Roger Pearse

Hang on, you think Christianity was founded by people who had already died and been buried?

A little imagination suggests that probably such activity would only occur *after* a lifetime full of fun, evangelism, and hymn-singing had first taken place... Indeed the very first Christians wouldn't need catacombs, would they? How much do lions leave?!?

All the best,

Roger Pearse

Sheshbazzar

Hi Chuck, and welcome to our midst. As Andrew states, the small and questionable archaeological evidence that is available places the Roman "Christian" catacombs after 150 AD.
I say "questionable" because these early allegedly "Christian" remnants are so identified on quite ambiguous grounds, that is the inscriptions are cataloged as being of "Christian" origin even though there is really nothing in the inscriptions that is specifically and identifiably exclusive to "Christian" usages.(of the JC type)
Pete Brown (Mountainman) has posted exhaustive documentation and analysis here on each and every one of these claimed as "Christian" artifacts.
The other problem with identifying "Christian" artifacts is that the words "Christian", "Christ" and the similar "Chrestos" were evidently employed somewhat freely and interchangeably by a diverse populace.
Thus there were many "Christs" known and revered, other than that Nazarene of NT fame, and there were also "Christians" that belonged to cults having very little, if anything at all, to do with, or any connections with that evolving form of religion that ultimately became the orthodox "Christian" religion.

So the term "Christian" as it is understood today, was not then so constrained. IOW we have came to commonly understand a "Christian" as one being a follower of "Jesus Christ", The Jew, however that interpretation would not have been necessarily indicated in many pre-Constantinian usages of the terms.
Constantine forced his particular form of "Christianity" by the banning, persecuting, and murderously exterminating the practitioners of any of these other myriad earlier forms of the "Christ" and of "Christianity"
This being so, there would have been Roman "Christians" around who were not disciples of "Jesus Christ", nor followers of Pauline theology, right up to the point of Constantine's instituted extermination campaigns of 324 + AD, thus it is to be expected that prior to this, these non-JC worshipping "Christians" (ie "good men") would have left behind burial sites and tombs, those remnants however, are no evidence for either a beliefe in "Jesus Christ", or for the early existence of that form of religion now recognized as Christianity.

ohmi

Including the original Hebrew Christian saints whose beliefs correspond to the OT [and NT], who understood the gospel of the new covenant of grace [Jeremiah 31:31-34]

Doug Shaver

Yeah, yeah, yeah . . . that's what they all say.

Trouble is, all of you who call yourselves Christians can't agree on what it means to obey Jesus. You've got four books claiming to have recorded his instructions, and you've been arguing among yourselves for almost 2,000 years over how those instructions are supposed to be interpreted.

And then you say that we skeptics are being pigheaded when we say that the instructions seem to be incoherent.

Roger Pearse

So they are all wrong? Or all right? Or what?

I'm probably old and grouchy, but I am a little tired of this particular knee-jerk response. As soon as you examine it, it falls apart, as above.

The idea that there are no such things as Christians hardly needs examination. That we don't know who they are is equally daft. That some people will try to claim the name for their own self-interested ends we know also.

My own rule of thumb is that if atheists curse them for being Christians (as opposed to demonise Christians on the grounds that these people claimed to be so), they're probably are.

All the best,

Roger Pearse

Solo

Andrew, am I mistaken that the Christian catacombs of the 2nd century were simply the continuation of the Jewish burial practices imported from Palestine ? I had an web article by Leonard V. Rutgers, of Utrecht U on the evidence of "shared" Jewish/Christian burials in the 1st century Rome. Unfortunately the site went down. A Natonal Geographic news item from 2005 mentions Rutgers and the shared burial traditions.

Jiri

andrewcriddle

The work by Rutgers provides evidence for an early date of one of the Jewish catacombs. Maybe a century earlier than the earliest clearly Christian catacombs.

It has been suggested that originally Christians and Jews shared the Jewish cemeteries before Christians constructed specifically Christian catacombs. However this seems to be more or less plausible speculation rather than something for which there is hard evidence.

An article by Rutgers et al is online here http://igitur-archive.library.uu.nl/...-catacombs.pdf

Andrew Criddle

Sheshbazzar

Agreed ohmi.

Diogenes the Cynic

This is off topic witnessing. Please try to keep the conversation within a context of objective history and not pure religious opinion. Thank you

DtC, Moderator, BC&H

jules?

The question is to do with origins;
So let me chuck some cream on the floor and see which one of you cats will lick it up;

My personal view is that the late occurance of the Gospels, 60-120 [and it doesnt matter if they are early] is a response to a following. luke even makes this clear in that he is collecting information for a information hungrey follower. Paul is riding on the back of a popular cult offering a new lite version. Apocalyptic Judaism and social revolution are rife for a century either side of the supposed life of JC. Enventually the destruction of the Temple and the State eliminated the revolutionary movement leaving only the spiritual new-Jerusalem promised.

Christianity could exist and flourish without a Jesus.