mata leao

the silence here is telling.

Toto

It tells you I might have other things to do.

A convenient explanation.

Yup

Not Clement, Constantine. But Clement is not all that early, you realize.

Where is the text that you quote?

I think that the Catholic advent is referring to the sign in "the symbol of the Lord's sign" - but it is not clear.

Those "Jews" are Christians.

mata leao

as were alll those first century jews in jerusalem who became Christians...and the historical question is WHY?

Toto

We don't have evidence that a lot of first century Jews in Jerusalem became Christians. If the evidence for Jesus' power were so great, you would think that many, if not most, of them would have converted. But they didn't - they continued to be Jews, in spite of that alleged empty tomb.

mata leao

sometimes it hurts to laugh so hard....lemme see, according to the atheist revisionists, the first century superstitious jews were oh so erudite and correct to reject the historical jesus as a fraud/rebel/nut case or b) to reject the mythical Jesus because he never existed, but they were otherwise superstitous idiots who believed in Jehovah God and all the supernatural stuff in the torah. They are right when you need them to be right but ever so wrong when you need them to be wrong. And it gets better, the messianic jews are utterly wrong. The gentile first century Christians are all complete idiots who were duped by a group of first century con artists who all managed to pass the gospels off (even though there is nothing, absolutely nothing correct in any of them) and these con artists created this utterly fraudulent religion which preached pre-marital chastity, marital fidelity, against divorce, vows of relative poverty for leaders. as well as refraining from exscess alcohol, etc etc. My GOD, if i was gonna create a religion out of whole cloth I would surely be able to make it much much more enjoyable for the con artist(I mean leaders) than that!

John A. Broussard

Ah. You've temporarily abandoned ad populum for the strawman argument.

I'm not sure it's an improvement, but it does provide variety.

Toto

mata - Rodney Stark in The Rise of Christianity has some answers for your concerns. He explains how Christianity grew at the usual rate for new religions based on social advantages and rational expectations, and why the apparent drawbacks were actually related to the success of the new religion.

mikem

Thankyou. An "old favourite" that I may revisit. It was a book on the shelf of every Jehovahs Witness when I was growing up, although I left the religion when I was 18. THEY used it primarily as evidence to prove that the doctrine of the Trinity had it's roots in older religions. However, what Hislop was trying to do was to show how the Catholic church was tainted by pagan ideas, with particular reference to "Mary worship". However he provided enough material to cast doubt on the doctrine of the trinity, and had to add a footnote to explain that it was not the Christian idea of the trinity he was attacking, but Rome's perversion of it. The phrase "sawing off the branch you are sitting on" comes naturally to mind.

mikem

I watched a documentary shown on British TV at Christmas with the above name. It was about what archaelogical findings in Palestine can tell us about Jesus existence. Not a great deal as it turns out. Bethlehem of Judea didn't exist in the 1st century, although there was a Bethlehem 5 miles from the site of Nazareth There was scarcely any archaelogical evidence for Nazareth. There was a nicely preserved 2000 year old boat, a heel bone with a nail through it, Caiaphas' ossuary, but most interesting of all, in the Megiddo plain, a 1st or 2nd century place of worship, with traces of an altar, and a beautifully preserved floor mosaic showing guess what? - fish. A tuna and a bass, curled round each other to form a rough circular shape. No sign of a cross anywhere. The archaelogists believe it to be a christian place of worship, butthe programme did not go into detail as to why they believed that.

I think that in the earliest catacombs, Jesus is portrayed as a beardless young man - a shepherd. As far as I am aware there is no hard archaelogical evidence for the sign of the Cross as a Christian symbol much before Constantine, but I may be wrong. However, the fact that the earliest symbols were fish and young men and not crosses does lend support to the revisionist case.

mata leao

the "conspiracy" the revisionists allege requires a greater miracle than the four corners story of the gospel itself! dont worry, they keep digging over there, the stones have a way of crying out.......modern archaeology has been bible affirming overwhelmingly. wonder what will turn up next??? p.s. Anthony Flew understood mathematics better than you think!