aa5874

The very PASTORALS have UTTERLY destroyed you.

The Letters under the name of Paul have ALREADY been deduced to have MULTIPLE AUTHORS.

Now, based on pure LOGICS, the TRUE Identity of the Pauline writers are NOW questionable.

The Pauline writers NEEDS independent corroboration without which NO presumptions can be accepted.

Apologetic sources have shown that they cannot account for the TRUE Identity of the Pauline writers.

Apologetic sources claimed Paul was executed under NERO, before c 68 CE but that he ALSO was AWARE of gLuke deduced to have been written AFTER c 70 CE.

The Pauline writers are QUESTIONABLE and virtually all sources that mentioned the name Paul are themselves NOT credible.

There are three sources in the NT that mentioned Paul--Acts of the Apostles, the Pauline letters and 2 Peter.

Acts of the Apostles is considered a work of Fiction.

The Pauline letters are considered the work of MULTIPLE authors.

2 Peter does NOT belong to the Canon according to the Historian of the Church.

It is just mind boggling that YOU would want to accept that some Pauline letters are authentic WITHOUT a shred of corroboration from non-apologetic sources.

All non-apologetic sources of antiquity that mentioned Paul are FORGERIES.

Duvduv

Not a SINGLE word about Christ at all, who revealed himself to Paul and who guided his mind??! Not one single mention?!

LegionOnomaMoi

Primarily on this little thing we like to call archaeology. However, as so far you seem almost completely unaware as to how this is used in ancient history at all, I imagine that coming across an actual academic work which uses it (especially as you haven't read it) may lead you to the crystal ball comment.

Who do we "find" with archaeological evidence? You keep harping on archaeological evidence for Jesus as if we should have some. By that standard we don't have any evidence for virtually every known historical figure from ancient history.

What archaeologist? It says "by John" at the top. John who? Moreover, it's so ridiculous it would be funny if it weren't just too pathetic. For example, to argue that an two complete 4th century copies of the NT are not actually evidence for christianity because they used a common contraction for Jesus Christ instead of spelling out the name? That's what scribes did in antiquity. Imagine copying by hand the entirety of Herodotus or Thucydides or the bible. Scribes developed methods to make their work easier by using systems of contractions, whether the name Jesus Christ or prepositions. The post you links to actually suggests that Sinaiticus and Vaticanus, even though the author admits these date from prior to the 4th century, aren't evidence of christianity even though both contain all the gospels and either all or almost of the the rest of the NT. Why? Because the replace Iesous Christos with the first letters of both words. Of course, they did this with so-called "sacred" nouns in general (theos, kurios, Israel, etc.). Yet somehow this abbreviation refers not to Jesus Christ but to...well there things just seem to fall apart completely. We even find something about "police officers" arresting "a man described as a Chrestian." The fact that police officers didn't exist and the fact that the word they point doesn't read "Chrestian" at all in no way bothers him. Somehow, even complete 4th century gospels aren't evidence of christianity because of common abbreviations, so we can discount the 2nd and 3rd century NT papyri.

You mention Dura-Europos, but I guess you missed exhibition Edges of Empires: Pagans, Jews, and Christians at Roman Dura-Europos at Boston College and then at then at the Institute for the Study of the Ancient World. However, this is hardly the only archaeological evidence, and you can still read about, say, the wall fresco of Jesus healing the paralytic (M8) from c. 232. and other archaeological findings in the journals Near Eastern Archaeology, Biblical Archaeology Review, or even the American Journal of Archaeology to name a few. For example, from the last journal there you can find the paper The Christianization of Space along the via Appia by L. Spera.
Spera writes : "The 'Christianization' of the Via Appia appears to have begun in the late second or early third century with the establishment of the first cemeteries used by the community of the Church of Rome. Prior to this period, Christians were buried in the same areas as pagans."

Here's a paper from a peer-reviewed journal of archaeology (not biblical archaeology, or even specifically near-eastern archaeology) which not only takes as well established the existence of both pre-4th century christianity and christians, it actually focuses on a particular change in the archaeological record which begins prior to the 4th century and involves evidence for christianity.

Perhaps you should look at archaeological journals before going to blog posts.


1) The "truckloads" of papers are not limited to Biblical and NT academics at all
2) In order to say anything about the evidence, you have to have read the scholarship. So I ask (again) on what academic texts are you basing your view of historical Jesus scholarship?



Compared to, say, Socrates or his followers, where we do? I guess Plato never existed either.




You really should actually look at archaeological journals before making statements like the above.


Anthropology and Archaeology and related or sub-fields (like palaeography) are considered social sciences.


Sort of like a great many scientific theories, from those in physics to those in sociology?


And that's how the NT manuscripts are dated, along with all manuscripts from ancient history.

Agnostic75

Paul says that Cephas, the twelve, James, and over 500 people in Corinth saw Jesus after he rose from the dead. You do not believe that that happened. How do you account for Paul's claim? What convinced him that all of those people had seen Jesus after he rose from the dead?

Which is more likely, that 1st Corinthians 15:3-8 is an interpolation, or that an intelligent, thorough researcher like Paul could become convinced that a whole bunch of people saw something that did not happen?

Duvduv

Verse 6 sounds like an interpolation of a commentary starting with the phrase "after that" which interrupts the twelve and Cephas followed by James.
Especially as a vision of the celestial or mystery Christ rather than in a historical Jesus context.

LegionOnomaMoi

There's an excellent series of volume Witchcraft and Magic in Europe. Each volume deals with a time period (biblical/pre-classical period, Greco-Roman period, middle ages, etc.), and contains papers written by specialists of that period and on (of course) witchcraft/magic or something related to it. In the volume for the Greco-Roman period, there is an entire paper on archaeological remains (curse tablets, voodoo dolls) we've uncovered from that period. Although the practice of magic was illegal for the most part throughout the greco-roman period, it was still practiced. People believed that these things worked. Why? For the same or similar reasons people today believe that "faith healings" are truly acts of god.

Sometime very early after Jesus' death, his followers and those who joined them (like Paul) believed Jesus had risen from the dead. Even by Paul's time it seems to have been a fairly fixed creed. The standard (although not unquestioned) view of 1 Cor. 15:3ff is that up until Paul talks about himself he is not just repeating something he was told, but a relatively "fixed" formula/creed repeated and taught among the Jesus sect/early "christians." Unlike questions such as whether Jesus existed in the first century, had a following, was executed, and a handful of other facts we can know with about as much certainty as we can for anything in ancient history, the question of why his followers believed he rose from the dead is a matter of "best guess" for something we have little evidence for. Paul is the only contemporary of Jesus who wrote about him, but he almost certainly didn't know Jesus, and his writings are letters to "christian" communities, not apologetic texts defending the "faith." From Pliny, Tacitus and Josephus (and Paul, actualy) it is evident that within Jewish communities the Jesus sect was fairly well-known and that it didn't take long for it to be known among romans as something apart from Judaism. But Josephus is the only one who was in an excellent position to know something about Jesus and at least refers to him. The majority view of his longer reference is generally believed to be an altered version of a passage which did originally talk about Jesus, but there is still a minority view which holds the entire passage is an interpolation. The only reference to Jesus which Josephus experts (the leading specialists on Josephus are Jewish scholars of ancient Judaism like Geza Vermes) agree was written by Josephus and is unaltered is merely a usage of Jesus to identify James (kinship identification was one of the most common methods of differentiating different people with the same first names). With the possible exception of Thallus, none of the early non-christian sources deal with the Jesus' resurrection, and it isn't until Celsus that we have a pagan voice denying that Jesus was anything more than an ordinary human being (the son of a roman soldier who slept with Mary).

We know Paul was educated enough to read and write Greek (as he likely dictated and then read his lettters, as well as at least once write part of one in his own hand). But this doesn't make him intelligent, and all we know of his "research" is that at one point he was persecuting this new sect, then for some reason he became a follower (did he actually have a "vision/hallucination"? Was it a dream? Did something else convince him and the whole "relevation" part was invented by him so that he could claim some sort of "disciple" like authority?). He later spent some time learning from Peter, but exactly what he learned we can only guess and he was already a believer anyway.

And we are talking about a period in which belief in spirits (from the Roman Genii to the Greco-roman daimona), possession, acts of YHWH or other deities, and so forth are all nearly universal. There are intelligent people throughout the modern "age of reason," from Newton to C.S. Lewis to Francis S. Collins who believe that Jesus rose from the dead. What exactly caused the first followers to start this tradition we can only guess. But it isn't at all difficult to imagine that Paul believed something impossible happened, as belief in magic/miracles was nearly universal. It is much harder to explain what would convince a group of Jews, even granting a good amount of hellenization (which is unlikely to have existed among Jesus' original followers) to believe that a messiah wasn't actually supposed to restore Israel, but begin a new "kingdom" of god (and open the doors to it) through his resurrection. Yet Paul repeatedly refers to Christ dying and rising, not just here. And along with Josephus and the author of Mark he refers to Jesus' brother whom he at least of the three actually met. So he didn't think Jesus existed 100 years ago or was never on earth at all. He believed that Jesus had lived during his day, died and resurrected, and that Jesus was in some way more than human (exactly what Paul's understanding of Jesus' "divine" nature was is an open issue). What convinced him and others is another question, and one for which we have scant evidence to answer.

mountainman

We are discussing both these figures and their cults. We have archaeological evidence for the existence of a great diversity of cults, but very little or none for the christian cult prior to Nicaea. Snyder summarises the evidence, and it is entirely unconvincing.




I do not find the Dura evidence at all compelling. It's more like clutching at straws, and is reliant on a "Christian Art Appreciation".




So does Spera cite the same evidence cited by Graydon Snyder? Does Spera mention that Damasius renovated the catacombs in the later 4th century?




I have reviewed many articles from many journals for the express purpose of gleening the fundamental and basic archaeological evidence that is being presented and discussed. I have itemized this so-called evidence. It has been discussed here before. It is very wanting.


We have corroborative evidence that the followers of Plato were a very high profile group in the Roman Empire in the 3rd century. They were in fact imperially sponsored by the Emperor Galienus. Where is the comparable evidence for the followers of Jesus?

mountainman

This is unsubstantiated dogma that has all the ear marks of a fairy story. For Christ's sake Gandalf the Grey was resurrected out of the "Pit of Moriah" and so became Gandalf the White! What evidence do you cite to support the case that this statement represents history? Or is it at the end simply reliant upon the opinion of centuries of dedicated and mypoic Christian theological scholars who have managed to convince themselves that in the canonical books of the new testament is the historical truth?

LegionOnomaMoi

Given your username, and that your qoute from Snyder is an exact duplicate of a quote found here: http://www.mountainman.com.au/essene...m%20Review.htm

is it safe to assume that you wrote or are otherwise connected to the blog?

It also refers to the same site you referred me to which you said was written by an archaeologist. What Archaeologist? It's also one of the most astoundingly ridiculous arguments I've ever heard. In essence, the central argument is the assumption that if one:

1) takes the entirety of all four gospels.
2) replaces every instance where later texts say Jesus or Jesus Christ with the equivalent of JC

Then all of the sudden we don't have christian documents. So, for example, in Sinaiticus, when the angel appears to mary in Lk 1:31, and states "and behold, you will conceive in your womb and bear a son, and you will call him JC" those initials refer to...? What? Luke becomes non-christian by replacing the equivalent of Jesus Christ with the equivalent of JC? Same with the other gospels? So who is JC? How did JC all the sudden become Jesus Christ in the fourth century (oh, and by the way, the scribal practice of replacing Jesus Christ with JC in NT texts continued through and after the fourth century).



Of course not. Because the only compelling evidence if the "evidence" which supports your view. Paeleography? It's just "art." NT/Biblical studies? They exist in a vacuum, which you know because you haven't read the studies. Archaeological evidence? You refer to one book which "summarizes" the evidence (rather than the actual archaeological studies themselves) and dismiss it. And your basis for comparison on the use of archaeology in ancient history when it comes to, say, hellenistic mystery cults, the pharisees, the pythagoreans, etc.? So far all you've done concerning the evidence for early christianity (apart from dismissing scholarship you haven't read), is compare it to what we should expect based on your misunderstanding of ancient archaeological evidence in general. Have you read, or read anything like, Rutger's paper in the American Journal of Archaeology "Archaeological Evidence for the Interaction of Jews and Non-Jews in Late Antiquity"?

It's the same method of dealing with evidence I've now seen with online anti-evolution arguments, cosmological/logical "proofs" of god, etc.

I've uploaded it here so you can download it and read it for yourself. There are many papers from peer-reviewed mainstream archaeological journals (not biblicals studies journals) which discuss, present, or otherwise deal with evidence for christianity before long before Nicaea.


To you apparently. Not to archaeologists. But hey, what do they know about archaeology compared to you?


So...about 600+ years after Plato.

Comparable evidence for followers of Jesus 600+ years later? Do you know where are manuscripts of Plato's writings date from? Or Aristotle? As for the evidence, apparently you simply disregard archaeologists' opinion of archaeological findings. When papers on archaeological pre-4th century christian findings are discussed in peer-reviewed archaeological journals (which means other archaeologists review them to determine if they fit the standards of the field), apparently it's because archaeologists don't know their field. We should go to blogs for real archaeology.

Doug Shaver

I don't care what Acts says. I don't think there is any real history in it.

It certainly does not reflect Christianity as we know it. I don't believe that kind of Christianity even existed before the second century or, just possibly, very late first century.

The same Paul as which Paul? The Paul of Acts? I'm not claiming that.

I did. The writer called himself Paul. That is evidence that his name was Paul.

Hmm. Maybe you'd better give me your definition of "evidence." You and I don't seem to be referring to quite the same thing when we use that word.