Peter Kirby

What would such a statistical analysis look like?

Join the club. Dues are $20, here's your card and "Jesus is Make Believe" bumper sticker.

best wishes,
Peter Kirby

Amaleq13

How does identifying whether belief in an HJ emerged before or after the first Christian martyrs accomplish that?

Are you just looking for a timeline?

I suspect that this has more to do with the nature of the questions than any answers that might be offered. Your questions appear to do nothing to differentiate between a Christianity that arose from the actions of a historical figure and a Christianity that arose from beliefs associated with a unique interpretation of Hebrew Scripture.

I'm afraid that is unavoidable given the uncertain nature of the relevant evidence. If the HJ proponent is honest about it, you'll find the same uncertainty in any attempt to explain the origins of Christianity under the assumption of a historical Jesus.

Christian martyrs are entirely explicable regardless of whether one assumes an HJ or an MJ so it makes no sense to try to make it a differentiating point.

I don't think you are likely to obtain your actual goal by asking the wrong questions.

Clivedurdle

A statistical analysis would ask for example are there records of sizes of various religious groups at certain times? Things like records of wealth - could they afford temples of stone as against wood or were they using someone elses structure?

Execution records - who got executed where and why?

Court records - what were people tried for - were xians actually showing up that much?

We probably need a modern criminologist with an interest in Roman history!

Peter Kirby

The only piece of specific data of which I know, from the literary sources, concerns the size of the church at Rome in the mid third century.

Prior to Constantine, Christians worshipped in houses and synagogues, or possibly open spaces too.

I know that we have martyrologies, but I don't know about any "court records" to which we can point here.

What would a background in criminology provide?

best,
Peter Kirby

Chris Weimer

I think Pliny's and Tranjan's letters to each other are the significant works here then. In them, Pliny recognizes a Christian threat, but Trajan says don't kill them unless they don't recognize the Roman gods, and don't go after those on hearsay. This means a couple things, 1. by this time, Christians have a definite name for themselves and are being killed by Romans, 2. they were not a large enough threat to have them go merciless, so we figure that Christianity was probably like the Communist scare in the 1930s-1950's where for the most part, Communists didn't hurt anything, but there were several radicals who induced a frenzy over all of them.The actual numbers for Communist persecution were quite low. For some reason I doubt that Christians martyrs were that much higher.

John A. Broussard

Let's start with the answer to one of your questions. The answer is that it's almost impossible to answer it, because:

1. We have no way of knowing the earliest date when a group of believers considered themselves, or were considered by others, to be christians.

2. Early references to so-called christians were very likely confused references to Jews. (Suetonius probably made that error)

3. We do know that earlier followers of the christian cult, or pauline cult if you prefer, were slaves. While the Neronic persecutions may have been mythical, if they did occur, then scapegoats were the target. Slaves--who just incidentally were also christians--could have been those early "martyrs."

These are only a few of the reasons why it's virtually impossible to give a reasonable answer to the question.

andrewcriddle

One possible indication of the number of martyrdoms is the list of supposed bishops of Rome.

Peter is claimed to have been executed under Nero. The next six bishops die by natural causes the seventh bishop after Peter Telesphorus was according to Irenaeus martyred. The next death by violence involves the 15th bishop after Peter the controversial Callistus who seems to have died in an anti-Christian riot. The 17th bishop after Peter Pontain died in a forced labour camp. The 19th after Peter Fabian died in prison. His successor Cornelius died of natural cause while in exile. Sixtus (or Xystus) II the 23rd after Peter was executed by beheading in 258.

There is then peace till the Great Persecution under Diocletian, where two bishops of Rome seem to have died in exile and one escaped death by apostasy but none were martyred in the strict sense.

The risk of violent death for a church leader like the bishop of Rome was presumably unusually high but these figures suggest a quite high casualty rate at least in the 3rd century CE.

Andrew Criddle

Ted Hoffman

The Ignatian epistles have been argued to have been forgeries - with some good reasons.
I would be interested in (1) reliable evidence that (2) proves that the martyr's were specifically killed because they believed that Jesus died for their sins.

I am aware that it has been argued that the martyrdoms were fabricated by the Church as propaganda machines to win converts.

As for Yuri's questions, I think they are beneath a person of his calibre. For a person who I regard as informed, the questions are simplistic, fallacious, without substance and ultimately irrelevant to proving the MJ hypothesis because the questions cut both ways.

Sample this:
Yuri:All IDers are in consensus that the creator was God therefore ID must be correct? This is poor reasoning. Consensus within an interest group proves nothing. Plus, the expression "among the HJ mainstreamers" is tied up to the factoid Yuri is arguing. Hence begging the question - which is, what is the evidence that a HJ existed "among the HJ mainstreamers"?

JoeWallack

Don Gakusei:
"Yuri, I don't think much of Doherty's ideas, but I can't see the connection. St Paul was persecuted, flogged and had his life endangered from his preachings. If he represents an expression of the Christ Myth, then it isn't unreasonable to assume that the Christ Myth could inspire martyrdom."


Yuri:
"You don't know if he represents an expression of the Christ Myth. This is what the Mythicists need to demonstrate..."


Don Gakusei:
"The charges against Christianity that appeared to result in the conditions leading to martyrdom were rejection of the Roman gods (atheism), love feasts and blood sacrificing - there is no evidence that it was because they were worshipping a historical figure (though by the end of the 2nd C CE we can see that Christ was thought to have been a wicked man due to his crucifixion)
I just don't see the issue of martyrdom as giving weight to either side of the Christ Myth debate."


Yuri:
"Well, then answer my questions."


Don Gakusei
"Why wouldn't a heavenly Christ's crucifixion have been a shining example?"


Yuri:
"You answer my questions first."


JW:
I think this "exchange" says it all. Yuri really is asking two questions:

1) Did early Christian Martyrs believe in a HJ?

2) Did early Christians become Martyrs because of belief in a HJ?

Yuri is acting like he only has one question:

1) Did early Christians become Martyrs because of belief in a HJ?

As G-D has pointed out, Paul's supposed willingness to die for Jesus was based on Personal Revelation and Paul makes a point of this being in Contrast to knowledge of a historical Jesus. Paul is also generally regarded as the greatest ProConsulityzer of all time, "The Taursus Convertible", so presumably his converts' willingness to die for Jesus would have been based on Paul's Personal Revelation also. Paul is thought to have lived relatively early in Christian history so objective accounts of Christian Martyrs before Paul would be rarer than Gordon Gecko's interest in Annacott Steel.

You have the following problems (most already identified here) with trying to conclude early Christians became Martyrs because of belief in a HJ:

1) Paul's willingness to die for Jesus was based on Personal Revelation.

2) Scarecity of contemporary writings on the subject make it diificult to support any conclusion.

3) Claims of early Christian Martyrs are relatively few and late.

4) Claims of early Christian Martyrs are generally by biased Christians.

5) These Orthodox Christians confess to us that they are motivated primarily by Faith.

6) These Orthodox Christians also believe that G-D sacrificed Himself to Himself in order to end a Law which was Eternal and conquer Death by dying.

7) Christians had Motive and Opportunity to Lie about early Christian Martyrs.

8) Religious minorities tend to be killed while religious majorities tend to kill. So maybe a cause and effect is that the early Christians were in the minority.

9) So far Andrew has been unable to find any support for early Christian Martyrs in the Talmud.

Yuri, you are asking good questions and I understand your point. So far Mythicists are relying mainly on critiques of HJ rather than their own Positive statements as to the Origin of The JesuSpecies. Doherty's real problem is that Commercially he is on the wrong side of the Christianity issue (he can't make a living at it). He also tends to act like an Advocate, arguing every point, rather than an objective scholar, conceding some points. Your conclusion though, that early Christians became Martyrs because of belief in a HJ, has not been proven here.



Joseph

Jesus, Name. The fleshy part of the Trinity.

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Errors...yguid=68161660

http://hometown.aol.com/abdulreis/myhomepage/index.html

Clivedurdle

Peter, the point of a criminologist would be to think through what was happening from a crime perspective. In Britain there is a huge difference between crimes experienced and those reported to authorities, but looking at the Pliny correspondence, the answers are there.




"depraved excessive superstition", "contagion" are very important terms. Pliny thought he was acting as a public health official controlling a sociological plague.

It is interesting to note that Pliny talks of "Christ" NOT "Jesus Christ".

What are the earliest records of Jesus being mentioned by Romans, and has this correspondence been tampered with by xians?