spin

This is where the topic is:



This is what the proponent has been doing for years:



He has been in denial about the obvious evidence for christianity at Dura Europos for so long. It can't be christianity because there weren't any christians before Eusebius because Eusebius created christianity because I have the will to believe that it was so.

However, we have a well-defined closed environment which guarantees that the material belonging to the house church was in the ground by 257CE. It also guarantees that the epigraphic fragment of a diatessaron was also in the ground before then. This last is a christian gospel type document. With the house church and its frescoes this document means that christianity existed before 257CE. There's only one person here I believe who can't get that idea and that's because he refuses to deal with the facts for obvious reasons.

As to the diatessaron fragment, it was obviously placed in the ground under the glacis at Dura Europos then in the kingdom of a hostile Parthia by one of Eusebius's lackeys. It's obvious, it couldn't have been that it was already there under the fill of the streets, because mountainman's theory rules that out. The area was filled by the Roman garrison after 254CE in order to strengthen the walls around the Palmyrene Gate against the Parthian king Shapur I's awaited attack, an attack which took the city and ended its existence. This fill also preserved a synagogue, but the house church was for some unknown religion which required a water basin and featured scenes well-known to christians.


spin

mountainman

Dear Spin,

Do you have a closed mind to this? The closed environment providing guarantees is Yale since they shipped the suspected house-chuch off the little prairie at Dura-Europos and freighted it back for artistic enhancements here and there. The foundations remain at Dura, nothing else. The archaeological report was dated 1928? What an exiting discovery!

Emperor Julian marched the entire Roman army through the city of Dura-Europa one hundred years later, and shortly after the army had to fall back from the Persians after the death of Julian. We know christianity existed when Julian was around because he had the sense to legislate that christians be legally called Galilaeans.

That the diatessaron fragment was not left behind by a christian in Julian's army cannot be ruled out, and leaving all the rest aside, this represents an extremely weak, and embarrassingly feeble attempt to provide genuine archaeological citations for he existence of christian churches.

Who gives a fig about some suspected house-church? Where are the church-houses and where are the proper churches, which were staffed by transcendental christian bishops, in the centuries 1,2 and 3 according to your man Eusebius? Not one brick to be found. Not one C14 citation. No crosses. Nothing. Hundreds and thousands of christians apparently existed, ministered to by hundreds of transcendental christian bishops. They left no trace.

Perhaps you'd like to discuss The Prosenes Inscription or some other second choice citation.

Best wishes,


Pete

mountainman

Dear Spin,

I must say I like your inventive toolkit of graphics. But was Jesus born in the first century or the fourth century? As far as I can determine the archaeological citations and the carbon dating both point to the fourth century.

J-D

There is no way of carbon dating somebody's birth. I suppose if you had access to remains, you might be able to carbon date somebody's death, but we do not have access to Jesus's remains, so we can't carbon date his death, either. Nor is there any archaeological record giving a date of birth for Jesus in the fourth century. I don't know where the little story you quoted came from, but it gives no dates. Presumably what you actually meant is different from what you said, and this is just another example of the consistent pattern of evading saying what you actually mean which utterly destroys your credibility. Frankly, if you told me the weather was fine I'd be looking for my raincoat.

mountainman

Dear J-D,

The logic of the situation with the archaeological evidence is this. If we can find no trace of canonical christianity in the first three centuries to substantiate the literary assertions of Eusebius in the fourth century, then it remains quite possible that the good news about the new Roman god of Constantine was novel to the fourth century greek speaking academics of the eastern Roman empire c.324 CE.

Documents without dates have never before troubled all Biblical historians, and if you are really interested in the source of the above, it is the gospel according to the brothers Grimm.

best wishes,


Pete

Sheshbazzar

I had to chuckle at this one Pete, as centuries of expert "Bible Scholarship" likewise insisted that The Exodus had to have happened, because, after all there were these Jews, and there just couldn't and wouldn't be any Jews unless The Exodus accounts were factual history.
Now that same myopia afflicts the subject of Christian origins, we have evidence that "Christians" exist, therefore the old accounts of Christian origins must be swallowed hook line and sinker.
Just overlook the fact that these alleged tens of thousands of Christians managed to sojourn for near three centuries throughout the near east, leaving behind near on to nothing to evidence that they even actually existed; Makes the Jews claimed forty years of sojourning in The Wilderness pale in comparison.
Makes one wonder how these experts were ever able to resign The Exodus account to the realm of myth based on the lack of archaeological evidence, yet ignore that humongously greater glaring lack of evidence for the Christian history as it was presented to us by Eusebius.
Just where in the hell is the evidence for the existence of all of those great early Christian Churches and of the hundreds of miracle working Christian saints that he claims were so active?
They should have left tens of thousands of archaeological evidences behind, just as did the cult of Asclepius and many others. But all that these defenders of the Eusebian account can come up with are two or maybe three disputiably "Christian" sites? Something is bad wrong here, and it lies at the feet of those who choose to ignore the absence of all the evidence that ought to exist to support their opinions.
I say give 'em hell Pete, they may mock and ridicule you, but at the end of the day, they are the ones who are going to have to confront the fact that their favorite version of history proves to be bunk, of no more value than their former opinion on The Exodus fable.

Toto

Pete could try to support the radical theory that Christianity did not exist at all until the second century. But he has chosen to maintain that Christianity was invented in the 4th century.

Unfortunately for his theory, there are a few relics of Christianity, about what you would expect for a very small movement that met in people's houses and tried to avoid calling attention to itself.

Pete could revise his theory, make it more nuanced to take more factors into account, but instead he had stood his ground and tried to impeach all contrary evidence.

Transient

You are probably right but he does add a sort of flavor to the place in that his ideas encourage a broader look at things & I for one would like to see him continue with what he does.
I would also like others to continue to debate him on the issues that are raised.
In my opinion I think that there were probably a whole range of different "christianities" around before Constantine - none of which resemble what we call christianity today & they are all a load of hogwash - based on nothing real & used by those in power to control & manipulate the masses.
Nothing will change, maybe the followings will diminish a little but most people are stupid & will believe any garbage that is presented shrewdly to them :frown:

J-D

You are now making the same methodological error which I have pointed out to you repeatedly in earlier threads and which you consistently evade discussing.

It is possible that there is a cockroach on the floor behind me right now as I type, but there is no evidence for that proposition. There is no evidence to support your theory, either.I was not referring to the date of the document. My point was that the story does not give any date for the birth of Jesus. Hence, even if did have any evidentiary reliability, it would not support the assignment of that date to the first century, or to the fourth century, or to any other century. It simply doesn't bear on that point, which was the point under the discussion at the stage when you first brought it up, so you were simply indulging in irrelevancy again, in a characteristic evasion of the point at issue.

J-D

There is, of course, no rule against people posting utter rubbish here, and nor should there be. There is equally no rule against other people pointing out that it is complete rubbish, and nor should there be.