aa5874

I can detect fiction. It is upto those who fabricate stories to prove that there were mentally-ill when they wrote fiction.

If Joseph Smith has no medical records that indicated he was mentally-ill, then one must assume he wrote fiction while sane.

Roger Pearse

The Nag Hammadi library was burned?

All the best,

Roger Pearse

sschlichter

I do not know how you are defining early christians (time of Celsus), but I do not beleive early christians were destroying documents. Later Christians did this.

In fact, Celsus objections should clarify the fact that early Christians made the same claims (about Christ's divinity) that current christians make. His complaint was to what he felt was a 'silly' view of history that was presented. I.e. that God would ever become a man.

scribal errors and deceits are amplified and caught because of the wealth of data. Most modern bibles very clearly point out the passages that did not exist in the earliest manuscripts.

I do not think destroying consenting opinion was peculiar to Christians. They themselves were destroyed due to lack of consent. Many Americans destroyed German books during WWII. This is not that uncommon of a practice, historically speaking.

~Steve

jules?

it was buried [possibly by local monks] to avoid being burnt

jules?

but the many 'false' gospels spoken of by Ireanius [sp?] are not as abundant as the true ones. The orthodox faith at some point [the 4th century perhaps] went to great lengths to destroy the opposition.

Sheshbazzar

Apparently the majority of the followers of Jim Jones were unable to distinguish his false statements, but acted upon them as being true.
David Koresh sent out long rambling communications that were quite obviously the productions of a seriously deranged mind, and evidence of his insanity. Yet his followers evidently remained convinced of his sanity, and that his statements were such truth as was worth fighting and dying for.
Actually history can provide a multitude of examples of large groups of people who have willingly and indiscriminately believed the false statements made by insane leaders to be true, and submitted to and acted upon the dictates of these insane madmen.

sschlichter

I would not argue that there was not at least an attempt of this. I do not know how effective it was or if that is really the reason we do not have them. (some other reasons were alluded to in this thread)

However, Theodosius is some 300 years later. I understand being skeptical of trusting history to those that won (in a theological struggle or otherwise) but we can get around the 4th century to earlier works and can verify for ourselves what the early christians beleived and did not beleive. There is no chain of dependancy that requires us to beleive them.

Ireneuas laid out the beliefs of the heresies that he wrote against. Perhaps, as we find more and more of them, we will be able to determine how thorough and fair of a job he did.

~Steve

joedad

That’s an interesting response. It can be claimed that the act of lying constitutes a mental condition comparable to an illness, just as the act of murder constitutes a mental condition, possibly illness. Insanity is really a matter of degree, no?

But I agree there is a difference between composing fiction and making false statements.

mens_sana

Three "Pauls"? I suppose so, if you mean the Paul of Acts, the Paul of the suspect epistles, and the Paul of the authentic letters (per scholarly consensus — and yes, I know, so don't bother because it won't change anything).

I don't think Paul's conversion was "fake" in any of them, nor do I think he had a "fake revelation," which is not to say that his revelation was of divine origin — it was just interpreted that way because no one had a vocabulary that could "describe" it any other way.

Minimalist

Wait a minute. If someone has a "vision" and writes about what he saw the crazy part is having the vision....not the later written description. He might not be making a "false statement about his vision...but he's still nuts for having one! These days, we'd treat people like "Paul" with medication.

I don't know about your second statement at all. "Crazy" is a non-technical term which covers a lot of behavior.