hunters or proto-farmers to leave such evidence nor is it reasonable to draw any conclusion from the absence of such evidence.

I must have missed the post where you offered examples. What illegal or persecuted minority religious groups have left behind "hard archaeological evidence" of their existence during the time they were persecuted?

Their families would not be.

I'm not saying you would not, I'm saying it is naive to assume that you would. If we didn't have texts informing us that early Christians used a fish symbol to identify themselves to each other, how would you know the symbol was significant? Even with that information, we still don't know exactly why or how that symbol was derived.

I don't recall who tells us about the use of the fish symbol but I see no reason to assume that this was the only non-obvious symbol used by Christians.

Ben C Smith

Pliny also establishes another of the points that you have made on this thread:

Consider:

...after which it was their custom to separate, and then reassemble to partake of food, but food of an ordinary and innocent kind. Even this practice, however, they had abandoned after the publication of my edict, by which, according to your orders, I had forbidden political associations.

The Christians that Pliny is prosecuting were given to him by name, not by some kind of raid on one of their meetings, since they had apparently given them up because of the edict. Hardly a wholehearted welcoming of persecution with open arms. Elsewhere in the letter Pliny writes of former Christians. Pliny even anticipates being able to bring the Christian sectarians back into the mainstream:

From hence it is easy to imagine what multitudes may be reclaimed from this error, if a door be left open to repentance.

Ben.

Doug Shaver

A prosecution has to begin with a showing of probable cause. I have seen no evidence that shows probable cause.

To the contrary, you have argued that your indictment is a "postulate" and that, as such, it requires no evidence.

andrewcriddle

Justin Martyr didn't get away with it , he was eventually executed for his faith.

Persecution was erratic but it probably happened occasionally in most places. (It would partly depend on the priorities of the Governor who would change every few years.). How far the (low) risk of being killed for being an open Christian deterred you would depend on the person. Most, one would expect, played safe.

Andrew Criddle

Toto

I just noticed this story: Road workers find 1,000 ancient graves in ThessalonikiThe graves are dated from the first century BC to the 5th century CE.

I wonder how long it will take for archeologists to analyze the finds.

Jeffrey Gibson

But I didn't ask for hundreds.

In other words, you don't know where they are. Thanks for confirming what I suspected to be the case.

Jeffrey

mountainman

What other evidence do you have, since these two references are likely enough to be obvious forgeries identified a century ago. See Witnesses to the Historicity of Jesus by Arthur Drews (1912).

Best wishes,



Pete Brown