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02-28-2010, 06:51 PM | #71 | |||
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One of the key documents of that period is an extant letter written by Constantine From the Letter of Constantine Quote:
Evidence from the fifth and sixth centuries concerning the epoch surrounding the council of Nicaea and the "Arian Controversy" which raged for centuries from the council of Nicaea 3.325 CE ON ACCOUNT OF THE SOPHISMS OF ARIUS is relatively late evidence. |
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02-28-2010, 09:19 PM | #72 | |
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Unless it can be ascertained when the Pauline writings were made it is pointless relying on an author that the Church itself seemed to have lost track of. It would appear that Church did not know what Paul wrote. How can you tell if the fake Paul did not write Romans and that the real Paul wrote Hebrews? After all, some believed Paul wrote Hebrews. It would appear that the Canon produce by the Church is filled with bogus information about the dating, authorship and chronology of the writings within. The Pauline writings do not match the time zone in which they were placed no historical source external of apologetics can account for the Pauline doctrine or character in the 1st century from Aretas to Nero. There is no external historical where Jews were worshiping a man as a God. Up to the middle of the 2nd century, Justin Martyr only accounted for a single book found in the Canon by the name of Revelation. It would appear that the Church destroyed and manipulated their own history and then want others to retrieve and re-construct their past with forgeries and bogus information. The history of Jesus believers may be lost forever due to deliberate fraud within the Church itself. |
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02-28-2010, 09:33 PM | #73 | ||
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02-28-2010, 09:36 PM | #74 | |
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The orthodox movement is going to have a problem with the Gnostic movement if they are trying to divert faith away from Christ but are instead using Christ as a spokesperson for their particular metaphysical view that they believe will lead to some kind of salvation. You are correct about the earthly intermediaries found in the orthodox church would oppose a mystical approach of direct connection to the spirit but I was only speaking about the intermediary in the platonic sense that Jesus is personifying/replacing in some interpretations of the story. It’s easy to see the argument from a mystic offshoot against the orthodox promotion of earthly leaders as the church broadened their power base as your standard power grab. Why let these guys tell you about having faith is enough when we can show you how to connect to the same spirit and have the same mystical experience as Jesus. The reason that the mystically minded individual is going to have problems with the orthodox position is because they are usually looking for the solution for the individual not for the whole. It’s a case of micro vs macro salvation. Also if you don’t believe in a literal resurrection of the dead then the orthodox position is going to be tough to justify so alternate salvation routes are going to be required. Such as it is understanding his teachings or connecting to the same spirit that is the source of the salvation since faith in him being resurrected is just nonsense from your world view. The problem with the mystical or Gnostic interpretation is what does a mystical experience do for you or how does any level of Gnosticism no matter how detailed and correct save you or solve any of the world’s problems in any way? Yea Jesus and Paul were mystics but what they gained from their mystical experience wasn’t gnosis but faith that Jesus was the Christ. What drew people like Paul to Christianity wasn’t the followers’ mystic ability or their level of gnosis but it was their faith by their willingness to die that helped convince him that an actual resurrection was possible after they established a new kind of kingdom where Christ alone is king. From this perspective the mystics and Gnostics are just mentally wacking off and getting in the way of real work in trying to not only fix the world but get your name on the list to be called back up during an age of eternal life in the future. |
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03-01-2010, 06:52 AM | #75 | ||
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It's possible that the "first teacher/preacher enthusiasm" was genuine and based on profound belief in the validity of the message. It's equally possible that the enthusiasm was feigned and resulted from the way this message gave a skilled messenger considerable influence, power and financial gain. Either way it's a cinch that Christianity did not begin "just like it says in the bible". A recently resurrected Jesus didn't magically float off into heaven. Twelve apostles weren't sitting in a room one Pentecost morning when a sound of a strong wind was heard combined with cloven tongues like fire sitting on the heads of each one. They didn't immediately begin speaking in foreign languages, nor did 5,000 pious Jews cry out with remorse over having crucified Jesus and get baptized in his name that afternoon. There was no tiny band of miracle workers healing blind, paralyzed, deaf, mute or demon possessed people. Nobody was struck dead for lying to the holy ghost. There was no bloody persecution of early Christians by Jewish leaders, no letters of authorization to travel to Damascus or other places to hunt down, imprison, torture and/or kill Christians. This entire colorful history was fabricated to provide drama and sympathy, to entice people to join the ranks of Christians. The actual evidence indicates that Christianity evolved slowly over many decades (possibly even centuries) from loosely associated myths into more organized belief systems. For a long time there was considerable disagreement as to when this messiah figure might have lived, where he lived, where he traveled, what he did, when he died and how he died, even whether or not he got married and started a family. Many didn't even believe he ever had a physical body. The non canonical gospels are evidence of this wide disparity of beliefs. At some point a group of powerful and influential people organized in an effort to squelch competing beliefs. They used their influence, power and sometimes good old fashioned book-burning to force "orthodox" Christianity on everyone, branding any versions that weren't compatible as "heresy". |
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03-01-2010, 01:43 PM | #76 | ||
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Again, some good stuff there Elijah, and although I disagree with some of it I like the way you think about it. Just to say something on this.
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Judging from the evidence we have, including Paul, Chrisitianity is a very small beer thing to start with, basically a bunch of people sharing ideas. You get the impression from the gospels that this was all a big deal - but if we are going for a human, HJ, we can't accept that it was a big deal, it must have just been a tiny movement (that remained tiny till well into the 2nd century, and even then plateaued as a relatively minor religion until Constantine. So it's a bunch of people sharing ideas. Now I would be prepared to countenance that they were sharing ideas in response to some human teacher called "Joshua" if there was any external evidence of such a fellow (outside mentions, artefacts, archeological stuff, etc.), or any internal evidence that any of the people who wrote the earliest texts (supposing stuff like Paul, Hebrews, Didache, etc., to be genuinely the earliest), or anybody known to anybody writing those texts, knew a human being called "Joshua the Anointed One". But so far as I can see, there isn't any such evidence, neither external nor internal. So the most plausible alternative, failing finding evidence of the human fellow who got blown up into the ridiculous (albeit moving) and well-known myth, is that they were sharing ideas in response to one or a combination of: mystical experiences (states of profound absence of the ordinary sense of self, concomitant with the presence of a sense of being the Universe, or the Absolute, or the All, or however one's culture conceives the ultimate context of all contexts); visionary experiences (trance states with real-seeming encounters with divine or angelic beings, and/or demons); and philosophical and theological ideas, often sparked off by, or sparking such experiences. And that's the evidence we have - from the apologists, for example, one gets a sense of a philosophical kind of Christianity (again, remember Plotinus actually engaged with the Gnostics - he disagreed with them, but took them seriously enough to engage in argument, obviously partly because their philosophy was closely competitive with his, quite similar in some ways, not leaast including the emphasis on experience). From Paul we get the sense of an experiential, already-verging-on-gnostic religion, and from Hebrews and Didache, we get the sense of a disciplined, Philonic Jewish sort of deal - related to Gnosticism via a common acceptance of Middle-Platonic ideas. There's even more variety than that as time goes on, but that's already a varied bunch. Some of that could have been started by a living man, but until we find such a man, it could also easily have started sua sponte, with lesser lights responding to ideas "in the air" at the time. Quote:
It's the experience, knowing, and the pursuit of knowing, that gives the conviction. Religious founders are people who inspire - they inspire to action. This kind of conviction comes through the conviction of having personally experienced something remarkable (again, it could have been a real crucifixion/hysterical reaction, but there's no evidence for it). It doesn't come from mere belief. So originally it was a small, scattered movement of geeks, geeks and, on the whole, contrary to later on, somewhat well-to-do, somewhat educated people; but geeks who were having ideas, visions and unitive experiences based on some kind of collective celebrations (cf. Paul on the situation with his congregations - some pretty whacky stuff going on there) or philosophical discussion groups. Some of the congregations would be more ritualised and/or riotous, some would be more philosophical and sedate. The philosophical circles would have been more like the later Hermetic circles (cf. book by Garth Fowden) or like some Vedantic discussion circles (satsangs) - you'd have a teacher with personal experience, perhaps of Plotinian philosophical ascent, or Jewish ascent mysticism, or some kind of non-dual philosophy; or they might have a claim to experience of encountering deities, spirits or demons. And you'd get some local well-to-do "New Agey" types who would go and listen to them talk, and do any exercises recommended. The name, Joshua Messiah, Joshua the Anointed, has the air of a construct. It's like saying "Everyman Messiah". The entity was probably first conceived through poring over Scripture to glean theological insights. Some geeks found signs, hidden in Scripture (I'd guess probably based on linguistic or numerological tricks) that there had already secretly been some kind of Messiah in the recent-ish past. The High Priest stuff, the "secret long hidden", etc. Then some of them will have had visions of the entity in question. It might well have personally given some of them a "gospel" of sorts, some kind of mini-biog ("Know ye that when I was on earth I did such-and-such.") Others might have had mystical experiences inspired by contemplation of the philosophical symbolism of the idea. I think, actually, that the apocalyptic stuff may be a red-herring, as traditionally interpreted (in fact it was an embarrassment for later Christians, obviously). Something Ehrman said really rang a bell for me: that proto-Gnosticism may have started off as "disappointed apocalypticism". Hence, I think, there are remnants of apocalyptic language in Paul - but it's an interiorisation and spiritualisation of the apocalyptic trope (due to failure of standard apocalyptic expectations). |
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03-01-2010, 01:57 PM | #77 | |
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Check my post to Elijah above for some things relevant to this too. And also, of course, all this could have happened with an HJ, it's just that it needn't have happened with an HJ for it to have happened, and in the absence of good evidence for an HJ, there's no good reason to suppose it did happen with an HJ, and therefore it's more likely to have happened via some conglomeration of philosophy (ancient philosophy as practical, involving ethical, mental and meditational exercises), theology and visionary/mystical experience. |
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03-01-2010, 06:30 PM | #78 | ||||
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The point I was trying to make was that the orthodox position is that despite Jesus and Paul and maybe all the early Christians being mystics, what they gained from the experience was that Jesus was the Christ not a gnosis about the universe or salvation from the mystical experience itself. Salvation was seen in establishing a new kind of kingdom with a spiritual king that could work like a meme-virus within existing empires like Rome, creating a new day. For that faith in Jesus is all that is needed not mystic ability or a specific Gnosticism and arguing for that just creates divisions slowing the progress down which is why they were persecuted. Quote:
John the Baptist has already been killed so Jesus knows his time is short so instead of running forever he just faces his death and tries to get it to work for the cause of establishing this new kingdom John and himself were prophesying. So Jesus tells his followers that it is his intent to die but the followers don’t understand why but when he does have the faith to go thru with it they believe him more then they understand what the hell was going on. At this point there is no way anyone could have really foreseen the effect of his sacrifice and more importantly him asking his followers to follow his example in being willing to sacrifice their lives. This creates a meme that every time you kill a Christian it becomes “the seeds of the church” which brings them closer to the goal in Christianizing whatever particular nation they were working on. That IMO is why Jesus is sacrificing his life and how Christianity got going. Not because of a desire to promote mysticism or Gnosticism. Quote:
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Basically I think you are over emphasizing the effect of a vision and under emphasizing the effect of seeing someone with enough conviction to sacrifice their life as the catalyst for the formation of Christianity. |
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03-01-2010, 07:05 PM | #79 | ||
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This is found in "Octavius" by Minucius Felix Quote:
See http://www.newadvent.org |
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03-02-2010, 02:15 AM | #80 | ||
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Because that would bring the tally of answers up to five. |
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