Toto

Discussion of aa5874 split off here

Minimalist

Certainly the Jews must have felt that way....

We have two sources regarding the Great Revolt - Josephus and Tacitus - and neither mentions "Christians" as part of any power bloc in the fighting.

davidstarlingm

Yeah, the early Christians were probably all "peace on earth good will towards men" and "the meek shall inherit the earth".

Not that the Roman sources would have differentiated between the various sects of Jews involved in the revolt. "Only good Jew is a dead Jew" and all that.

aeebee50

Man is too entertaining to wipe out. A laugh a minute.

Minimalist

Yeah - that's one way of looking at it. I'm sure the Hollywood vision of xtianity would go for it.

For myself, I lean towards the idea that xtians formed in isolated groups in the aftermath of the revolts (bar Kochba cannot be forgotten, here) when it would have been a really solid idea to want to differentiate themselves from Jews.

davidstarlingm

Definitely a possibility.

In any case, the role that the gradual defeat of Jewish interests played in informing early Christian apocalyptic doctrine was likely a very significant one.

aa5874

So what are your corroborative sources to support your claim of early Christians?

You really have NO basis for any probability at all.

If you ACTUALLY follow the Jesus story you will DISCOVER MASSIVE HOLES.

If you want to FIND out about the Jesus cult then one cannot just use Acts of the Apostles since that book may have been total fiction.

Other evidence from Antiquity does NOT support Acts of the Apostles.

Even up to the 4th century, a Christian writer claimed many persons did NOT even know Acts of the Apostles existed and did not even know the author. See Chrysostom "Homilies on Acts".

Let us go through the written statements PROVIDED in the NT CANON to find out if there were Christians BEFORE the Fall of the Temple and if they SURVIVED.

The Pauline writers made Jesus the MOST SIGNIFICANT character in the ENTIRE Roman Empire by claiming he was the Jewish Messiah, God's OWN Son, the END of the Law, and that Jesus Christ had a NAME above every other name in the ROMAN EMPIRE and ABOVE the DEIFIED ROMAN EMPERORS.

And further, the Pauline writers supposedly PREACHED ALL OVER the Roman Empire for OVER 17 years and supposedly DOCUMENTED his teachings in EPISTLES to 7 Churches.

But, NOT one single Jewish or Roman writer of the 1st century wrote about, DEBATED or ARGUED about this "Pauline" Jesus, Pauline teachings, Pauline Churches, Pauline converts or Pauline writers.

Nothing Pauline seem to exist in the 1st century.

It was in the 2nd century that the Jesus cult was started because that is when Roman writers like CELSUS began to DEBATE and ARGUE about Jesus Christ. See "Against Celsus" by Origen

It was in the 2nd century that CHRISTIANS DEBATED and ARGUE about the NATURE of Jesus and it was ALSO in the 2nd century that CHRISTIANS DEBATED and ARGUED over DOCTRINE.

See "Against Heresies" by Irenaeus, "First Apology" and "Dialogue with Trypho", "The Apology", "Against Marcion" and "On the Flesh of Christ" by Tertullian, "To Autolycus" by Theophilus of Antioch and "A Plea for the Christians" by Athenagoras.

The abundance of evidence from antiquity suggests that the Jesus cult or Christianity based on BELIEF of the Jesus story was a 2ND century invention and was most likely FABRICATED by an UNKNOWN APOCALYPTIC author around the time the very inventor thought there would be an Apocalypse.

In effect, it was the CLAIM that there would be an IMMINENT Apocalypse, as found in the INITIAL story that TRIGGERED the BELIEF of the Jesus story and the START of the Jesus cult called CHRISTIANS some time in the 2nd century.

It was possibly the FALSE Prophecies about an Apocalypse that started the Jesus cult which would mean IRONICALLY the FALSE Prophecies did ACCOMPLISH what the Apocalyptic author wanted.

Toto

The discussion of Remsberg has been split off here

DCHindley

David,

So, I guess that Nanos is off the table for you? I noticed that you tend to pass over some subjects without comment, presumably because you do not deem them of sufficient interest or value to comment on. Pity.

For those who don't know, Mark Nanos is Jewish (he attends a Reform synagogue and considers himself observant), who earned a PhD (U of St Andrews, Jewish & Christian studies) after retiring as the president of a family operated Advertising firm, and is well regarded by many Jewish Christians for his work on Paul's understanding of Jewish-Christian relations. Nanos interprets Paul as a Torah observant Jew who was also a Christian.

For those interested in taking a closer look at attempts to penetrate Paul's impenetrability through analysis of ancient rhetoric, Nanos was the editor of The Galatians Debate: Contemporary Issues in Rhetorical and Historical Interpretation (or via: amazon.co.uk).

DCH

Doug Shaver

The correctness of premise A, it seems to me, depends on whether first-century Christians were apocalyptic in their thinking. The assumption that they were, it seems to me in turn, rests on the assumption that they held the beliefs attributed to Jesus in the canonical gospels, which, in one more turn, rests on the assumption that Christianity originated among the followers of a historical Jesus.

Granted, there is nothing particularly fundamentalist about any of those assumptions, and I should not have suggested that there is. I'll take back that remark.