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Old 01-13-2008, 04:50 PM   #1
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Default One of my debates with James Holding at the Theology Web

Consider the following post that I made at the Theology web over two years ago:

Quote:
Originally Posted by Johnny Skeptic
Do you still claim that 1 Christian per5,000 people is miraculous? You are actually pretty close to agreeing with Rodney Stark’s estimate of 7,530 Christians in 100 A.D.” You conveniently did not respond.
Quote:
Originally Posted by James Holding
Sorry, Johnny, but I did already; you just didn't like it. But you say I'm close to Stark? So what? It doesn't affect my point one bit.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Johnny Skeptic
It most certainly does. You said that in 70 A.D. there were from 100,000 - 250,000 Christians in the Roman Empire in 70 A.D., and that there had to be that many Christians in order to get the Romans' attention. Now you contradict yourself with "But you say I'm close to Stark? So what? It doesn't affect my point one bit." You said that even 1 Christian per 5,000 people would have been miraculous. That would be 10,000 Christians per 50 million people. Some time ago you said that Stark picked his numbers out of a hat, and on another occasion you said that Stark massaged the numbers, but now you are saying "But you say I'm close to Stark? So what? It doesn't affect my point one bit." If you don't mind agreeing with Stark, then there is no doubt whatsoever that by 70 A.D., the vast majority of people had flatly rejected New Testament claims of miracles, including the resurrection of Jesus. If there were no miracles and no Resurrection, then it is to be expected that the Christian Church could not have begun to grow more rapidly until after the deaths of the supposed still living eyewitnesses, which would have been late in the first century.
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Originally Posted by James Holding
I'll skip any more canned answers by you at this point, which are merely repeats of what has already been refuted.
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Originally Posted by Johnny Skeptic
Well of course you will skip my answers, since I demolished you in my post #608, not only regarding the numbers, but regarding the persecution of Christians as well. I encourage readers who have not read that post to do so. If Richard Carrier likes my post #608, he might add it to his nexts rebuttal of TIF. If he does add it to his next rebuttal of TIF, you will be forced to respond to it.

E. Mary Smallwood, in her literary work, 'The Jews Under Roman Rule from Pompey to Diocletian,' says, 'The hardening of Jewish Nationalist feeling.'
Quote:
Originally Posted by James Holding
That's nice. What did this have to do with anything I said? Nothing. It doesn't even mention personal attitudes.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Johnny Skeptic
Consider the following from a previous post:

“Titus did not have a personal disdain for Jews in general, only Jewish Zealots.”
Quote:
Originally Posted by James Holding
No, sorry, Johnny -- Romans as a whole had a disdain for Jews as a whole. Nice try.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Johnny Skeptic
E. Mary Smallwood, in her literary work, ‘The Jews Under Roman Rule from Pompey to Diocletian,’ says, "The hardening of Jewish Nationalist feeling into a militant resistance movement at the very start of the period of Roman rule was the fundamental cause of the recurrent disturbances of the next sixty years and of the revolt which was their climax, in the sense that it created or sharpened the dilemma facing the Romans in attempting to govern Judaea as a province. They were committed to a policy of protecting Jewish religious liberty, but on the political level they were opposed to nationalist aspirations among their subjects. The problem in Judaea was that to the Jews religion and politics were inextricably bound up together as two facets of a single way of life, AND THOUGH A 'MODUS VIVENDI' MIGHT HAVE BEEN ESTABLISHED BETWEEN ROME AND MODERATE JEWISH OPINION, THE EXISTENCE OF A BELLIGERENT NATIONALIST PARTY FOCUSING DISCONTENT AND FOSTERING OPPOSITION POSED A PROBLEM WHICH THE ROMANS SIGNALLY FAILED TO SOLVE. THEIR FAILURE IN TURN AGGRAVATED MATTERS, AND THE STORY OF THE YEARS 6-66 IS LARGELY THE STORY OF HOW THE OCCUPYING POWER AND THE NATIONALISTS (Johnny: Contrary to what you said, not all of the Jews) REACTED TO ONE ANOTHER, EACH PROVOKING THE OTHER TO FURTHER EXCESSES, UNTIL THE FINAL EXPLOSION CAME."

You knew exactly what my quotes meant, and since you knew that you didn't have a decent rebuttal, you pretended not to know what I meant. Any high school student would know what I meant.
Quote:
Originally Posted by James Holding
About WHAT that I said??? About Titus being Josephus' boss??? You didn't even touch those points and instead went back to some old crap about the Tacitus fragment, and none of that has a whit to do with anything I said about Josephus.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Johnny Skeptic
I just showed you how I refuted your comments about Josephus via E. Mary Smallwood. Surely you know that if necessary I can find other sources that corroborate Josephus and Smallwood.
Holding and I debated the size of the first century Christian church for many months. He claimed that in 70 A.D. there were from 100,000 - 250,000 Christians in the Roman Empire in 70 A.D., and that there had to be that many Christians in order to get the Romans' attention. By contrast, In "The Rise of Christianity," Rodney Stark estimates that there were only 7,530 Christians in the world 30 years later in 100 A.D.

Holding said:

Quote:
Originally Posted by James Holding
But you say I'm close to Stark? So what? It doesn't affect my point one bit.
But it did affect his point that there had to be from 100,000 - 250,000 Christians in the Roman Empire in 70 A.D. in order to get the Romans' attention. In addition, regarding "But you say I'm close to Stark," it was not just that I said that Holding was close to Stark, but that eventually, after many months, I succeeded into luring Holding into a trap where he himself unwittingly agreed with Stark.

As I said, Holding said:

Quote:
Originally Posted by James Holding
No, sorry, Johnny -- Romans as a whole had a disdain for Jews as a whole. Nice try.
Wasn't Holding wrong?
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Old 01-13-2008, 05:27 PM   #2
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Anyone can pick a number.

Does anyone have any evidence concerning the number of Christians?

Stuart Shepherd
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Old 01-13-2008, 05:42 PM   #3
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Quote:
Originally Posted by stuart shepherd
Anyone can pick a number.

Does anyone have any evidence concerning the number of Christians?
My main intention was not to debate the size of the first century Christian church, but to show that James Holding contradicted himself. He said "But you say I'm close to Stark? So what? It doesn't affect my point one bit." However, it did affect his point that there had to be from 100,000 - 250,000 Christians in the Roman Empire in 70 A.D. in order to get the Romans' attention.

Holding also said that "Romans as a whole had a disdain for Jews as a whole." I am pretty sure that that claim if false.
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Old 01-13-2008, 08:47 PM   #4
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Johnny Skeptic View Post
Holding also said that "Romans as a whole had a disdain for Jews as a whole." I am pretty sure that that claim if false.
Quoting from an article on the Livius org website (I don't know enough myself to say how correct it is):
http://www.livius.org/am-ao/antisemi...emitism02.html
"The following accusations were common:

* The Exodus-story was inverted. The Jews were considered to be the descendants of lepers, who had been exiled by the Egyptians. In Antiquity, statements like these were considered extremely insulting.
* Because the Jews were said to have been rescued in the desert by a wild ass, the Jews were believed to venerate this animal as their God. A similar statement can be found in the Symposium of the Greek philosopher Plutarch of Chaeronea (c.45-120), where he says that the object of the Jewish cult was the pig.
* The Jews did not worship the usual gods, like others did. This was, of course, true, but was held against the Jews, who were sometimes considered to be responsible for the divine anger when disasters befell a community. It should be added, however, that many Greeks and Romans were fascinated by the radical monotheism of the Jews, which was philosophically elegant.
* In their temple in Jerusalem, the Jews sacrificed human beings. For example, it was widely believed that when the Roman general Pompey took the city and entered the temple, he liberated a Greek prisoner who was being fattened for the sacrifice.
* Jews were considered to be lazy: this was clear to all Greeks and Romans, because the Jews maintained the sabbath. This thought can be found in the Fourteenth satire of the Roman poet Juvenal (c.67-c.145).
* The Jews had strange customs. The Food and Purity Laws -the difference was never clear to the Greeks and Romans- were the object of many jokes, sometimes good-natured, usually not.
* Those who followed the Law of Moses were thought to ignore the law of the state in which they resided. Of all accusations against the Jews, this one is the oldest; we have encountered it in the story about Esther.
* Jews were believed to be antisocial. They separated from the other people living in the ancient Mediterranean world. (As a matter of fact, pious Jews were forced to live in the neighborhood of their synagogues -there was a maximum distance they were allowed to walk on a sabbath-, which explains the existence of Jewish quarters. For example, in Rome, the quarter on the other side of the Tiber was entirely Jewish. So, the Jews were indeed separated from the others, but this does not mean that they were antisocial.)
* The 'mutilation of genitals' was considered barbarous. The Greeks and Romans thought that the Jews circumcised their boys to prevent them from assimilating. In 132, the Roman emperor Hadrian tried to root out this practice, which led to war. Probably, he was influenced by Greek philosophical ideas about the integrity of the body (which was, after all, the vehicle of the soul). This may also apply to the persecution by Antiochus IV."
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