Duvduv

Why would modern scholars give more credence to Giacondo than to the claims of Rabbi de Leon about the antiquity of the Zohar in the 14th century?

Toto

You can read Doughty's discussion linked to above, which contains factors arguing for or against authenticity. With the Zohar Nevertheless, there are arguments made in favor of at least partial authenticity of the Zohar.

I gather that there is no such linguistic evidence against the letter from Pliny.

Duvduv

I don't know about the case of Pliny, but what about outright forgery? I don't understand why Giacondo would simply be taken at face value.

aa5874

Most significantly the Pliny letters show that Pliny himself did NOT know about the Jesus character and the Jesus story.

If Christians ONLY believed in a character called Jesus and Pliny himself heard the of the Jesus story then he would NOT need to TORTURE the Christians.

The Pliny letters ALSO destroy the Pauline letters and the claim that Peter and Paul were in Rome and all over the Roman Empire establishing Christian Churches.

Remarkably, the Pliny letters suggest that the ENTIRE NT was UNKNOWN and NOT circulated up to 110 CE.

Duvduv

I don't think we should worry to much about the Pliny letter. For all we know it was invented by Giacondo, a very "unbiased" source........

Toto

No one does. Please refer to the previous discussion.

andrewcriddle

This article tertullian and pliny may be of interest, particularly since it gives references to other analyses.

Andrew Criddle

rlogan

One gift of the post-reptilian age is to use reason, like assuming something to be true for purposes of argument, and seeing where that leads vis-a-vis assuming the contrary.

Because that allows one to proceed logically rather than spinning one's tires in the mud.

You have a lot of them to manage simultaneously, and if one presumption falls then a number of others fall with it. For example the year 112 is pivotal because if there is no literature in circulation in 112 CE then the whole first-century dating paradigm is dead.

The benefit of seeing how a number of premises fit together is that ultimately you can arrive at an Argument from Best Explanation, which is a primary thesis and all of its derivative positions on each piece of evidence.

That isn't "faith", as you put it, in the religious sense. It is the practice of logic and it also arranges things in rank-order, meaning secondary theses where you have thought through what it means if there does exist a first-century literature and how that bears on all the other questions.

rlogan

It is enough to observe that the most massive structure in a city is the Church which is supporting an extensive bureacracy, maintaining a Library, and harnessing the energies of multitudes who pay tithes of one kind or another. If you direct that economic force somewhere else through Christianity, it is revolutionary.

I have often said in traveling through third-world countries that if the people all moved into the Church, or alternatively if the people's houses were erected from church materials, that their standard of living would rise more than anything else you could do for them. This was the original Christian insight: If we remove the obligation to support a Temple bureacracy, we can eat better and house ourselves better, right now in the present. We can thank Christ for that. Look at what motivation people would have in looking for a way to remove the constant demand on them to pay.

That is why Christianity spread like wildfire: it removed obligation. Eat your food yourself. Stay at home and improve your own place instead of building a Temple for corrupt, hypocritical fat cats. The irony is of course that it ended up being co-opted by the fat cats.

In an era of secret cells, they have to be small and power cannot be concentrated. But once they are numerous enough to practice in the open, they can be organized and controlled better, regardless of whether it is an independent chuch heirarchy or the state. And at that point Christianity began to grow into the thing it originally overthrew in the fist place.

Duvduv

What kind of textual evidence exists in the history attributed to Eusebius suggesting that the book or parts of it were not written by Eusebius or more importantly that it could not have been written when it is argued it was, I.e. the early fourth century?

Also, what are the implications from the letters of Athenagoras and Theophilus for emerging "Christianity "??