spamandham

Jesus Christ you are hung up on authorities in this field. You do realize that history is not science and that Biblical history is often considered quackery by serious historians, right?

maryhelena

But the hand of Abraham was stayed - no human sacrifice here.
The issue is not Jewish ideas re resurrection - it is that through one human sacrifice, that of the assumed historical gospel Jesus that 'salvation' comes to all men from this event.
The gospel storyline, when considered as a historical event re the crucifixion of Jesus and his resurrection, is taking the ancient dying and rising god mythology to new heights. It is adding the assumption that this one man paid the price, for sin, for all men - and through this one human sacrifice all men are now able to be saved. Hard to sell such an idea? Well, certainly on home ground, so to speak, there has been little Jewish interest in buying...

That is of course how things are theologically viewed today by christians - as to whether or not that was the original understanding is open to question. Especially when, from a mythicist perspective, there was no historical gospel Jesus being nailed to that cross in 30/33 ce....


Not fixing - developing. Transferring, developing ideas that were related to a Hasmonean historical figure to a newly constructed spiritual figure. A shift of focus from the historical to the spiritual - to an intellectual perspective; an interpretation of the historical that allowed endless scope for re-invention as opposed to the constraining realities of historicity. (don't want to get off topic here...)

Littlejohn

No follower of Jesus, nor even 'Paul of Tarsus', never wrote anything about the 'catholic-christianity' (the specification is a must, since the term 'Christianity' it is completely generic).

All the Gospels, including the Apocrypha and/or Gnostic works, are nothing more than pseudo-epigraphic works , fraudulently attributed to various disciples of Jesus, in order to give them an authority that would not otherwise have had.

The only text to have been written with certainty by a direct disciple of Jesus, today is no longer available to the erudition's world, inasmuch it is considered 'lost' by the forger clergy (but, almost certainly, some copies are kept in the exclusive archives of the Vatican). It consisted of the collection of sayings or 'oracles' of Jesus made by the TRUE Matthew, like we learn from Papias of Hierapolis. Surely the same Papias made use of that work (as well as by 'oral' sources) for the composition of its work in five volumes, titled 'Explanation of the Oracles of Jesus', declared 'lost' even it (because too incriminating!)

For this reason, the pseudo-gospel of Matthew, which today is one of the four 'canonical' Gospels, in the early centuries of the Christian era enjoyed great authority, by virtue of the forger device to attribute in pseudo-epigraphic way this text to the disciple Matthew, thanks to the ambiguity created by the collection of sayings made by the same true Matthew: a well-known thing in the second century of our era, when they began to flourish gospels of all species, including those canons.

It is certainly not a coincidence that when you wanted to give authority to a blatant patristic lie, one put it in the Gospel of Matthew, such as the absurd nativity present in this text and the famous phrase ".. you are Peter and on this rock I will build my church .. ": a phrase that Jesus never one dreamed to say !!...

The alleged 'apostolic tradition' (from which the fraudulent title of 'Catholic Apostolic Roman Church), still today the pride of the Catholic clergy, it was just one of the countless and hallucinating inventions of the forger fathers of about 19 centuries ago, inasmuch at the base of the birth of the catholic-christianity there was absolutely nothing of 'apostolic'!...

In reality, it has (or 'is'?) existed a community, or sect, whose members called themselves 'apostolics', in the sense that they strictly followed the true message transmitted to them by Jesus himself, or by his immediate disciples. It was surely a Gnostic sect. Concerning it, namely the one of 'Apostolics', one does mention in the Gospel of Philip. This sect resisted until the late fourth century, then was swept away by the fierce persecution of the bloody Roman Catholic clergy, along with all other Gnostic sects and 'heretical', as well as all the pagan cults in existence in the Imperial Rome of the fourth century AD.


Greetings


Littlejohn

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Doug Shaver

I intended generic. I don't think Paul's Christianity was anything like what became catholic Christianity.

I also don't believe Jesus actually existed. I'm just noting that IF he did, then he was crucified and, over some period of time afterward, some of his followers started a religious movement of some kind that, over the next two or three centuries, evolved into the religion we now know as Christianity. But I don't think that is how Christianity really got started.

andrewcriddle

My point was that your position requires Paul to hold a consistantly bleak negative view of the angelic rulers but a consistently benign positive view of their human counterparts.

There is a tension, (you might regard it as a contradiction), between Paul's positive and negative attitudes to rulers and authorities, but I don't find it plausible that Paul crudely believed: heavenly rulers bad ! earthly rulers good ! In most cosmologies of that period there is more consistency between peoples' attitudes to earthly things and their attitudes to heavenly things.

Andrew Criddle

neilgodfrey

There is no difference in methodology, only in availability of resources, and thereby the types of topics investigated. Most ancient history looks at broad sweeps because the nature of the concrete evidence allows for little more than broad sweeps (e.g. rise of Athenian democracy, some era within the Roman empire).

The few exceptions (e.g. histories of Julius Caesar, Hadrian, etc) are likewise often broad in scope, and are rarely if ever capable of delving in to the sorts of detail a modern historian would relish in researching, say, Lincoln or Bismarck and co.

andrewcriddle

Have you read Ancient History - Evidence and Models (or via: amazon.co.uk) by Finley ? Particularly chapter 2 The Ancient Historian and His Sources

Finley would have largely agreed with you as to best practice in both Ancient and Modern History. However he admits the extent to which Ancient Historians frequently treat as a primary source material which would not be accepted as a primary source by historians of the Modern World. To some extent this is bad practice by Ancient Historians, but sometimes there is no alternative. Using strict criteria of what counts as a primary source would make it impossible to write about a good deal of the Ancient World.

Andrew Criddle

DCHindley

MH,

FWIW, that coin has σεβαστῷ (SEBASTWi, the I on the coin is the iota subscript associated with the omega, which is sometimes spelled out rather than assumed), which is the dative singular of σεβαστός (SEBASTOS). You will note that Livia stands besides her husband, draped. The appelation is clearly to Augustus only.

For the plural, to include Livia, wouldn't you need σεβαστοι (which, I believe, is how Livia and Augustus are together referred to on inscriptions after the death of Augustus)?

DCH

aa5874

The "Lives the Twelve Caesars" by Suetonius show without any reasonable doubt that writers who were non-Jesus believers were not much different from writers of today.

It WAS the authors of the NT, including "Paul", who were fairy tale fiction writers posing as historians.



Examine the "Life of Tiberius" by Suetonius.


There is no DOUBT whatsoever that non-Christian writers did use sources which today's writers would have used. Today's historians would surely use PUBLIC records.

It was JESUS believers who INVENTED their sources which NO credible historian would have done today.

Examine gMatthew's version on the birth of Jesus who supposedly lived during the time of TIBERIUS.


Matthew 1.18-22 What PUBLIC GAZZETTE did the author of gMatthew use for the Holy Ghost birth story?

The "Twelve Lives of the Caesars" is proof that Ancient historians, not the NT fiction writers, were not very different from today's historians.

maryhelena

DCH

I had another look at the Wikipedia page - and clicked on the discussion tab - and lo and behold there is Doktorspin......and Roger Pearse..

Here is a bit of the discussion.