Doug Shaver

Any theory of Christianity's origins has to pick one or the other.

I don't believe I'm starting with either answer, if the question is "How did Christianity originate?

That is not what I saw when I did my own investigation.

The gospels, and Paul's writings, and all other early Christian writings, and every other scrap of evidence we have, must be interpreted together. Your theory has to explain all of it, all at once. You are forcing the conclusion if you select a subset of that data, build your theory to explain that subset, and then interpret everything else in light that theory.

If a theory has difficulty explaining the remarks of an adversary when the only account of those remarks comes to us through an apologist, then I'm not going to regard that as a serious difficulty. However, I see no difficulty. See Earl's and my responses to the question about Christianity's critics never questioning Jesus' historicity.

My previous answer stands.

Doug Shaver

Oh, come on, Don. Would you really have us suppose that second-century Christians couldn't have believed anything that wasn't so? What, Christianity recruited all its members from the Near Eastern Skeptics Society?

The "first Christians" that we know about existed in the middle of the first century. There is zero evidence that any of the gospels existed at that time, never minding the degree to which they were accepted.

Kapyong

No no.
I think there WERE Christians in Rome "many years" before Paul.

The issue is how? Who started it? When?
Did it have anything to do with a historical Jesus?


Iasion

mountainman

Are you able to cite the historical source and/or evidence at the basis of this "knowledge"?

bacht

Also, if baptism had become a standard ritual in Christian circles the John the Baptist figure may have been used as a supporting back story.

PhilosopherJay

Hi Steve,

First a question for you. When did the concept of fictional character develop?

Warmly,

Philosopher Jay

spamandham

IMHO, this is the best explanation of why Mark has Jesus baptized. Christians simply didn't know why they were engaged in a Jewish purification ritual, but rather than give it up, Mark provided a rationale for continuing it. I think the same thing happened with the Eucharist.

aa5874

In antiquity there were people called Christians who did NOT believe in Jesus, ONLY God, nor did they believe that God was is need of sacrifice.

But, these Christians although NOT accepting Jesus or sacrifice were not mentioned among the Heretics.

For example the writers called Theophilus of Antioch, and Athenagoras claimed they were Christians but not because they believed in Jesus or the atonement of sins through sacrifice but were NOT called Heretics.

Athenagoras claimed that he believed God had a SON called the Logos but the Logos was NOT a physical human. The Logos was a philosophical in IDEA and operation.

' A Plea for the Christians" X Athenagoras would also claim that God was NOT in need of BLOOD.

A Plea to the Christians XIII


The written statements from the Christian Athenagoras is EVIDENCE from antiquity that a physical Jesus was NOT needed for there to have been people called Christians and that God was NOT in need of the BLOOD of a MAN as a sacrifice.

andrewcriddle

If you mean one can have a "bioi" of someone who probably never existed then of course I agree. Plutarch wrote a "bioi" of Theseus and one of Romulus, neither of whom is likely to be a historical figure.

If you mean that people in the ancient world would write what was in terms of genre a "bioi" of a person without intending the reader to believe in the historical reality of that person then I am more dubious.

Some of the biographies of imperial pretenders in the Augustan Histories are probably of people the author knew never existed, but it seems likely that the author intended his readers to be deceived.

Can you give an example of a work that is in terms of genre a "bioi" but where the reader is not intended to regard the narrative as historical ?

Andrew Criddle

Juststeve

Doug:

Thanks for your response but I seldom make arguments from silence and am not making one here. Had there been significant dispute about the actual existence of Jesus in antiquity I would consider that to be supporting evidence for your position. The converse is not true, for some of the reasons you have offered and some others as well.

What you mean by the Gospel accounts of Jesus being in wide circulation is true if you mean the Gospels themselves. Neither the Gospels or any other written documents were in wide circulation at a time when all documents had to be hand copied and at a time most people were illiterate. If however you mean the stories about Jesus that were later incorporated into the Gospels, that is another issue. I suspect that stories about Jesus, some of which were recorded in the Gospels, some not, were in circulation in the Christian Community before the Gospels were written. The author of Luke tells us exactly that.

Steve