-Jay-

Toto -

You've touched on something I've wondered about. It's common to discuss 1st Century Christians, but (speaking only for myself) I'm not sure I have a really good feeling of what that means. Obviously, you had some Jewish Christians, and some Gentile Christians, but what were they socially? Please point me at a reference for this...

regards,

NinJay
(afdave: 2=/=14)

Toto

It's not so obvious that there were any first century Christians. In the second century, the satirist Lucian in Peregrinus had his protagonist take advantage of the simplicity and gullibility of Christians.

From Kooks and Quacks of the Roman Empire To be fair, the Roman Empire was not full of skeptics in general, so it is hard to say that Christians were more gullible than, say, followers of Isis.

The conventional belief has been that Christians were the marginalized - slaves, the urban poor, women, etc. Rodney Stark thinks they were more educated than that, but were disconnected from traditional social networks.

Acts implies that there were a number of wealthy Christians, especially widows, who could afford to host the house churches that Christians used. There is some discussion of the social status of early Christians in Ben Witheringtons' The Acts of the Apostles : A Socio-Rhetorical Commentary (parts of which can be read on Google books), but Witherington is constrained by his belief in the essential truth of Acts as history.

-Jay-

Interesting comment. Maybe it's lack of thoroughness on my part, but I've never seen anything that really questions Paul writing in the latter half of the 1st Century CE, which implies he had congregations (maybe not large ones) that he was writing to.

The mental picture I have is of many cults in competition for followers, in much the same way that the current U.S. south has a Church of Christ on one corner, a Baptist church on the next, and the occasional First Church Of Jesus The Glowing Nazarene Praise Be To God church on the next. (Aside - a few years back whilst driving my daughter to a summer camp, I had occasion to go through a fairly rural part of Kentucky, and was struck by just how many churches there are for an area with a relatively low population density. Christianity, it seems, is nothing if not a buyer's market.)

This tracks well with my understanding. The cynical part of me (which is most of me...) wonders if this arrangement wasn't akin to modern fleece-the-elderly-with-fraudulent-home-repair schemes, to the extent that wealthy widows (for example) would seem easy marks for someone selling a sense of fellowship and salvation.

Damn it, Toto. Now I've got another book to add to the list of things I need to read but don't have time for.

Thanks for the elaboration.

regards,

NinJay
(afdave: 2=/=14)

Toto

Paul's letters cannot be dated with any degree of confidence. (You will find several threads here to that effect.) Not to mention that there is an alternative theory of Paul - he was a Jewish messianist whose letters were later coopted by Christians, who turned him into a Christian.

My theory is that it is supply driven - there are preachers who get a virtually tax exempt income for selling it.

-Jay-

Yep. Found 'em. I'll take some time to catch myself up on those. I'll point out, though I'm sure many before me have, too, that this is what makes this subject so interesting - there's always something new to learn.

(Sadly, it's also a convenient excuse for those who believe that the Truth is perfectly inscribed in the pages of a book...)

regards,

NinJay

mountainman

Perhaps in a Roman Law Court of the ((XXX))
(insert the appropriate century 1,2,3 or 4)
century, four eyewitness accounts were
sufficient to seal the deal.

They could not be exactly the same mind
you or someone would suspect that just
made the thing up. They had to be different
and to have inconsistencies.

Also, a concordance would then be handy
thing, recording those issues in which these
four disciples agreed between the 4 of them,
where they agreed only with 3, issues that
were common to only two disciples, and issues
which were unique to each "eyewitness".

This master concordance was called
"The Eusebian Canon Tables" and
from it one could read the riot act.


From another perspective, once a series
of events and sayings were listed out in
entirety in one source document, a master
concordance could be used to generate
the four gospels as required.

boneyard bill

If Mark was originally written as a play as some people have claimed and as is implied by the comparison with Oedipus Rex, then could it not be that the disciples are represented in that play by the Chorus? In that case they wouldn't have a whole lot to say and most of it would have been in unison. And the repetition of the same response to repeated miracles would have a thematic significance that wouldn't make much sense if you are just focusing on the plot.

Clivedurdle

Was Seneca the Andrew Lloyd Webber of the time?