FathomFFI

You keep talking about these other Christs and other Christians, but have consistently failed to show any evidence whatsoever.

This portrays your view as being inaccurate.

patcleaver

Wow this is great. We can work backwards to determine when Christianity started.

Assuming there were 10,000,000 Christians in 315 according to Stark, and the growth rate should be the same as for Scientology according to Fathom, then Christianity did not exist until around 265 CE.

So everything before 265 CE is just forgery or interpolation or misdating.

Of course this is not absolute proof, but its a good starting point.

spamandham

Admittdely, this is a projection backward from what Justin Martyr said in his First Apology:

It doesn't seem unreasonable to me to conclude that if Justin Martyr called followers of these men Christians in his day, that they were also called Christians in an earlier period.

Is there any reason not to make that connection?

FathomFFI

I suppose you've never heard of something called "the saturation effect?"

Didn't think so.

Ben C Smith

I have no problem calling the Simonians and Marcionites Christians or Christian sects. But my question was: Whom do you have in mind as one who was actually called Christ? How do you know these sects were not called Christians precisely because they claimed a connection to Jesus Christ?

Take the Marcionites, for example, from that quotation you offered. Are you seriously claiming that the Marcionites were called Christians because Marcion himself was called Christ? Or, rather, was it not because the Marcionites claimed to be the true followers of Jesus Christ?

Ben.

patcleaver

I wonder if Peter also included references to Chrestus and Christus. What about messiah in Jewish literature. Anybody called messiah in Jewish literature may have been called Christ in Greek/Latan literature.

How many places is Jesus unambiguously called Christ in the Pagan literature of the first three centuries?

Tacitus seems to be calling Jesus Christ in Annals, but its ambiguous.

Emperor Hadrian's letter to Servianus 134 CE, seems to claim that in Alexandria the sun God Serapis is called Christ, and his worshipers are called Christians or "Bishops of Christ", but its ambiguous.

There is much that is strange in early Christianity. Tertullian says, “You say we worship the sun; so do you.” (CE xiv, 525; Ad. Nationes, xiii; ANF. Iii, 123) ???

FathomFFI

There's nothing ambiguous about it. It's crystal clear.

Not even close to the truth. The letter merely says that some Christians and Bishops were worshiping Serapis, and never does the letter say anything whatsoever that Serapis was Christ. Here's the pertinent part:

The last line should clue you in, as it completely distinguishes between Searpis and Christ as two entirely different entities.

Refuted, conclusively.

What's so strange about the quote above? Senselessness.

mens_sana

I'm with FathomFFI here. While I'm aware that early Christianity was a splintered proposition ("pillars," Ebionites, Gnostics, Docetists, Arians, etc.), I was not aware that any of these groups thought of themselves as other than followers of Christ. I'm also not aware of more than one "Christ." Please refer me to these "multiple Christs" and to the Christians who did not follow some form of Jesus. Just curious.

Roger Pearse

Oh god not this canard again? We've seen this in this forum so many times.

You're right, of course, as anyone who reads the letter knows. The letter makes the point that the Egyptians are such tarts that even those supposed to be Christians go and worship Serapis.

It's just a crib from Joseph Wheless' collections of misrepresentations and falsehoods. Funnily enough people never link to the work online... we can imagine why they are not eager that we should have ready access, of course. It is, of course, a misquotation:

"Chapter XIII.214 ----The Charge of Worshipping the Sun Met by a Retort.

Others, with greater regard to good manners, it must be confessed, suppose that the sun is the god of the Christians, because it is a well-known fact that we pray towards the east, or because we make Sunday a day of festivity. What then? Do you do less than this? Do not many among you, with an affectation of sometimes worshipping the heavenly bodies likewise, move your lips in the direction of the sunrise? It is you, at all events..."

It's just a tu quoque in reply to various accusations of shameful behaviour -- "if we did, you couldn't complain about it" --, not an admission of worshipping the sun.

Is it too much to ask people to verify their quotations?

All the best,

Roger Pearse

Roger Pearse

Justin does not call them Christians. He says that the pagans call them Christians; and is objecting to this, and to Christians being demonised for the evil lives of the heretics.

"All who take their opinions from these men, are, as we before said, called 'Christians'; just as also those who do not agree with the philosophers in their doctrines, have yet in common with them the name of 'philosophers' given to them. And whether they perpetrate those fabulous and shameful deeds --the upsetting of the lamp, and promiscuous intercourse, and eating human flesh-we know not; but we do know that they are neither persecuted nor put to death by you, at least on account of their opinions. But I have a treatise against all the heresies that have existed already composed, which, if you wish to read it, I will give you." (quotes around names added by me)

The Fathers do, tho. Indeed St. John's disciple Polycarp called Marcion to his face "the first-born of Satan."

All the best,

Roger Pearse