MarkA

I do not follow what you mean. What is your understanding of how manuscripts were produced and/or copied in antiquity?

MarkA

Civil1z@tion I agree with your assessment of the Gospel of Judas and its existence as evidence of a Jesus cult prior to its date. I also would like to add that the theology it expresses implies a rather sophisticated theology of Jesus as Universal Saviour rather than as simply a Jewish prophet. However, the date you cited is the lower end of the scale and in any case if Ireneaus was a character created in the fourth century his refutation would be inadmissable since it would have been forged later than the Gospel date.

I would like to stress at this point that this thread seems to place far too much emphasis on manuscripts at the expense of archaeology. Arguments on the content of ancient writings are important and indeed vital in the assessment of the subject. However, if there is no archaeology to support the sometimes elaborate theories put forward based solely on writings by the protagonists then it is imperative that such speculation be treated exceedingly cautiously and not repeated as 'gospel'.

For example, should Agricola's description of the conquest of Britain be taken at face value or should we expect archaeology to support his writing? Should the writing of Eusebius be taken at face value or should the archaeology support his assertions? There seems to be precious little archaeology to support the assertions of all pre-Nicene writers about the spread and even existence of christianity and why should this be so? These are the questions that should and indded must be addressed.

MarkA

My understanding is that orthodox christianity was imposed by Constantine at Nicea when he ordered the assembled bishops to accept the creed he devised and circulated on pain of expulsion from the Empire. This creed was a compoltation and a compromise of the most generally accepted beliefs at the time. This is not to say that all churches accepted all of the content before the Council just some of them. Yet the whole cloth must be accepted for a person to be considered orthodox. Is there any scholar who agrees that there was an orthodox church before then?

youngalexander

Hooray! At last a person of sound opinion.

Bravo!!

However, as it happens we do know why this is so to 180CE: Why is there no Christian Archeology prior to 180 C.E.

What remains to be explained, is: Why is there such a slow build-up of NT Christian Archeology b/w 180 & 325 CE? Given all this splendid literary development. Not to mention 170+ years of oral tradition.:huh:

Roger Pearse

Is there any scholar who would endorse the above?

All the best,

Roger Pearse

andrewcriddle

I think this partly depends on what one means by orthodox church. There was previously an institutional church with creeds and statements of faith, which had procedures for deposing bishops for their unorthodox views. See the case of Paul of Samosata. http://www.ccel.org/ccel/wace/biodic...20of%20Antioch. The Council of Nicea is part of a process in which the definition of orthodoxy becomes more strict, but institutional procedures for dealing with unorthodoxy already existed.

Andrew Criddle

youngalexander

Here we go with this tedious accusation of crankdom, when nary a decent definition has been proffered. Is it not perfectly obvious that my previous proposal that a crank is "one who promulgates uncalled for absurdities" is the only proper one under the circumstances of IIDB debate?

Now witness
Absurdities undoubtedly, but uncalled for? Not a whit!

Why I called for them myself not this past Lenten March.
Further, who amongst us may deny that enormous numbers of absurdities have been perpetrated on this very forum since that time?:notworthy:

Are Pete's any worse than our collectivity?

Jeffrey Gibson

So the OED one that I proffered isn't "decent"? One wonders what your definition of "decent definition" is, let alone what criterion you employ to decide what is "decent" and what is not.

Jeffrey

lpetrich

I am trying to explain how absolutely absurd it is to suppose that Eusebius had hired a team of forgers to run all over the eastern Mediterranean to insert references to Xianity in lots and lots of books.

If you doubt this, I challenge you to perform this experiment:

Write all the text content of some sizable document by hand. Yes, all of it. You need not duplicate the font and size and styling, just the text content.

You have to write without a pencil, without a modern-day ballpoint pen, but with the old-fashioned kind of pen that you have to dip into an inkwell every now and then. And do so without making any blots on the paper.

You have to write in reasonably-clear handwriting, preferably either printing-style or italic-style; try to write as carefully as you can.

You have to write on some relatively expensive writing material that you would be reluctant to throw away.

You can mark out every here and there, but at no better than the average rate of some ancient or medieval scribe.

Once you've done that, make some changes and do it all over again.

Yes, all over again.

Once you have completed this challenge, you will understand how difficult it was to duplicate a book before Johannes Gutenberg's invention of the printing press.

Huon

The Christians should approve heartily the point of view of mountainman. Why ?
1 – The miraculous birth of Helena, the mother of Constantine. There cannot be another explanation to the miraculous conversion of Helena to christianity, on the eve of the battle of the Milvian Bridge (Oct. 28, 312).
2 – The miraculous birth of Constantine.
3 – The miraculous choice of Constantine, a ruthless politician, of a religion unknown during more than 250 years, and supported by nobody.
4 – The miraculous battle of the Milvian Bridge (Oct. 28, 312), which could not have taken place without the three previous miracles. Remember that the Christians did not exist before this battle. The whole army (20,000 soldiers, according to the reports) were converted to an inexistent religion in only one day, or night. Next day, they won over the army of Maxentius (allegedly 100,000 soldiers). Many of the soldiers of Maxentius converted all of a sudden, and betrayed Maxentius, simply because.