Clivedurdle

From wiki. Umm it was a tiny bit bigger than that!

Amedeo

Quote:
This whole discussion is very informative and interesting, up to the point where the statement that "Christians have stolen the prophecy....from the Jews." Obviously the Christians in questions are not... Jews; that is, the Christians in question are non-Jewish converts to Christianity. So, the assumption has been made here that some non-Jews stole or utilized a Jewish prophesy IN CONSTRUCTING THE ANECDOTE IN MARK WHICH TELLS OF JESUS SAYING SUCH-AND SUCH, and in effect misunderstanding or misquoting the passage in Daniel.

So, I ask, what evidence is there that a non-Jew [a non-Israelite] (that is, not Jesus, and not his relatives and his disciples) is the AUTHOR of the Mark-anecdote???

While I admit that some Gentile-Christian might invent an episode of Jesus' life in which Jesus is the speaker who says this and that, as a rule I suppose that such a kind of episode was spoken forth by some person who heard Jesus, or by Jesus himself [though reported in the third person... but there is an "apocryphal" text where Jesus is not quoted but reported as speaking in the first person of the language].

So, I would presume that the episode was told by a Jew, and it was a Jew who employed verbal expressions from Daniel. Well then, the original oral story [of the speaking Jesus] was passed on and eventually it was written down in Greek. So, I think that the story reported in Mark is the original ORAL story which was retold by a Gentile who did not make a perfect translation of the original story, or paraphrased the original story. So, now Spin makes a comparison and correctly finds that in Daniel there is the talk of GOING UP, whereas in Mark there is the talk of GOING DOWN.

I suppose that the original Aramaic or Hebrew story said something like this, "I am, said Jesus, and you will see he who is like the Son of Man going up in the clouds of heaven and sitting at the right hand of the Mighty One." I am supposing this, because the context of the Mark-passage is NOT one which deals with the return of Jesus. The down-coming on a cloud or " second coming" is something that occurs BEFORE the cosmic cataclysm. It is thereafter that he will go up to heaven and sit at the right hand iof the Mighty One, presiding over the saved ones.

The Jesus of the anecdote said what is said... IN ORDER THAT the prophesy might be fulfilled. (His was speaking "in character", that is, as he usually does when asserting his messihaship.)

-- The narrator (in Aramaic or Hebrew) of the anecdote was not necessarilyreporting all the words that Jesus said after affirming that he was the son of the Blessed One. Very possibly he was like so many Biblical writers who state a fact or an alleged fact and proceed to make a comment to justify it or to explain why it happened, or who caused it happen. There is hardly ever a sort of simple journalistic reportage./ The alternative is, as I indicated, that Jesus way of speaking made an intentional allusion to Daniel so as to say in effect that the questioner will see the fulfilment of the prophesy in him: I am the son of of god and you will see me fulfilling the prophesy. [The evidence of his being the son of God is postponed until they all go to heaven!]

stuart shepherd

I agree with your explanation.
I was explaining Jesus' prophecy in the context of Mark's Gospel, the Christian interpretation. I fully understand that the Gospel was misquoting Scripture as they usually did in the Gospels. This is one reason why I am a skeptic.

Stuart Shepherd

figuer

Is that your idea of brevity?
Since Alexander the Great behaved towards the conquered people in a manner similar to the way you described the Romans behaving (respect for local traditions and goverment etc.), and he was a ROYAL "EMPEROR", then it can be said that the Roman Imperators did do something that a royal emperor did do.
I believe it. I am not defending an orthodoxy. I just don't consider your arguments valid regarding the "unempireness" of the SPQR.

Barbarian

Let me propose my favorite date: 1461, the fall of Trebizond. That's when the last remnant of the Eastern Roman Empire actually expired, eight years after the fall of Constantinople. Or so am I led to believe.

mountainman

Momigliano points out his objection to Pirenne
in the following manner:

But even regional studies cannot overcome what seems to me the most serious objection against both Pirenne and Dopsch, and, indeed, against Rostovtzeff. The objection is that these historians talked of social changes without even discussing the most important of all social changes - The rise of Christianity. More generally, it can be said that no interpretation of the decline of the Roman empire can be declared satisfactory it it does not also account for the triumph of Christianity.

It may seem ridiculous to have to emphasize this proposition so many years after A. Harnack and E. Troeltsch. But a careful study of their works can perhaps explain why they failed to impress their fellow historians. Though both Harnack and Troeltsch were well aware that the Church was a society competing with the society of the Roman empire, they remained theologians to the end. They were more interested in the idea of Christianity than in Christians. Rostovtzeff and Pirenne, who loved the cities of men, may be excused if they remained unimpressed by theologians who talked or seemed to talk about the idea of the city of God.

It is the modest purpose of this paper to reassert the view that there is a direct relation between the triumph of Christianity and the decline of the Roman empire.[/i]

Clivedurdle

Is this when the heart was cut out and after that it was life support?

http://www29.homepage.villanova.edu/.../symm-ambr.htm

andrewcriddle

Yes.

At the very latest it fell with the overthrow of the Czar of all the Russias.!!!

Andrew Criddle

No Robots

Actually, Pirenne's thesis dovetails neatly with that of John Draper's History of the Conflict Between Religion and Science, wherein it is argued that Islam arose as a reaction against the Christological disputes which sapped the strength of the Empire. See chapter three of Draper's book. So we can say that it was Christian doctrinal conflict that destroyed the Roman Empire.

figuer

I don't think that it is propper to consider either the fall of Bizantium or Trebizond as dates for the end of the Roman Empire.

Those people were not Roman (Latin), whatever the name of their political entity, they were Greeks.

If one is to speak of the fall of the "Roman Empire", it should refer to the general period not a specific year, when the Latins lost the political control to the Germanic chieftains in the West and the Greeks in the East.