aa5874

You don't know what you are talking about. It is virtually impossible for you to determine what the Talmud should contain and you have NO way of knowing if the Talmud has been manipulated by Jews.

You have no originals of the Talmud from the time of Bar Kochba.

The Talmud does not acknowledge the Nicene Creed or claim that the Jesus story and cult originated in the 4th century.

Please, tell us when the Talmud was first composed, its original contents and identify the authors??

There is silence on procurators of Judea in the Talmud. Are you implying that there were no procurators of Judea because they were not mentioned in the Talmud??

Duvduv

That is incorrect. We have the writings of rabbis going back as far as the gaonic period and of course thereafter, and one does not find contextual differences in their citations from what were of course manuscripts. There are occasional differences in wording but not on subject matter except for later censored material by the church specifically regarding what they thought were insults concerning Jesus himself.
There is not a single reference for the period in question in any talmudic or midrashic source concerning Christians in Judea or anywhere else, and no indications anywhere that there ever were. If you want to hang on to one precious reference from a book attributed to "Josephus", go right ahead.

But tell me, why would the Talmud be more subject to manipulation than the Josephus text, which survived only in the hands of the Church?

aa5874

You have not presented any evidence from the Talmud that the Jesus story and cult started in the 4th or 5th century.

You have not presented any evidence from the the Talmud that the Nicene creed and Council was was in the 4th century.

Again, you have NO originals of the Talmud for the time of Josephus or Bar Kochba and do not know what the originals contained.

Your argument that the Jesus story and cult originated in the 4th or 5th century is essentially worthless and based on your imagination.

tanya

I disagree.

You know that I admire your contributions to this forum, aa, so, please don't misunderstand.

I disagree that there is no evidence to suggest that the entire Christian myth is a fourth century fable.

I think, contrarily, that there is evidence at every corner, if we look with the eyes of a skeptic.

Let us consider one of your favorite authors: Justin Martyr.

What is the date of our oldest extant manuscript of Justin Martyr?
or Origen
or Clement of Alexandria,
or ....
or....
in every case, we come, as exemplified, surtout, with Josephus or Tacitus, with manuscript evidence dating, IN THE BEST CASE, with corrupted, plagiarized, forged documents, from caves in Italy, concocted during the gestapo period of the church, the so called inquisition. Sometimes we possess only A SINGLE MANUSCRIPT, dating from the Eleventh Century.....

You can read about Galileo on the internet. You can read about Michael Servetus

Here's the bottom line:

you, and duvduv, and anyone else, should make a chart, like David Hindley's.

You need DATA, and that data will show us precisely how many pre- Constantinian "patristic" authors' texts we need to account for, if christianity had been created whole cloth, in the 4th century. All you have to do, in other words, aa5874, to confirm that Duvduv errs, is demonstrate the physical impossibility of creating 100 documents, de novo.

I think that such a chart will have fewer than a hundred entries.

But, even should it possess, a THOUSAND entries, can you imagine that such a task is beyond the ability of Constantine to organize?

Compared with making a chart, like this, as David does so well, can you imagine the degree of difficulty, associated with leading, NOT standing somewhere giving orders, but LEADING, ten thousand soldiers into life/death battle, as Emperor Constantine did, AGAIN, and AGAIN.....

Think about it. What does he GAIN from creating de novo, this religion?

What does he lose, if he fails? NOTHING.

But, with success, he can unify the empire, and stop the bickering, particularly prominent among the Jews, with their many sects.

He needs that grain, and those cattle, shipped REGULARLY, like clockwork to Rome, and the bickering disrupts regular shipments. The best explanation for the origin of the Christian myth, is that it was implemented, top down, to promote unity, harmony, and grain shipments.

How best to get society organized, so that it will REGULARLY ship the goods to Rome, as he requires?

Logically, Constantine organized the religion whole cloth, in order to ensure the survival of the empire, as it was being attacked, from within, and from without.

So, then, HOW MANY documents, would he have been obliged to create, de novo, to ensure that the nascent religion rested on a firm footing? Did he have enough time between assumption of emperor status, and convocation of Nicea?

We need that chart.

aa5874

I am arguing that Duvduv's argument is worthless and based on imagination since he has presented NO actual evidence to support his claims.

The Talmud does NOT support his imagination about a 4th or 5th century origin for the Jesus story and cult.

Again, your position is no different to blind belief. It is of no real value to think that there is evidence if you do NOT Present any.

Again, and again, there are EXTANT RECOVERED DATED Manuscripts that tend to CONFIRM that the Jesus story and Pauline writings were composed BEFORE the 4th century.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of...stament_papyri

You keep forgeting that ACTUAL Manuscripts have been RECOVERED and DATED to the 2nd-3rd century.

Even if you reject Justin Marty, Josephus and the TALMUD we still have EXTANT RECOVERED DATED Manuscripts from the 2nd-3rd century with the Jesus story and the Pauline letters.

See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of...stament_papyri

David Hindley charts will show presumptions of the 1st century.
Please make a chart using the Recovered Dated NT manuscripts.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of...stament_papyri

Duvduv NEEDS a chart for the TALMUD. You NEED a chart for the evidence you "think" exists.

I have DATA which can be easily converted in a chart which shows that the Jesus story and Pauline letters were composed BEFORE the 4th century.

See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of...stament_papyri

Do you have any recovered dated originals for your stories about Constantine and organized religion?? You think you have evidence but present nothing in reality.

My argument is that the Jesus story and cult originated in the 2nd century which is EXACTLY as the RECOVERED DATED manuscripts show.

I Expected NO manuscripts from the 1st century but from the 2nd century and later.

The Recovered Dated Texts corroborate my expectations.

My argument is well supported by the actual extant recovered dated manuscripts.

Sheshbazzar

If Constantine organized the religion whole cloth, and the origin of Christianity actually dates to the 4th century, How is it that some 49 of the papyri on that list are dated to 250 CE or earlier?

How is the existence and dating of the Dura Europos house church explained?

or Dura Parchment 24, evidently buried circa 256 CE?

I'd be interested in hearing some answers that are plausable and make sense.

aa5874

As soon as it is realized that the short gMark story PREDATED all the Pauline writings then the history of the Church as claimed by Church writers is devasted.

The Pauline writer claimed he was a Persecutor of the Church of God and wasted it however there is NO credible evidence whatsoever of any Churches of God in the 1st century where Jews or any person in the Roman Empire worshiped a man as a God and no credible evidence that a Jesus cult was being persecuted.

Of the 27 books in the NT there are 13 books under the name of Paul in the Canon yet none of the other 14 books show any awareness of the Pauline letters. Not even the author of Acts acknowledge the Pauline writings.

This is extremely significant.

The Pauline letters supposedly went DIRECTLY to Churches and it is claimed they were known and circulated in the Roman Empire.

We would expect that Later writers would at least be aware of the Pauline Letters, the Churches, possibly attend them, and was INDOCTRINATED by the Pauline Revealed Gospel from the Resurrected Jesus.

Quite remarkably, it was NOT the Pauline Revealed Gospel that influenced the other authors of the NT--it was an UNKNOWN author of gMark.

Up to this day No-one knows who wrote the short gMark.

However, the short gMark story had the Most IMPACT in the NT Canon.

At least three authors of the NT used the short gMark story.

The SHORT gMark 10In the short gMark, Eternal Life was obtained by the WORKS of the LAW.

The supposed Jesus TAUGHT Salvation by the Works of the Law BEFORE he died but AFTER he allegedly Resurrected he Revealed to Paul that No man is justified by the Works of the Law.

Eternal Life is obtain by the Law in the Synoptics.

1. Matthew 192. The LONG gMark 103. Luke 104.Luke 18The Pauline Revealed Gospel of Salvation by Faith and NOT by Works was Revealed AFTER Jesus died and was Resurrected.

1. Galatians 2:16 KJV2.Galatians 3:10 KJV3. Romans 10:9 KJV The authors of the SHORT gMark, the Long gMark, gMatthew and gLuke were NOT aware that the Resurrected Jesus REVERSED himself in the Revealed Gospel of Paul where Eternal Life was NOT obtained by the Works of the Law.

Romans 3.28 The Pauline Revealed Gospel from the Resurrected Jesus is AFTER the short gMark.

The Pauline Revealed Gospel from the Resurrected Jesus made the short gMark Jesus OBSOLETE.

Galatians 1:9 KJV The Pauline Revealed Gospel from the Resurrected Jesus is the LAST Gospel in the Canon and was composed AFTER the writings of Josephus and the short gMark or after c 96-99 CE.

Chili

But to be a persecutor of religion is to tax it and let it prove its own worth, and lets not forget that the high horse Paul was riding on his way to Damascus of all places was not a wooden horse either.

Sheshbazzar

It seems to me that there were two quite different 'schools of thought' and sets of 'christian' writings that were developing concurrently.

The so called 'Pauline' school (perhaps originally with no actual 'Paul' character at all) that was very strongly based on the ideas of a 'Cosmic Christ', a heavenly Redeemer figure that was identified with, and was developed on the 'logos' theology of Plato and similar popular Greek philosophy, syncretized and nurtured by Hellenistic Jews and their Gentile god-fearer followers. This type of theology would have appealed to and 'sold' very well in the synagogues of the Diaspora, producing its own distinctive set of 'justification by faith' 'end of the law' no circumcision, doctrinal writings.

On the other hand the more 'Jewish' and traditional 'earthly messiah' expecting 'Judaizing' element and their followers were gathering and distributing the best of the ancient 'sayings' material, (not from any living 'Jesus' but from any source or saying that fitted into their religious views) and composing the bare bones of what would eventually become transformed into the Gospels. Their writings reflecting a strong bias towards an earthly messiah that taught keeping The Law, and the need to 'keep The Commandments' as an absolutely necessary component of one's salvation.

There was an ongoing propaganda war waged between these two quite opposing schools of early messianic theological thought, with each faction producing propaganda material aimed at countering and nullifying the teachings of the other.
But slowly each side was forced to answer and to (grudgingly) accommodate the positions of the other that were well known, and the more they were argued became the more persuasive. It was during this time that the hypothetical messiah, based on the 'sayings documents' came to be perceived as an actual (single) historical person who had 'said' all these things. Justin Martyr would have came along about then.

The book of Acts of the Apostles was soon created to provide a 'historical' bridge between these two warring theological factions and the writings of both sides were revised to accommodate and to support the idea that there had been but one agreeing catholic church from the beginning.
But the opposing theological texts being so crudely patched and sewn together, and one side and the other not willing to give, nor concede to discarding contradicting parts of their holy writings, there remain those huge gaping holes and contradictions that are upon close examination, still all too evident yet today.

Constantine came along and pretty much resolved all doctrinal disputes or any textual contradictions, by setting up a State supported system for the eliminating of anyone that did not accept his or The Holy Roman Catholic Church's views, rulings, or authoritative Decrees on any matter of dispute.
__Or anyone that asked too many questions or raised objections that could not be countered. 'Enemies of The Church and The State' to be silenced and elimininated.
No one had any right to dispute with 'The Vicar of Christ'.

aa5874

Again, Jesus is not the name of a Cosmic character and Paul's Jesus was the First Born of the Dead.

The Pauline writings are about the Resurrected Jesus.

The Pauline writer is claiming to be a Witness of the Resurrected Jesus and that he Received his Gospel after the Resurrection of Jesus.

The Pauline writings with Acts of the Apostles were composed to historicize the fictional characters called Apostles/disciples.

None of the Apostles/disciples in Acts and the Pauline writings have ever been located outside Apologetics.