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05-13-2012, 07:13 PM | #21 |
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It's not just religions. Look at the growth of communists from Das Kapital to early 20th Century Russia. It could only take a few decades to go from a handful to > 100k.
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05-13-2012, 08:09 PM | #22 | ||
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It is just not reasonable at all to assume growth rates for the Jesus cult when based on sources of antiquity the Jesus cult was operating in SECRET. Against Celsus 1.1 Quote:
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05-13-2012, 08:31 PM | #23 |
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The point of Rodney Stark's analysis was to show that the reported growth of Christianity was consistent with the normal growth of a new religion through social contacts and other social factors, and that there was no reason to assume some miraculous divine intervention that gave Christianity an explosive growth curve.
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05-13-2012, 09:33 PM | #24 | |
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People who use the NT and Apologetic sources for history will put Garbage in-and get -Garbage out. |
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05-13-2012, 09:54 PM | #25 | ||
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since were talking about 100CE on, its safe to say we could state we are looking at the population of Pauline christianity. I think he's right 100,000 is way to high, at 100 CE im thinking the numbers could be very low. and as stated difficult to determine by 200 CE though, pauline christianity was widespread and still on fire so to speak. gnostics were a minor cult and not enough to really count since they would be but a fraction of the total population, and the original jewish christian sect from the real apostles, had long since been gone. |
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05-13-2012, 10:51 PM | #26 | |
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You are merely inventing Fables when you use sources of fiction and implausibilities. The DATED evidence show that there was NO Jesus cult in the 1st century before c 70 CE. |
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05-14-2012, 03:08 PM | #27 |
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And of course even claims of Christian sects in the second century lack evidence even in the Apology of Justin who says virtually nothing about his sect or the sect of Marcion in his own backyard. So much for the SECOND CENTURY.
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05-14-2012, 03:27 PM | #28 | |||||
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It's precisely the modus operandi that an investigator would apply to the determination of the demographics of hobbits during the life of Bilbo Baggins in the Shire of MiddleEarth. The later one dates Acts (for example the end of the 2nd century) the more problematic the Stark reality becomes. Quote:
There is no history in Acts. It is the genre of pseudo-historical polemic that characterizes the literature of many otherwise anonymous 4th century heresiologists. Quote:
Philosopher Jay has above addressed the remarkable fact that we have absolutely no null nada zilch archaeological evidence to support the hypothesis for the existence of any christian demographics in the 1st and 2nd centuries. In fact, it may be true to state that we have more archaeological evidence for the existence of hobbits on planet Earth than we do for the existence of "early christians" on planet Earth before the forgery mill of the 4th century swung into top gear. Quote:
Surely we MUST BELIEVE in the legends of our Christian Fathers? Surely we cannot simply relegate these legends to pseudo-historical polemic produced by the heresiological regime that flowered in bloodshed, persecution, intolerance, inquisitional execution, censorship, book-burning and other fascist actions of organised crime? Or can we? . |
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05-15-2012, 05:56 AM | #29 | |
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Again, we are NO longer accepting Imagination--now we are dealing with the DATED Texts. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of...stament_papyri Once you reject the DATED evidence then your contribution is just mere speculation or propaganda. The DATED Texts do NOT support your claim that the Jesus story was initiated in the 4th century. |
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05-15-2012, 06:06 AM | #30 |
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And how do you know the Apology is from the second century? Because the biased church writers said so? Or did he come to you in a dream
Did you ever bother to notice that this so-called Justin never mentions a single leader, colleague or community of his Christians in his Apology even when saying "we"? Do you notice that Irenaeus supposedly arrives a mere 30 or so years later and knows all about all the NT texts? Did you notice that Justin is said to have lived in the time of the bogeyman Marcion yet doesn't mention anything about his writings or his so-called own version of memoirs? And if Marcion knew about Paul and epistles, why didn't Justin at least mention that even once? What kind of evidence is that for the second century?! Isn't it likely that Justin is based on some sermon or an early Byzantine production before the emergence of a uniform hierarchy written by somebody trying to make the emerging, Christian belief seem older than it really was and before the NT texts emerged? |
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