Diogenes the Cynic

Phil, in case you don't understand the significance of this, Steven is pointing out that the "Babylon" association is post-70 CE which means Peter was dead by your own tradition.

rlogan

You got it Phil. I can't speak for others here, and most are far better read than me. No Jesus means no apostles, mary, joseph, and etc. Isn't that uplifting? Fills my heart with gladness to see truth where once there were lies. Outrageous lies about me having to bow down to this fake pile of crap or burn in hell.



Now we can replace ignorant fawning after sanctimonious frauds with some real detective work. It is a fascinating study to see how this was engineered over a couple of centuries.

That is not to say that some brilliant conspirators set things in motion and followed through with a plan that had been conceived from the beginning. Rather, how an eschatological movement of the post-diaspora hellanized environment was ultimately commandeered.



Please cite evidence instead of just listing authors.

Chili

The problem is that there is no such a thing as a qualified mythicist because there is no one to judge him: "he has no equal, he is God" is what Gogol said about him (if that means anything).

I'll try to defend the argument that Peter died in Rome and remains buried there because faith cannot be part of an Infallible Church. It just cannot be that way or doubt (Thomas was the twin of Peter) would also be part of the Church that cannot be Infallible in the presence of doubt. So therefore, Peter is buried in Rome and Vatican city is the evidence of this for the rest of the world to see (there is no need to dig a hole to find the remains of Peter).

The new faith of Peter was shown to us by Jesus himself who told Peter to cast his nets on the other side of the 'boat' since they had caught nothing all night. I guess the reason why they caught nothing is because Peter was naked to show that when all doubt was removed Peter was bereft of the faith on which Jesus had died his honorable death (there is no honor in heaven).

The martyrdom of Peter is really the death of reason after which time only the other side of our brain would be the fishing ground for the Infallible Church that was built thereon . . . wherefore Peter put on his cloak once again and dove headfirst into the celestial sea to built his Church (Jn.21:7).

Rome is the evidence of heaven on earth in the Universal; the gather of which I see as the destiny of man as Freeman in heaven on earth where neither faith nor doubt can be limitations to freedom. Both are Infallible or heaven could not be what it is claimed to be.

Chili

The beauty of this is that with the removal of the historical Jesus we can be his brother with our own set of apostles, our own Mary (she's the perpetual virgin for good reason), and our own destiny in heaven where we will crown her queen of heaven and earth so we might enjoy the company of our shepherds in their fullness of truth. Ie. to know what our own life is all about.

Burning in hell is only for those who try to take a short-cut to heaven.

andrewcriddle

If all church disputes are doctrinal then the dispute at Corinth was by definition doctrinal, but I'm not sure that is an interesting result.
IMHO you're taking certain rhetorical conventions rather too literally.
At face value the situation is that leaders at Corinth had been deposed presumably because of serious disatisfaction but without allegations of gross misconduct.

The author of the letter wishes to persuade the church at Corinth to reinstate these leaders, his strongest argument is that people properly appointed to church leadership should generally hold office for life.

Hence general rhetoric about doing the right thing not being jealous etc will serve his purpose better than getting bogged down on the details of why the great majority of the congregation are dissatisfied with their leadership.

On the general point as to why such dissatisfaction might occur. if as many on this list agree Christianity went through important changes in the late 1st century then people appointed around 70 CE might well be out of touch with the views of their congregation around 100 CE
The letter does not support the Office of Bishop as later understood. Bishops in the letter are equivalent to elders/presbyters. They are not Monarchical Bishops in the later sense. Nor does the letter really support Roman authority in the later sense there is no hint that the author should be obeyed because he is in some special sense the heir of Peter nor even a claim that Corinth should obey Rome because of some special status of the Roman church.

Although the letter probably IMHO implies that Peter and Paul were martyred at Rome (it almost certainly in context means they died for their faith somewhere), this is not stated unambiguously and is not beyond doubt meant at all.

There really is no attempt here to give the Roman church let alone the head of the Roman church any privileged position, which IMO argues in favour of the reasonably early origin of the letter.

Andrew Criddle

andrewcriddle

As I posted earlier there would seem reasonably good evidence from archaeology that a shrine for Peter and Paul existed from say 160 CE.
The church at Rome appears to have been claiming bishops going back to the apostles from around 165 CE. From Telesphorus on (supposedly took office sometime before 130 CE) we are dealing not with mere names but with people about whom real information has been preserved.

I think it unlikely that a letter referring to current conditions at Rome and written after 130 CE would fail to mention a monarchical bishop.

Andrew Criddle

Chris Weimer

Am I the only one who sees that everyone missed Earl Doherty's correction about 1st Clement and en hemin? So that nil's the only so-called reliable witness outside of 1st Peter that he was in Rome.

PhilosopherJay

Hi Phil,

I feel a little bit dazzled by all the traffic. As I pondered a response to your post, there were a whole spat of messages with lots of interesting points. I feel like echoing Dorothy in Wizard of Oz, "Oh my, people come and go so quickly in this place."

In any case, my proof of the non-existence of Peter would rely on a quite complicated theory of literature and social behavior which would take a bit more time to explain than I have right now. Rather than going into the abstract and theoretical, I would prefer to examine a simple concrete text for evidence for Peter being in Rome. Since 1 Peter has been offered and it is a text I have not examined in a while, I think we should start there.

The text begins with: It is evident to me that the epistle is addressed to God's elect, i.e. the other apostles. The writer is not slavishly imitating the letters of Paul and addressing churches. That is a bit surprising.

The next statement seems extremely interesting: Tertullian says in adversus Praxean that in his time the Roman Church held the position that the father and son were one and the same. He vigorously opposed this idea. This line is evidently meant in opposition to that position. We may conjecture that Tertullian wrote this epistle sometime after 207 C.E. This is confirmed by the anti-woman diatribe he puts in at chapter 3. Tertullian had a problem with his wife who apparently was quite beautiful and liked to dress provocatively (see his works to his wife). In several passages of Paul's letters that he rewrote we find the same prejudice displayed.


Skipping to the ending we find: "She who is in Babylon, chosen together with you," can only refer to Mary, probably Jesus's mother rather than Mary Magdalene. The term "Babylon" is quite difficult to understand here. The term one would expect would be "Jerusalem." The author has no reason to use the term "Babylon" for Rome or to put Mary in Rome. The term "Babylon" is probably a later change made to the text by someone other than Tertullian. The editor knew of Tertullian's remark in Macion 3:13 that John meant Rome when he wrote Babylon in Revelations. This would indicate that the editor knew this was a work by Tertullian. The editor erased the term Jerusalem and substituted Babylon because the term Jerusalem suggested that the author Peter wrote from Jerusalem. He wanted to suggest instead that Peter wrote from Rome.

These are my preliminary observations. I have proposed a definite writer and a definite mise en scene for the production of the epistle.

Sincerely,

Philosopher Jay

S.C.Carlson

The �ν ἡμῖν (EN hHMIN) referred to in the Catholic Encyclopedia article is found in 1 Clem. 6.1.

Stephen Carlson

andrewcriddle

About the letters of Ignatius I would just like to say that in themselves they (assuming genuineness) could have a wide range of possible dates.

On internal evidence I would be uneasy with a date towards the end of Hadrian's reign let alone one after that. However there is no internal evidence against a date in the early to middle part of the reign of Hadrian.

The generally accepted date in the reign of Trajan rests on later claims that a/ Ignatius is second from the Apostles as Bishop of Antioch b/ specifically that he was condemned under Trajan.

IMHO these claims (particularly a/) are early enough to be of some historical value. However if we had no evidence of date other than that provided by the letters themselves then one would probably date them in the 120's

Andrew Criddle