darstec

Name any Patristic material that is not at least 800 years removed from the time those writers existed as evidenced by radiocarbon dating and has not been passed down through the hands of a biased Catholic Church.

You won't find any.

You don't seem to understand that we have nothing, absolutely nothing that was even remotely connected to the time the author supposedly lived.

Iskander

Yes, yes, I don’t understand, of course

The quality of the extant material cannot be used as evidence in support of the claim that the object under study never existed.

stephan huller

darstec You're right I had no idea until you mentioned it. Thank God I spend my time at this forum.

So here's my question for you. What if we want to discuss Socrates or Plato or Aristotle - we can't because we don't have the original autograph of Plato or Aristotle? So what are we allowed to talk about?

Let me guess - how everything is bullshit. Isn't there some anarchist forum that you could be having these sorts of discussions along with your Professor Emeritus aa5874?

darstec

If historians encountered varied texts by those authors that were highly edited and had passed solely through the hands of their detractors and were on a highly charged subject such as religious belief, then YES, absolutely, we cannot use them as being an accurate representation. We should absolutely hold them as highly suspect. We do that with the interpolations of Josephus.


We know that the NT texts and those telling us about "heretics" changed radically and that we have nothing original.

Now we know for a fact when Aristotle lived. There were many sources confirming that he actually lived when others said he did.

But with the events in the NT (or OT) none of the main characters have contemporary references outside the biased Catholic Church. We have nothing about any Papias, or Irenaeus, or Polycarp. We only have snippets of what they supposedly wrote from authors hundreds of years removed from their lifetime. But then even what we have from the authors who told us what they supposedly wrote is 800 to 1000 years removed from when those authors wrote.

Do you believe that any of the NT texts were altered because of religious bias?

Do you mean as opposed to the 2000 year old pabulum of True Believers? A word of caution, there are more contributors to this forum that have a grasp of the biblical languages equal or better than yours. Some of us even have a formal education in these.

stephan huller

Hi I guess I am new to the forum so you don't know my positions.

ALL. And the Church Fathers - virtually all. So now we're clear about that (I have this picture beside my name with 'trusting the church fathers' because I want to remind myself everyday how much I hate J P Holding, its author).

It's sort of an inside joke.

Yeah right. You can't have opinions like this and actually have scholarly ability. Just joking. We're on the same side you know. I am just trying to whip you guys into shape for the coming battles ahead with the real enemy ...

stephan huller

There, I've changed my avatar. No more J P Holding. I am going to show the world the true loving, giving and generous person that's really inside of me

Here's to the new me!

aa5874

It is apparent that you don't understand what EVIDENCE is. Thanks for the confirmation.

You seem not to understand that it was the Church who claimed JESUS and PAUL did exist that was in CONTROL of their OWN EVIDENCE, their OWN WRITTEN RECORDS.

THE CHURCH'S WRITTEN RECORDS MUST BE IN PRISTINE CONDITION.

The Church historian claimed Acts of the Apostles and ALL 14 Epistles of "Paul" were authentic.

Well, when the written records of the Church are examined and compared to secular historians and writers of antiquity it appears that we really have a FICTION STORY about "PAUL".

The WRITTEN EVIDENCE from the Church is extremely good for the theory that "Paul" was very very LATE.

I have never heard of a case where a defense TEAM has lost a case because of the POOR quality of evidence from the prosecution.

The Church has presented POOR QUALITY EVIDENCE which should have been under their control.

They MUST lose every SINGLE CASE for Jesus, the 12 disciples and PAUL.

It is ALL OVER.

charles

I am new to this forum. Is aa5874 really suggesting that all the writings of the Church - the Old Testament, New Testament and the writings of the Church Fathers are all forgeries? In what sense are they forgeries? Does he mean they were no historical authors to any of the texts?

aa5874

Well, this OP is really about the authenticity of the Pauline writings but these are some of the writings that appear to be reasonable credible.

1. Justin Martyr

2. Theophilus of Antioch

3. Athenagoras of Antioch

4. Minucius Felix

5. Tatian.

6. Aristides.

These are some of the whole or partial fiction, or forgeries or substantially non-historical writings.

1. Ignatius

2. Polycarp

3. Clement of Rome

4. Papias

5. Irenaeus

6. Tertullian

7. Origen

8. Eusebius


It is my view that the writings of Justin Martyr reflects a more credible history of Jesus believers at around or up to the middle of the 2nd century, not Irenaeus.

Justin Martyr, it would appear, did not know of any NT Canon, no named authors of Gospels, and nothing about Acts or the Pauline writings.

Justin Martyr claimed that it was the "Memoirs of the Apostles" that was read in the Churches when he was alive.

It must also be noted that not even the authors of gMatthew or gMark copied a single verse from a Pauline writing.

The Pauline writings are not from the 1st century before the Fall of the Temple. According to the Church historian gLuke was ALREADY written when "Paul" was alive.

It has been deduced gLuke was written after the Fall of the Temple.

The authenticity of the Pauline writings is questionable.

spamandham

Of the 13 epistles once attributed to Paul, 6 are now widely believed by scholars to be pseudepigrapha - a later writer passing his work off as if it were an earlier work by someone with authority, aka forgeries. The remaining 7 have not been proven authentic, they simply have not yet been accepted as also the pseudepigrapha which I argue they are.

The Gospels are frauds in the sense that they contain massive quantities of absurdly impossible and obviously constructed stories, and even demonstrably false 'ordinary' stories (such as Herod's slaughter of the innocents) . The authors were inaccurate about the historical events to such a massive degree that it is not valid to engage in exegesis with them at all. Worse yet, the gospels contain glaring anachronisms which should cause us to date them much later than the typical dates assigned. The gospels were either never intended as historical records in any sense, or were constructed as as intentionally false history.

The same types of issues are discovered in virtually every supposedly early Christian text we find, and even non-Christian texts, such as Josephus, have clearly been edited by the church to crazily depict Josephus as recognizing the divinity of Jesus.

Where aa's approach fails, IMHO, is that he stops at "they're all frauds, fiction, and lies". His approach doesn't tell us anything aboout *why* these texts, which are so clearly intertwined with a truly ancient religion we call Christianity, exist at all. There is no explanatory power in such a declaration.

Instead, IMHO, the right approach is to recognize that nothing in the NT should be taken at face value, and put on the detective hat to try to figure out when the texts were really penned, and for what reasons. This is the approach that I think might one-day lead to a real understanding of Christian origins, instead of the typical NT exegetical approach of what amounts to trying to extract the historical Santa from "The Night Before Christmas".