andrewcriddle

When Justin refers to a prediction of Christ 5000 years before his coming he presumably means the narrative in Genesis about Adam and Eve eg Genesis 3:15

Justin, working from the Septuagint, would have dated Adam and Eve 5000 BCE or a little earlier.

Andrew Criddle

Duvduv

No that's not true. He was talking about Hebrew prophets.

GakuseiDon

He was talking about the predictions in "the books of the prophets" in that passage. From here:
http://www.earlychristianwritings.co...stapology.html

In these books, then, of the prophets we found Jesus our Christ foretold as coming, born of a virgin, growing up to man's estate, and healing every disease and every sickness, and raising the dead, and being hated, and unrecognised, and crucified, and dying, and rising again, and ascending into heaven, and being, and being called, the Son of God. We find it also predicted that certain persons should be sent by Him into every nation to publish these things, and that rather among the Gentiles [than among the Jews] men should believe on Him. And He was predicted before He appeared, first 5000 years before, and again 3000, then 2000, then 1000, and yet again 800; for in the succession of generations prophets after prophets arose.

Gen 3:15: "And I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring[a] and hers; he will crush[b] your head, and you will strike his heel.”

Not stated explicitly, but it fits. It's in Justin's First Apology, written to the Emperor and the Senate. I think we tend to underestimate early Christians' emphasis on the importance of the prophecies about Christ when converting pagans and convincing people that Jesus was the Christ. It wasn't the miracles nor the sayings that were the clinching arguments; it was that Christ was predicted, and Jesus fulfilled those prophecies. As Karen Armstrong writes in Chapter 3 of her "History of God":

"[Justin Martyr] argued that Christians were simply following Plato, who had also maintained that there was only one God. Both the Greek philosophers and the Jewish prophets had foretold the coming of Christ - an argument that would have impressed the pagans of his day, since there was a fresh enthusiasm for oracles."

Duvduv

I noticed below the use of the term "apostles" in Dialogue with Typho is a very general category and even gets used to refer to the followers of biblical prophets. Not much is known about any apostles except for the ones named, and they obviously do not have an especially important role. And of course had Justin known WHICH apostle said what in the so-called Memoirs he would have said so, seeing as how he makes sure to mention (only) Peter and John.

But note that the author, "Justin," makes specific reference to an apostle John and to Peter, and he really could have mentioned Paul if he had ever heard of him.

The word "gospel" is used only three times in the Dialogue as another general reference without any explicit description of what the gospel actually is, who wrote it, etc. Just aphorisms which were known as part of this gospel, which perhaps were simply a collection of aphorisms/logia thought to have been uttered by the Jesus figure.

Chapter 81 – John, “one of the apostles of Christ who prophesied by a revelation that was made to him…..”

Chapter 100 – For Christ called one of his disciples previously known by the name of Simon Peter……

Chapter 110- - :the true worship of God from the law and the word went forth from Jerusalem by means of the apostles of Jesus.

Chapter 119 – “we have believed God’s voice spoken by the apostles of Christ and promulgated to us by the prophets.

Overall, however, the Dialogue is just a rhetorical piece against Judaism, which would have been something undertaken long after the second century at a time when the Church was trying to discourage its followers from maintaining Jewish practices and ties to Judaism. IMHO.

aa5874

Your claim is unsubstantiated. There is no way that you can show that Justin Martyr's Dialogue with Trypho was written long after the 2nd century.

We know that there was a story about Christians in PALESTINE that worshiped a Crucified man in the 2nd century because of Lucian, a non-apologetic writer.

Justin Martyr was a Native of PALESTINE See First Apology.

Lucian's Death of Peregrine
Again, the writings of Justin Martyr were NOT manipulated because we know EXACTLY what manipulated writings contain.

Please EXAMINE "Against Heresies" and "Demonstration of Apostolic preaching" attributed to Irenaeus because those are the FLAGSHIP of Manipulated texts.

If you want to know if any text of antiquity was manipulated just compare the contents with writings attributed to Irenaeus.

It is that easy.

Duvduv

Let's not build up everything based on Lucian. It sounds like he got things all mixed up. If Irenaeus was backdated with his divine Christ into the 2nd century, then we can say that there was no belief that "Jesus" was a god in the second century and certainly not in the Greek sense. He didn't expound any books, didn't prescribe any laws, wrote no books and wasn't a president of anything. And if Theophilus and Athenagoras are any indication, Christians at that time didn't deify anyone and didn't have their Christ yet.

aa5874

You seem to want to base everything on Eusebius????

Duvduv

Hardly......he was a leader of the heresiology industry.....Whereever there is untruth there are grains of fact to be found between lines. SOMETHING was going on in the 2nd century, but what??
Who can take Eusebius's word about anything, even including the alleged original Nicene Creed or Edict of Milan?!

I made the point to Toto that for all intents and purposes revisions and interpolations by the 4th century means that what we have today is only from then anyway, and not before. However, isn't it more than likely that texts were being worked on even into the 5th century??

Interestingly by the 7th century the Quran text knew of John/Yahya but nothing of Paul/Bulus. Nothing. It speaks of John's birth which reflects some knowledge that found its way into GJohn, and the nativity of Jesus.
If the Muslims knew of the NT canon, then the authors of the Quran purposely left out any reference to Paul or to Peter / Boutros for that matter. And why would that be if the Quranic author accepted much of the four gospel accounts??

aa5874

So are you using the Nicene Creed as the means to date the start of Christianity?

Eusebius was the first to mention the meeting in Nicene. You MUST trust Eusebius if you think there were Christians during the time of Constantine and before the meeting in Nicene.

Duvduv

I don't rely on him about anything, however if he wanted to totally invent the ideology of the Nicene Creed to strengthen Christianity, he would have incorporated some ideas of the NT texts into the Nicene Creed, which shows really nothing from the NT texts, unlike the 381 Creed.
So it would seem that the creed in 325 reflected something going on about some kind of Christianity prior to that, but how much before? The excuse for so few "bishops" in Nicea was due to disagreements, but who knows if that was the real reason? The Creed of 381 shows some awareness of NT texts, but 325 doesn't. At least as far as it goes.