gnosis92

wiki lists

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apostolic_Fathers

The apostolic fathers include St. Clement of Rome, St. Ignatius of Antioch, and St. Polycarp of Smyrna.

"Thus they provide a link between the Apostles who knew Jesus of Nazareth and the later generation of Christian apologists"

It also lists Didache and Shepherd of Hermas as belonging in this generation of writing. Papias is not mentioned as an Apostolic writer but clearly his writings are extremely early.

Now I've not read their writings, but I do recall Bart Ehrman, Crossan, Mack elaborating on them. I recall that Papias spoke of "words of the Lord" which has been suggested as Q.

Do these writings reveal a HJ, and any knowledge of any MJ "heretics"? If they claim they knew the HJ 12 disciples personally, it's hard to imagine they would not have seen J as HJ rather than MJ. Of course you can reject such claims but is there any reason other than an a priori commitment to MJ to reject their own claims of meeting with J's disciples?

If the Apostolic fathers claim in their writings that they met J's disciples, such as Peter or John, in person, is this evidence of an HJ over MJ?

Papias writes
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Papias

Papias (70AD-150AD) describes his way of gathering information:

I will not hesitate to add also for you to my interpretations what I formerly learned with care from the Presbyters and have carefully stored in memory, giving assurance of its truth. For I did not take pleasure as the many do in those who speak much, but in those who teach what is true, nor in those who relate foreign precepts, but in those who relate the precepts which were given by the Lord to the faith and came down from the Truth itself. And also if any follower of the Presbyters happened to come, I would inquire for the sayings of the Presbyters, what Andrew said, or what Peter said, or what Philip or what Thomas or James or what John or Matthew or any other of the Lord's disciples, and for the things which other of the Lord's disciples, and for the things which Aristion and the Presbyter John, the disciples of the Lord, were saying. For I considered that I should not get so much advantage from matter in books as from the voice which yet lives and remains.

show_no_mercy

Playing devil's advocate, there were also Gnostic Christians (or proto Gnostics) like Cerinthus who were supposed to be contemporaries of the original Apostles. What ground would these proto-Gnostics have to stand on for a MJ if he actually was historical? Many proto-Gnostics trace their teachings back to Paul.

aa5874

I think you should make it clear what you mean by "HJ". Jesus believers of antiquity had basically 3 versions of Jesus, 1. only human, 2. god/man and 3. god only.

Regardless of the version, Jesus believers propagate that Jesus was on earth during the reign of Tiberius.

The human only Jesus was born normally, the offspring of a man and woman, the god/man Jesus was the offspring of the Holy Ghost and a woman, and the god only Jesus came to earth directly from heaven, in effect, all the versions of Jesus are figures of history that interact with people, preaching, teaching and carrying out miracles.

The cannonised NT and the church writings propagate the god/man Jesus and their authors, like Ireaneus, Tertullian, Origen and Eusebius claimed it was false that there were any other version of Jesus except the god/man.

So, it is already known what version of Jesus is in the NT or the church writings, and it is already known that gods are myths, and all these writers claimed it is not true that Jesus was human.

Jesus was a myth as revealed from examination of the NT and church writings.


A claim that some-one met Jesus' disciples has no truth value when the authors made other claims about Jesus and the disciples that appear to be false.

Now, how ironic that Papias would claim he got more "advantage in the matter" from voice rather than books, when he had to write this in a book.

Papias statement has no truth value unless it can be corroborated, he may have made other statements that are erroneous or false about Jesus, and the disciples.

The church writers, as have been said before, propagated the god/man Jesus, and their description of the god/man is either false, erroneous, mis-leading, implausible or cannot be corroborated by any other external source.

This god/man as described, is mythical/fiction or legendary tales.

gnosis92

I'm kinda curious as to whether you believe Wayne Bent is a historical person or a mythical person, based on what his followers say in Strong City.

Toto

None of the apostolic fathers claim that they actually met someone who knew Jesus in the flesh. Papias might be interpreted that way, but we only have his account second hand from Eusebius. (His actual works are missing.)

And none of them claim to have met a disciple of the Lord and pumped him for information on what Jesus looked like or his favorite food. There is no way to show that these disciples were disciples of a real man.

After all, Paul claims to have met Peter, but gives him no respect. is this an argument for or against a historical Jesus?

aa5874

I am only dealing with the OP right now.

The Apstolic fathers presented Jesus as a god/man and wrote that the human only Jesus and the god only Jesus are lies or fiction.

But, upon examining the god/man Jesus, this character is also found to be implausible or fictional.

gurugeorge

I think this is what's begging the question (not saying you personally you understand, just the logic of this idea): there's nothing in the earliest texts that actually suggest the Apostles knew someone called Jesus personally. The closest we come is 1 Corinthians 15, but that passage is ambiguous, and can alternatively be understood as referring to a bunch of people "seeing" (in the sense of getting or grokking) a religious idea, both in Scripture and in visionary experience. (i.e. they see the truth about the Messiah hidden in Scripture - that is not one to come but has been, sub rosa in a vague-ish recent-ish past, and that he wasn't a military victor but a spiritual one - and some of them even experience him in vision, specifically Paul but probably also the other main names mentioned).

The strong imputation that the Apostles eyeballed the cult figure and got teachings directly from him, were physical contemporaries of him, seems to creep in later, along with the idea of "Apostolic Succession".

spin

Do the Hebrew texts reveal a historical Moses (HM) or a mythical Moses (MM)? Will it change anything about how Moses is perceived today?


spin

Doug Shaver

If the claim were credible, I would take it as evidence for Jesus' historicity. But so what? None of them ever made such a claim.

That statement assumes a few facts not in evidence. In no extant writing does any apostolic father say that he met any apostles. Nor does any later writer attest to the existence of any document in which any apostolic father claimed to have met any apostle. The nearest we get to such testimony is Irenaeus's assertion that Polycarp knew John. But Polycarp himself makes no such claim in any document that has survived or in any document referenced by any subsequent writer. If Polycarp actually had met John, it is not credible that he would have written nothing about the meeting or that the document, if he had produced it, would have vanished without a historical trace.

Not only does no apostolic father claim to have met an apostle, but none of them claims to have known anyone who knew an apostle. Clement refers to Paul and Peter, but doesn't mention having met anybody who knew either of them. Neither does Polycarp or Ignatius. Only one early Christian whose writings have survived claims to have been personally acquainted with any man who was ever identified as one of Jesus' disciples. That was Paul, who tells of encounters with Peter, James, and some others. But Paul does not confirm that any of them had ever been associated with Jesus during any ministry in this world.

The claim of a linkage between Clement et al. and the apostles is a blatantly circular argument. It assumes the historical basis of the gospels and Acts. It further assumes that because they lived early enough to have known some of Jesus' disciples, then they must in fact have known some of them, or at least known some people who did know the disciples. But they don't tell us any of that in their own words.

Neither. And to refer to mythicists as heretics presupposes a historicist orthodoxy. If there was no historical Jesus, then historicism would not yet have been orthodox during the time we're discussing. If anybody was a heretic during the early second century, it was Ignatius with his babbling about a Jesus who was really born of a virgin and really suffered under Pontius Pilate.

I agree. But they didn't claim anything of the sort.

I don't need to. There is nothing there to reject.

We don't actually know what Papias wrote. We only know what Irenaeus reported that he wrote. Arguably, we should assume that Irenaeus quoted him correctly, but we should never forget that it's only an assumption.

Now, on that assumption, what do we know about Papias? According to this passage, did he know an apostle? No. He claimed to have met people who knew the apostles. But who were those people? He says nothing about them nor anything of the circumstances in which he met them. This is an odd silence.

And how do we evaluate Papias's credibility? On what basis? We have none. Apparently, Iraenaeus trusted him. So what? Do we have any reason to think Iraeneus was an impartial judge of such things? I don't think so.

Let's see what we're looking at under the historicist assumption. We have an itinerant preacher with some disciples. During a ministry that lasted maybe a year or maybe three, he did or said something that make a profound impression on those disciples. It was so impressive that after he was executed by the Roman authorities, those disciple came to believe that he had risen from the dead and was the son of God who had, by his death and resurrection, in some way redeemed the world from sin. But just what had he said or done to create that impression on them? We don't actually know, because:

(a) The preacher himself left no writings.
(b) Not one of those disciples left any writings, and so we have no direct witness to his deeds or teachings.
(c) Nobody who knew any of the those disciples left any writings, and so we have no direct witness to what the disciples were claiming the preacher had done or said.

On the historicist assumption, Paul would be an exception to (c). But it is still the case that we have no direct witness to what the disciples claimed about Jesus, because Paul does not tell us what Peter, James, or anybody else told him about Jesus. Orthodox Christians have simply assumed for nearly 2,000 years that the disciples must have told Paul everything they knew about him, but Paul's own words are inconsistent with that assumption.

aa5874

And now, there are problems with "Paul", after nearly 2000 years, it is now being learned that the Church did not know what "Paul" wrote or when the epistles were written. "Paul" is now just an assumption.