Robert Tulip

This has inspired me to look at some of Pete's work. His useful point is that Christians routinely assume we have early hard evidence of the church, but the paucity of such evidence is astounding, suggesting that conventional myths about Christian origins should be viewed with more doubt.

Even if Pete's hypothesis is exaggerated, it is a starting point to collect the incontrovertible evidence of the existence of Christianity before the fourth century. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Church_Fathers lists many pre-Nicaean writers. The idea that their work was fraudulently produced in the fourth century looks like the idea that Shakespeare did not write his plays - perhaps technically possible but highly improbable.

The other important result of Pete's ideas is the Orwellian analysis of imperialism and its reliance on a totalitarian narrative. The continuity between Constantine, the Papacy and modern subverters of historical truth such as Stalin illustrates how central ideas are to power. We routinely underestimate the will and capacity and need of rulers to construct their own fantastic self-serving versions of history. Pete's analysis is a useful corrective for conventional myths about Constantine's charitable Christian motives.

spin

This is a red herring. You misrepresented yourself. You claimed that you "have repeatedly claimed that if unambiguous evidence can be produced to refute the HYPOTHESIS then I would retire from the field of investigation". This is just another dodge. You basically falsely spoke. You have no intention other than to go back on your promise and stalwartly deny the simple evidence of the frescoes and the inscriptions. And let's go the whole hog and recall the diatessaron type document found under the defensive rubble outside a gate. The evidence is there. It doesn't matter how you try to finesse it, manipulate the situation or stick your head further into the sand. This is evidence that clearly shows that christianity existed at Dura Europos prior to 257 CE. Hence falsification.

Confirmation bias doesn't change the secure dating of these christian indications. Dodge, dodge, dodge.

Returning to this dodge now. What other explanations would you like to propose for four gospel narratives represented in the frescoes, for the nomine sacre found in situ and for the diatessaron also found in situ? Would you like to try to old divide and conquer routine, separating these christian items and neglecting the context in order to propose that they don't represent what they blatantly seem to represent, as confirmed by their presence together?

When you find a spade, there's no need to look for alternative purposes for the device. You should call a spade a spade and leave off with the attempts to call it an early prototype backscratcher.

Did I mention that we were dealing with a church house here?? I asked about the fact that we have christian images and texts. Dodge, dodge, dodge.

You are bending over backwards to back out of your claim:

"I have repeatedly claimed that if unambiguous evidence can be produced to refute the HYPOTHESIS then I would retire from the field of investigation."

Frescoes, inscriptions and the diatessaron. Hmmm, dodge, dodge, dodge.



Dodge, dodge, dodge.

It's well past time, mountainman.

Juma

I assume it is the images mountainman was kind enough to link.
I agree that they seem do depict storied from NT. But also that nothing indicates christianity as we know it today.

steve_bnk

American Evangelicals come right out of Paul and the gospels.

Laying of hands(healing)
Speaking in tongues and interpreting
Visions
Singing
Reading scriptures
Spreading the word as a mission from Jesus and god


I had the opportunity to attend a private meeting and watched the above in action . Inline with the NT their group had people considered elders, but no actual authorities.

If someone wasn't feeling well, people would lay hands on him or her. Long bouts of singing interupted by someone proclaiming a vision and relating it.

Catholicism and a pope are considered not biblically based.

Going back to the 1800s when Christianity was fading there was The Second Great Awakening. There was a large gathering in the 1700s or 1800s where people started having visions and the like, and it spread.

The roots of the revival movement that led to Billy Graham and today's Evangelicals.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_awakening

Circa 1970 when I was in Memphis preachers were out on the street preaching and prophesizing.

spin

There have been several centuries for the christianity we know today to have gone through its developments.

It is sufficient to have new testament images at Dura to falsify mountainman's claim. However, he will not admit it. He'll talk of such half-assed things as confirmation bias when he looks at the healing of the paralytic or the walking on water scenes. Bias certainly. He's confirming that he will not call a spade is a spade when it is stuck in front of his face. A religion centered on Jesus and the accompanying gospel stories existed before 257 CE.

MrMacSon

On what basis do you assert this?

Was that religion different to the religion we now know as Christianity?

Were there variations?

Toto

As I explained in the original thread on Dura Europas and at other times, it is accepted that Constantine made major changes in the status of Christianity, turning it into a support for his army and his state. But he worked with a preexisting religion (his mother was probably a Christian.)

This is not especially controversial. But Pete has a more radical thesis, that Constantine decided to invent a religion that had not existed before, and deliberately forged the gospels and the other parts of the New Testament, along with the second and third century church fathers' commentary.

You might look at Pete's theory as the Intelligent Design theory of Christian origins - it was created ex nihilo by an intelligent designer for a particular purpose.

Others, both Christian and non-Christian scholars, see a process of evolution and growth, but Pete sees only Creation.

spin

If you've been reading the thread, you'll know that it is based on the evidence found at Dura Europos in a closed environment dated to a period prior to the destruction of the city in 257 CE and the fact that it was never rebuilt, but left to decay.

I'm just saying no more than the minimum here because it cannot be meaningfully contraverted.

ph2ter

Hanging around here just to learn something new. Generally write something only when I think I have something new and original to write about.
Contrary to that there are some who are continually repeating the same, probably thinking that quantity can compensate the quality of their arguments.
Of course, the most annoying to me are aa5874's insistence on Paul after the Gospels and mountainman's Christianity after Constantine.
I'm glad to see that Jeffrey and spin finally decided 'to take care' of them.
But I am well aware that nothing in this world can stop them repeating always the same nonsense.

Chili

Pete is kind of right, except that it is not an ex-nihilo creation story but instead it was about the annihilation of a religion-on-the-run that was called Christian.

And it is true that behind this early reform movement, as we may call it, Intelligence was prime mover wherein heaven on earth for believers was clearly in sight to make it an inspired religion that they called Catholic and not Christian.

An nothing has changed. Their bold proclamation that heaven is for Catholics only is still true today.

The difference between Catholics and Christians is clearly defined in John 6 where John 6:56 spells heaven-on-earth opposite to which John 6:66 spells hell-on-earth for those who could not accept this and "parted company from Jesus" already then as if they knew better and started flipping pages instead.

And it does not matter one iota what scholars say on this, as 'schoolers' themselves who just do not know the difference between heaven and hell of they would not be scholars themselves, flipping pages again, now to see what happened back then.

So it was not an 'evolving idea' because hell can only get hotter but must be stamped out, and for this Government Support was necessary so its army could be its voice heard with no if's, but's or maybe's about it.

For Eusebius and comrades it was an easy sell to Constantine with all those self proclaimed Christians roaming about who had 'no rest by day or by night' forever on the lookout for another carcass to devour, kind of like 'two by two's' on the prawl already then (who I just noticed have replaced their traditional briefcase with a backpack today).

The real problem is that Christians and non-Christians cannot see beyond their own scope of reference that itself already makes room for inspired from the beyond by way of [neologic] induction, or God-send by angels as they call it (apart from Gabriel as prior to religion), to place them [forever] beyond the voice of critics from down below.

To support this argument just look what happened to higher learning where Port Royal has been replaced by Brittish Analytic that they call philosophy today, while in the height of ignorance refer to Port Royal as Continental that in essence has nothing to do with Continental Europe but only with Rome.