Roger Pearse

It might be better to argue from evidence about authorship, rather than from an authority which neither side truly respects?

aa5874

The records will show that there was really NO orthodox church until after the second century.

Justin Martyr in all his writings did NOT ever mention the name of his bishop or the name of any bishop anywhere in the Roman Empire. He mentioned no orthodox church structure but painted a picture where christians were fragmented, operating secretly, and dispersed over the Roman Empire.

Justin in his letters to the Senate and Emperor in his introduction did not even mention his position in his own church, an indication that there was no real church structure, no single universal authority or christian doctrine at the middle of the second century.

Justin showed clearly that instead of orthodoxy, the name Christian was used arbitrarily, and that Jesus believers were operating secretly. There was not even any visible physical church buildings.

Justin Martyr's First Apology1 Now, it must be noted that there are no extant writings fron any bishop of Rome to the Roman Emperors in the 2nd century, addressing persecution and abuse of Jesus believers, yet we have individuals on their own behalf making pleas to Rome to have this wanton injustice eliminated.

Based on Justin Martyr, there was no church structure, no orthodoxy of doctrine or single central authority up to the middle of the 2nd century or during the time of Marcion.

Roger Pearse

Based on Justin Martyr, early Christians did not need to go to the toilet; at least, if that argument is valid.

All the best,

Roger Pearse

aa5874

No. His argument was that a Christian's life was like living in the toilet.

show_no_mercy

I'm pretty sure you can tell why this is a strawman. If you can't, well... that explains a lot.

Sheshbazzar

Perhaps you did not notice that I wrote "orthodox church" and -not- "Orthodox Church"?
There is a distinction "orthodox", when it is uncapitalized, and is not being employed as an official proper "title" or "name", it is only an adjective meaning the
"the conventional-", "the customary-", "the commonly held- opinion"

IE the "mainstream opinion" as opposed to unorthodox fringe opinions. ....thus;
...."one that the mainstream church was unwilling to tolerate or compromise with at all."

He did not need mention names of bishops, because just as you note, the christian religion was yet unorganized and fragmented without any overarching organization or authority structure. No "bishop" (note no capitalisation) would have held any authority beyond what small group of followers would willingly place themselves under his care.

Yet there were the many who did hold "common-", "conventional-", "customary-" "mainstream -opinions" in common, these were the "orthodox" believers prior to the formal establishment of THE Orthodox Chrisian Church, with its Curia of organised and authorative Bishops, and The Basilica's of The Christian Church.
Oganization, structure, centralised authority, and buildings, are not perquisits to the acceptance of, the promotion of, or the existence of "orthodox"-
"mainstream opinions".
There were "the orthodox", long before there was "THE Orthodox".

aa5874

You may have been mistaken, you may have not noticed my "orthodox" was also uncapitalicised.



And what did YOUR orthodox believe in the 1st,2nd or any century?

I can show what Justin claimed was common, conventional and customary among the Samaritans or among the Greeks and perhaps Jesus believers.

Justin Martyr's First Apology 26
Marcion's First Apology 58 What is YOUR orthodox in any century?

fatpie42

Ok, lets back up to where you said this:
If I take it for granted that Romans, Galatians and 1Corinthians all contain sections which are later additions there are three possibilities:
1. Paul wrote the initial texts and then the Church added in bits later on.
2. A variety of writers (often calling themselves Paul) wrote the initial texts and the Church added in bits later on.
3. A variety of writers wrote the whole lot long after the fact.

I would have thought that point 3 was highly unlikely to be accepted by existing scholars, but you had issues with the dating of the Pauline texts so I thought I ought to keep it as an option.

Now, were you saying there were two Pauls in relation to these texts? Or were you saying that there are two Pauls in the sense that it was probably a different writer who wrote Galatians than wrote 2 Thessalonians?

Perhaps you can see why I was getting confused now. It's not so much the claim as the context which is confusing me.

Sheshbazzar

Your two quotations relate only to what was rejected as unacceptable and was considered as being -unorthodox-.
As though Justin in all of his writings did not write anything positive, and affirming the essentials of what was commonly believed by him and his fellow orthodox, "mainstream-opinion" Christian believers.

What the orthodox mainstream Christian sects believe today is in most essentials the same as what the orthodox Christians have taught and believed since their beginnings.

There have always been -unorthodox- fringe beliefs and sects.
The early controversy over circumcision was waged between the orthodox and the -unorthodox-, and was settled when the orthodox ("mainstream opinion") prevailed,
thus in The Christian church's, those of the orthodox ("mainstream-opinion") DO NOT require the practice of circumcision.
Any professedly "Christian" church, sect, or denomination that DOES, require the practice of circumcision, is by definition -"unorthodox"-.

The same is true for any of dozens of other fundamental Christian beliefs, doctrines, and practices.

The difference between being found among the orthodox, or among the -unorthodox-, is one of making choices.

It is orthodox beliefe, to accept that Jesus was the Son of God, who really walked the earth and performed miracles.
It is orthodox doctrine to teach that there will be a Second Coming
It is orthodox practice for members of the Christian Church to regularly assemble for worship each Sunday.

The -unorthodox- may go their own way according to their own choices, that choice however, does not change what was, and IS orthodox.

angelo

This is what Wikepedia has on the subject..... Mythical Jesus.

Bruno Bauer

Bruno BauerScholarly attention to the possibility of Jesus' non-existence began with the 19th-century German historian Bruno Bauer. In a series of studies produced while he was teaching at the University of Bonn (1839–1842), Bauer disputed the historical value of the New Testament Gospels. In his view, the Gospel of John was composed not as a historical narrative but to adapt the idea of the Jewish Messiah to the philosopher Philo's concept of the "logos". Turning to the Gospels of Matthew and Luke, he followed earlier critics in regarding them as based on Mark's narrative, but rejected the standard view that they also drew upon a common tradition apart from Mark. For Bauer, this was ruled out by the incompatible stories of Jesus' nativity which Matthew and Luke presented, as well as by the way their material which was not taken directly from Mark still appeared to be developing Markan ideas. Bauer instead concluded that Matthew depended on Luke for the content found only in those two Gospels. Now that the entire Gospel tradition could be traced through a single author (Mark), the hypothesis of outright invention became credible.[27] Bauer believed that there was no expectation of a Messiah among Jews in the time of Tiberius, and that Mark's portrayal of Jesus being recognised as the Messiah must therefore be a retrojection of later Christian ideas. He also argued that many details in the Gospels which seemed implausible as historical deeds or sayings of Jesus could be explained instead as reflections on the life of the Christian community.[28] Bauer also concluded "that the Alexandrian Jew Philo, who was still living about A.D. 40 but was already very old, was the real father of Christianity, and that the Roman stoic Seneca was, so to speak, its uncle."[29]

Bauer left open the question of whether an historical Jesus existed at all, pending a study of the Pauline epistles, but his published views were sufficiently unorthodox that in 1842 they cost him his lectureship.[30] In a revised edition of his work on the Gospels, published in 1850–1851, Bauer favoured a 2nd-century date for all the epistles and concluded that Jesus had not existed. Bauer's own explanation of Christian origins appeared in 1877: the religion was a synthesis of the Stoicism of Seneca the Younger, whom Bauer viewed as having planned to create a new Roman state based on his philosophy, with the Jewish theology of Philo as developed politically by pro-Roman Jews such as Josephus.[31][32] Mark, according to Bauer, was an Italian, influenced by Seneca's Stoic philosophy.[31] The movement developed in Rome and Alexandria, and was not attested until Pliny the Younger's letter to Trajan in the 110s, but over the following fifty years Mark and his successors developed the myth of a much earlier foundation.[33]

Later arguments against a historical Jesus were not all directly dependent on Bauer's work, but usually echoed it on several general points: that New Testament references to Jesus lacked historical value, that the lack of 1st-century non-Christian references to Jesus was evidence against his existence, and that Christianity originated through syncretism