aa5874

The gospels and the epistles all portray a figure that was a god-man who was born miracuously, who died, was resurrected, and ultimately ascended to heaven to sit on the right hand of God.

Now had these events about this figure been written contemporaneously, as recorded in the NT, it would have been immediately rejected as fiction by the skeptics. Romans, Greeks, Jews, Syrians, Egyptians and people from the surrounding regions would have been able to read the NT and basically rip it to shreds exposing its falsity.

It would have been known that his birth, as described, was fiction, the temptation by the devil, his miracles, his transfiguration, his resurrection and ascension would be all be ridiculed as nonsense by those who were living for the thirty odd years of the supposed life of this god-man.

Whether you believe Jesus was a god-man or just a man, many of the events written in the Gospels and "Pauline epistles are just fictitious in nature and if these fictitious events were written shortly after their supposed occurences, then the credibilty of the writer would have been destroyed.

Now, in order for the NT to become "believable", seeing that it contains fiction, it is best for the authors to write as late as possible, far removed from the time of the events, eliminating the possibilty that anyone alive who lived during the period of the fiction could expose the authors' fraud.

And if it is even supposed that this figure of the NT was a only mortal, then an author would have been foolhardy to write that this figure ascended to heaven, revealed himself to him and gave him a gospel, when the man was actually dead.

So, based on the fictitious nature of the NT, and in order to preserve believabilty, I do not envisage any of the books were written when live witnesses would have been able to contradict their veracity.

Huon

I am afraid that your post contains anachronisms. Who were the sceptics of this time (1st and 2nd century CE) ?

It seems (to me) that the gospels (all of them) and the epistles were not written in Palestine, but perhaps in Alexandria, Antioch, Rome or elsewhere. At that time, and in these countries, almost nobody could remember what had happened in Palestine to a guy who had disappeared, say 20 to 30 years ago, or more. The only people who could remember belonged to the sect...

And all the fiction about a Christ has been accepted by at least some people, and is still accepted by millions...

I think that, even at the moment of the death of the Christ (if ... ), the local Jews (except a very small number), did not accept the story, because it was unbelievable to them that Jesus was a successful Messiah.

Minimalist

Well...as seen here in this comment from Contra Celsus it seems that Ancient skeptics did exactly that. The activities of Christian book burners have deprived us of much of what they did say and we owe Origen a debt of gratitude for having salvaged this much of Celsus' very astute thinking.

BTW, I always think it rather smug of modern christian apologists to demand "proof" of what ancient writers thought of christianity knowing full well that as much of that evidence as was humanly possible was consigned to the fires by the new masters. Sort of meets the definition of chutzpah, doesn't it?

aa5874

Celsus, it would appear, lived around 150 years after these miraculous events and still was able to consider the christians' writing as fiction. Can you imagine what would have happened if the NT was in circulation around 50 CE, it would have been completely discredited as bogus.

And, now that you have brought Celsus into the picture, this is another indication that the all the NT were probably written late, well outside the time of events, since all extant written objections to Christianity occured no earlier than the 2nd century. There are no known refutations or acknowledgements to the epistles or the Gospels in the 1st century by any non-Christian writer.

aa5874

According to the NT, Jesus was exteremely popular, he had thousands of followers, he used to feed thousands and could bring people back to life and after he ascended to heaven, Peter and Paul were able to convert many more thousands to Christianity and build or establish Churches all over the globe in less than 30 years.

Now, who would forget Jesus? Strange enough, no-one remembered him until the 2nd century.

Huon

According to the NT...

When there is a demonstration in France, the police will say that there were 2,000 demonstrators, and the organisers will say 4,000. Perhaps, it was 3,000 ?

"All over the globe", except that the globe was flat at that time, at least in the NT, and did not comprise sub-saharian Africa, the Americas, Australia, China, Japan, North Europe, Groenland and the penguins of the Antarctic...

More seriously : some apostles (let us call them "apostles", possibly but not necessarily those who are mentioned in the sacred scriptures) converted people to Christianity, and established Churches, after some decades, when the parousia was postponed to "later". When a church was established, it needed some rites, such as meeting on Sundays, and eating some bread, and drinking some blood (oops, red wine...). An anecdote about Christ could be read on these occasions, and, Mister Quelle, could you write it in a book ?

Roger Pearse

Unfortunately the Hoffman 'translation' is unreliable (I don't know about this specific passage). This would need to be checked against some full text of Contra Celsum first. Hoffman was criticised by the only non-trivial academic reviewer for amending what Celsus said to make him sound like a modern atheist, rather than an ancient Epicurean.

I don't think that these allegations of ancient book-burning are really fair. 99% of ancient literature is lost, but that is because the society in which it existed collapsed. What survived is what the Christians chose to preserve. In view of the richness of this, and the quantity of pagan literature involved, such criticisms seem a little curious to me. If the complaint is that the Christians did not choose to copy and preserve all of the material written to insult them -- for they did preserve Zosimus, for instance -- then we might reasonably enquire why on earth they should.

All the best,

Roger Pearse

Huon

Origen writes Contra Celsum in 248. Origen says that Celsus did not believe that Jesus is a god who died and resurrected. Origen is the only source for the philosophy or religion of Celsus. And the Catholic Encyclopedia says that there were several people of that name, Celsus. Who can tell if Celsus was an atheist in the modern meaning of the word, or if Celsus was simply not a Christian, but possibly a theist, believing in Sol invictus, or some other sort of Supreme Being ?

aa5874

According to gMark 16.44 and 8.9, Jesus fed about 9000 men, and there are no known estimates from the "Roman police", or should I say, non-Christian writers. We have 0000 on these bread and fish events. The crowd may have been under-estimated by 9000.

Mythra

With all due respect, Roger, that doesn't appear to be what you are saying here:

From all of which we learn that the council made a ruling on the date of Easter and condemned the views of Arius. After the council, Constantine ordered the burning of the works of Arius and his sympathisers, and the exile of himself and his supporters, and followed this later in his reign by action against Christian schismatics and gnostic heretics.

http://www.tertullian.org/rpearse/nicaea.html

Although I do understand your overall point - that the claim of wholesale book burning and destruction of texts by the christians is probably overstated.