schilling.klaus

no, he doesn't do anything like that

that's what right-wing talmudists try to trick you into believing


in order to fulfill Scripture and feign an authority prior to tyhe heretics that pre-dated the Roman church.


for deceiving people


Occam's razor is nothing but intellectual inertia
, truly a fraudulent positivist superstition


Klaus Schilling

Amaleq13

Then, why wasn't Jesus' prophecy about the fall of the Temple added to Paul's letters?

Says the man trying to peddle a vast and convoluted conspiracy theory.

Solitary Man

Just because one man argues against the idea doesn't make the proposition "arguable".

I think I'm dense. Please connect the dots for me.

Of course. Those were in addition to 70 CE.

However, in order for your theory to work, you'd have to show how. Otherwise, your theory seriously lacks in comparison to the current one.

Toto

It is the current theory that has so many difficulties. The current theory tries not to offend Christian sensibilities, and says that there was a charismatic Jewish wisdom teacher around 30 CE preaching the end of the world and the coming kingdom of god. He was executed by the Romans, and then what? The current theory has to posit that there were "oral legends" of him that survived in an underground mode, but has no clear explanation of what those early Christians were doing, how they lasted so long without losing faith or face, until you finally get some notice of Christians around the end of the first century by Roman officials, and someone finally starts to write something, several generations after Jesus allegedly lived. There's a lot of hand waving and guesswork here, and this is not what more recent history shows to be the pattern of charismatic end of times preachers - their movements tend to die out with them, unless they established a church while they were still alive.

The alternative is simpler. Jews of various sects agitate against the Romans, and finally it all comes down on them and the Temple is destroyed. The reaction is to construct a story of a true Messiah who predicted all this and gave a better way, and write his story back in time.

Solitary Man

That's not the current theory.

No handwaving I've seen, but guesswork? Of course, that's par for the course for any and all historical scholarship. And "recent history" in a modern society is a horribly anachronistic analogy, ignoring social contexts.

First part is good. Second part has no evidence for it. You have to posit people with extra motives to construct a Messiah, horribly so, out of scripture to predict this...for what reason? It's quite simply illogical.

Toto

OK, it's a current theory. What is your current theory?

You must have a different definition of handwaving.

The relevance of recent (or not so recent) history depends on how much you think human nature has changed in the past two millenia of our species' history. Rodney Stark assumed that religion could be studied as a human social institution, and came up with some interesting conclusions that have some explanatory power. I think someone here compared the religious situation in ancient Rome to that of Victorian England (it was in the Carrier thread).

I think the evidence is early Christianity. I don't see how it is simply illogical.

Copernic

Particularly if any remaining religous leaders were under the thumb of the Romans who had an interest in pacifying the Jews and avoiding further agitation.

ApostateAbe

70 CE? Why not 300 CE? There is a possibility of that, too, given the ambiguities surrounding the dating of manuscripts. Just about any such conclusion can be forced.

Toto

Abe - you can find archeological remains of Christianity from the late second century. There are amulets with Jesus' name. There are manuscripts that fit a second century date. There is a fragment of the gospel of John that has been dated paleographically to the second century.

But there is no similar evidence for the first century.

Minimalist

But the Dead Sea Scrolls and Philo, (first century AD sources) do not indicate that Christians even existed before 70. Add in the fact that Tacitus and Josephus do not mention Christians as any sort of power bloc before the revolt and the whole picture starts to look rather slim.