Quote:
Originally Posted by arnoldo
Quote:
Originally Posted by Topher
. . . I've been told by many Christians that no historian demands only contemporary evidence, and so the historicity of Jesus shouldn't be any different. (Obviously that does explain the lack of such evidence when it seems there should some, given the claims.)
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There is ample evidence for early christianity existing in the first century including from the following Roman Historian, Pliny the Younger.
Quote:
Pliny to Trajan:
It is my custom, Sire, to refer to you in all cases where I am in doubt, for who can better clear up difficulties and inform me? I have never been present at any legal examination of the Christians, and I do not know, therefore, what are the usual penalties passed upon them, or the limits of those penalties, or how searching an inquiry should be made. . .
In the meantime, this is the plan which I have adopted in the case of those Christians who have been brought before me. I ask them whether they are Christians, if they say "Yes," then I repeat the question the second time, and also a third -- warning them of the penalties involved; and if they persist, I order them away to prison. . .
There were others who showed similar mad folly, whom I reserved to be sent to Rome, as they were Roman citizens. . . Those who denied that they were or had been Christians and called upon the gods with the usual formula, reciting the words after me, and those who offered incense and wine before your image -- which I had ordered to be brought forward for this purpose, along with the regular statues of the gods -- all such I considered acquitted -- especially as they cursed the name of Christ, which it is said bona fide Christians cannot be induced to do.
Still others there were, whose names were supplied by an informer. These first said they were Christians, then denied it, insisting they had been, "but were so no longer"; some of them having "recanted many years ago," and more than one "full twenty years back." These all worshiped your image and the god's statues and cursed the name of Christ.
http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/ancie...y-trajan1.html
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There is one word missing from the passage and it is
JESUS.
The passage did
NOT say one single thing about
JESUS.
Do you not understand that
CHRIST is a title or used as an adjective and any person alive or imagined
in antiquity could be called CHRIST, and their followers called Christians?
The word CHRIST predated the so-called Jesus by hundreds of years.
It is naive and absurd to think that the word CHRIST only refers to the so-called Jesus. This idea is simply a fallacy.
Please read "Against Heresies" by Irenaeus to see the many versions of CHRIST.
Pliny wrote nothing about Jesus.
11-29-2008, 05:14 AM
