Transient

Hey, derailing and diverting is what they do best

spin

You apparently wanted to know. I explained. If you didn't want to be set straight, you could have kept silent and there wouldn't have been derailment, diversion or illumination.


spin

stephan huller

But the proposition that Mani WASN'T a Christian has no evidence to support it. All the surviving evidence points to Manu claiming to be the apostle and paraclete of Jesus. So what's the problem? People are defending a particular theory rather than actually looking at the evidence. Dura provides another example of that

mountainman

The hypothesis that we are looking at an art motif inspired by the artists knowledge of the New Testament story of Jesus and Peter out walking on the sea is one hypothesis, eagerly supported by associates of Yale Divinity college who were invoved in the restoration of the mural after its shipment back from Dura Europos in a crate.

But I dont buy it. Sorry folks. I dont recognise the headless dude on the right as Jesus, or the one on the left as Peter (or even vice verse). I refuse to believe that the only rescue at sea in antiquity was the one recorded in the new testament.

Mani and Dura Europos c.267 CE

Do any of the Manichaean historical accounts have Mani travelling by boat anywhere, with his apostles? Where was Dura-Europos? Was it close to Persia and the Persian capital? How strong was the infliuence of Mani and the Manichaeans in Dura-Europos in the year 267 CE?

stephan huller

You are seriously ........ Seriously ......

I don't know what to say any more.

Toto

Then don't say anything.

There is no evidence of Manichaeanism in Dura Europos. Mani never walked on the water or calmed storms.

Pete can find a few people who think that Dura Europos is not enough to falsify his theory, but he can't actually find anyone who agrees with him that Constantine invented Christianity.

It's time to stop paying attention to Pete.

avi

Based upon reading Hopkins' text, I would reply that there was little, if any, influence of Mani at Dura Europos in 267 CE. Hopkins describes Mithraeism in considerable detail, but nothing about Mani.

Inscriptions were found in Middle Persian, in the synagogue of Dura Europos, but they were apparently unrelated to Manichaeaism.

Describing the westward spread of Manichaeaism,
avi

Transient

Probably. As I have said before - if I were Constantine and Eusebius I would have done a much much better job of the NT - it looks a total mess as a newly made up religion - pretty pathetic attempt if it was from scratch.
Then by the same token, it would seem that neither of them were too free to fix up all the glaring problems and try to harmonize everything - they must have been severely limited by the vested interests in all the different variations of christianity at the time. They reduced the variations as much as possible but couldn't do much with the already widely spread documents that were then included in the NT.
I am not sure that I buy the idea that these documents were total fiction either - they just don't seem like it. There seems to have been some real events that ended up with these stories etc being written.

avi

How about the evidence that has been ignored, thus far, by western "scholars"?
For example, Mani's seventh book, written in middle Persian, WHERE IS IT? Does its' contents support the myth of Mani's supposed claim to have been both 'THE' Paraclete, and an apostle of JC?

oops. no one knows the answer, because the seventh book hasn't been translated into Greek/Coptic. Since it was intended for presentation to the Persian Czar, one doubts that it makes any reference to Christianity, whatsoever, and rather, embraces Zoroastrianism, wholeheartedly. But that is simply conjecture. Point is, WHERE's the EVIDENCE that Mani supposedly made these claims to have been both THE Paraclete and an apostle of JC?

It doesn't exist. It was destroyed, millenia ago....All we have left today, are rumors, gossip, and third party, biased accounts, most slanted either towards Christianity, or Islam.

avi

stephan huller

avi

You could find a way to get confused about a peanut butter sandwich. Why don't you just face the fact that you will never understand this stuff because you don't want to understand it. You want to arrange the evidence in a certain way and then when it resists your efforts you start developing the silliest of explanations.

Why don't you do something unimaginable? Why don't you go to Google books and search for Mani and Paraclete. Read a book on the subject. Then when you are feeling an itch to develop one of silly ideas READ ANOTHER book by someone else who actually knows something about Mani.

This is too tedious and your endless theories and questioning are a pointless exercise. You are like a five year old child who just asks questions to find a path to get what you can't seem to get from the available evidence.

Your methology is seriously flawed because you have no interest in the truth. Its like trusting a taxi driver who only takes passengers to the places HE wants to take them.