Littlejohn

Uhmmmm .... I think just not! ... I think it's much more useful for you if you take off by your head this absurd 'fixing'!


Greetings

Littlejohn

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stephan huller

Just to make clear everyone,

This argument about the origin of the nomen sacrum HAS NOTHING TO DO with whether the Christian title Chrestos is older than Christos. What we are discussing is where and how the Christians started using nomina sacra as substitutes for spelling out sacred names like 'Christ' 'God' etc.

The Greek speaking Jewish writers to the best of my knowledge DID NOT USE nomen sacrum (I think that's what Trobisch said). This was a Christian invention from a source outside of Judaism.

Here is an article written over a century ago that 'Chrestos' inscriptions (in various forms) outnumbered 'Christos' inscriptions AT THAT TIME 18,000 to 1,270!

http://books.google.com/books?id=9Qc...ptions&f=false

I brought this up to Trobisch once and he noted that this text was written a long time ago. But still if Christos gave Chrestos a 'headstart' of 17,000 inscriptions is it likely that in the last century and a bit the evidence all turned up 'Christos'?

I will dig out the source for the understanding that XC developed as a marginal notation of Greek scribes BEFORE Christianity shortly ...

stephan huller

CORRECTION (actually I think its a correction of Trobisch) I just discovered a 2009 article which discovered a nomen sacrum in the Sardis Synagogue:

http://jbl.metapress.com/content/9n6l5330gu077567/

andrewcriddle

The article is available in full at chrestos. Although it does indeed present evidence that chrestos outnumbers christos, I can't find the exact statistics you quote.

Andrew Criddle

stephan huller

The reason you can't find the statistics I quote is because they are wrong. I remembered having a discussion with Trobisch about a reference to greater numbers of Chrestos inscriptions than Christos. I will cite the correct number momentarily.

Thanks for pointing that out

Kent F

To aa5874:
I will not reply quote by quote from your previous reply to my post since it's obvious to me that you have misunderstood everything I wrote.

I will instead try to be as clear as I can:

I believe that the epistles written by ”Paul” are NOT fabricated by the early church fathers of the Roman Catholic Church (RCC) because the epistles themselves contradict many of the beliefs associated with the RCC.

Since you claim that the writings of Paul ARE fiction, then WHY are they written the way they are? I asked: Why didn't Paul visit the places where Jesus was supposed to have been crucified and buried and told about it in one or more of his epistles? Why didn't he write that Peter had guided him "on a tour" to these places? What better way for the RCC to prove that Jesus was human and that Peter was superior to Paul! You answered these two questions as if they were not valid. But they are. You can't just claim that the story of Jesus is false and that there are no such places, because the RCC BELIEVED THESE PLACES EXISTED and they still do. The human Jesus born of virgin Mary and resurrected from the dead was and is their doctrine. How hard could it have been for them to fabricate Paul outside the empty tomb when they had fabricated the entire story of a human Jesus?

WHY was Paul's statement that he was brought up to the third heaven and heard words which NO MAN before him had heard allowed to stand? Why did the RCC write such a thing which makes a dwarf out of their first bishop Peter, whom they are claiming legacy from? WHY didn't the RCC name the author Peter instead of Paul if they wrote the epistles from scratch?

It was PAUL that wrote that Jesus was crucified in heaven, not Earl Doherty or someone else claiming a mythical Jesus. How is it even possible for Doherty and others to interpret the epistles this way if the RCC who believed in a human Jesus wrote them? If they had written them, they would totally confirm the existence of a human Jesus and of Peter as superior to Paul. As it is, they do not and therefore the RCC didn't write them. Pure logic.

Asking WHY is indeed proof, namely proof that your theory is flawed.

aa5874

You MUST quote what you think that I misunderstood or else I won't know.

Please be absolutely clear.

Are you claiming that YOU KNOW who WROTE ALL the Epistles under the NAME of Paul and that YOU KNOW when ALL the Epistles under the name Paul were written?

Let me be CLEAR. The Pauline writings are about the AFTERLIFE of the RESURRECTED JESUS.

The Pauline writers have FOCUSED their story on JESUS after he was RAISED from the DEAD.

The RESURRECTION of JESUS was the Pauline writers' PRIORITY since there would be NO SALVATION without the RESURRECTION.

"Paul's" gospel, "Paul's" good news was that Jesus was RAISED from the DEAD.

Ro 10:9 - "It is the resurrection stupid" according to the Pauline writers ,borrowing a phrase from a former president.

Look again.

"It's the resurrection stupid" according to the Pauline writers.

1Co 15:17 - Look again.

The gospel, the good news, of Paul is the same refrain ALL over the Roman Empire. In Rome, in Asia, and in Judea:

It's the RESURRECTION stupid".

Ga 1:1 -
But, there was NO resurrection. The Pauline writers are fiction writers.

Now, people write fiction to deceive.

Why would "Paul" claim he was SAW Jesus AFTER he was RAISED from the dead when there was NO resurrection?

When you answer me please be absolutely CLEAR.

bacht

Good point. We have thirteen letters with Paul's name (originally fourteen if we include Hebrews) and only two with Peter's name. In Acts the two apostles are presented as equal, just focused on different ministries. According to tradition they were both martyred in Rome.

It would seem that the Catholics were forced to keep the Pauline letters because of their usefulness despite the supposed primacy of Peter. Clearly Paul's name was established enough to be remembered, rather than written out.

aa5874

A bunch of rhetorical questions are NOT EVIDENCE at all.

Why are there so much contradictions in the Jesus stories?

Why are there so much contradictions in the NT Canon?

Well, contradictions are SIGNS of fabrication.

Contradictions are indications of non-historicity.

Why did the Church claim 2nd Peter does not belong to the Canon?

Why did the Church claim gMatthew was written first and BEFORE the Fall of the Temple?

Contradictions are signs of fabrication.

Why did the Church get wrong virtually ALL the dating, authorship, and chronology of the NT Canon?

Contradictions and errors are signs of fabrications and inventions.

There are MASSIVE HOLES ALL over the NT Canon.

WHY?

Kent F

You misunderstood everything. Shall I re-quote my entire post? No point in doing that.

No, I don't know that, and neither do you. But I am claiming that the so called genuine Pauline epistles were NOT written by the early church fathers of the RCC because they contradict their beliefs. They are a textual evidence from antiquity in themselves. That's why they were edited here and there, and that's why there were epistles added by the RCC later on, more in line with their thinking. But the so called genuine epistles have an authentic core.

And you are silent on the fact that these epistles are A NEW LAW for Jews and gentiles alike. They are A SPLIT from the old testament of Moses.

Paul's gospel is "of no man" and even if he only speaks of the Jesus risen from the dead, as you say, why leave out Peter, the supposed founder of the very church you claim wrote these epistles? Why not make PETER the originator of these ideas? Because he had been a disciple of the human Jesus? So what? Even more powerful I would say!

Fair enough but you are still stuck in the same dilemma. These supposed fabricators of the RCC, with PETER as their main man, make him of little or no importance in these epistles. WHY? And why are the epistles by PAUL and not by PETER? Couldn't PETER have explained the importance of the resurrection just as well? Then we would have Peter's epistles to the Corinthians, Romans, Galatians etc and no other letters from him in the NT as they would be sufficient. The dull letters of Peter that instead ARE in the NT are of a later date than the Pauline epistles and fabricated by the RCC to counter Paul, just as Acts. Why write counters on Paul if they had fabricated his writings? What could possibly be the point of that? And please don't duck away from these questions by saying that Peter is fictional. The Roman Catholic Church believed he was REAL and they still do! He IS their legacy.

And why not mention that this Paul was familiar with the story of a human Jesus, born of the virgin Mary? Why fabricate epistles which are open to the interpretation that he was NOT aware of this story?

...from a tomb outside Jerusalem? How hard would it have been to add such a phrase for a faker?

I will try! You interpret what YOU believe into these writings. You and I can say "there was no human Jesus and no virgin Mary" and "there was no resurrection" as much as we like but the RCC BELIEVED THERE WAS. And Paul did believe there WAS a resurrection, but from a different perspective.

Shouldn't the writings of the RCC then REFLECT their beliefs in a way that can't be misunderstood? They have put thousands and thousands of people to death for NOT believing in a human Jesus or a virgin Mary. The four gospels REFLECT their beliefs. The Epistles DON'T. They are open to a different interpretation, that Paul didn't know the story of a human Jesus. Even if they fabricated them to explain the importance of the resurrection as you say, then why not fabricate references here and there to a human Jesus, the virgin and fill them with quotes from Jesus? And why fabricate so MANY with such a huge text volume compared to the pathetic writings of Peter, the founder of their church?

No, I do believe that the core of the genuine Pauline epistles have remained as is and that they originally had NOTHING to do with the RCC. They were instead part of another church, more powerful at that time: The so called Marcion church. They read as they do because they were too well-known to be changed at free will by the early church fathers of the RCC and because they wanted the Marcion followers to join them when their power rose.

Sorry, aa, but I think that's a MUCH better explanation than the one you offer.