Chili

To say that there is no plural in infinitve but why is soul there with no plural while as humans we each have a soul but in the 'essence of Christ' we no longer have a soul inside the genus as man.

BTW I took some Greek and should have been able to read gJohn but I never could.

spin

Aah, just what we needed, avi, and the attempt to cover up the obvious.

Yup.

Traversed? Nonsense. He marched his troops down the left bank, taking Cercusium (Carchemish) and crossing the river Abora (Khabur). Perhaps you imagine that he had his army cross the river for a tourist visit

The ships were for support and supplies. They were used to build the bridge across the Abora. The troops marched.

No we don't. We assume that it was captured, sacked, the occupants sold as slaves in Ctesiphon. Dura remained in Sassanian hands from then on with a notable passage of the zone by Julian and his army off down the other side of the Euphrates to Ctesiphon.

That certainly describes avi's post so far.

But who the fuck claimed otherwise?? Try another windmill.

avi is trying hard to insert the possibility another era painting the quaint mix of third century art found at Dura.

Self-description must be avi's talent.

Jewish home! That's why the nomina sacra was found there. That's why we have the stories of Jesus healing the paralytic and walking on water. avi certainly knows how to offer a credible alternative.

Right next door here means a block away. But an error and capitals is near enough, isn't it?

I'd say you do, as you are trying to depend on it here. But the damning indictment...

On p.108 Hopkins says that this diatessaron "bears witness to a recognized background for the paintings of the Chapel." Then p.109, "Without the Diatessaron one could never be certain at Dura just what Christian tradition the paintings represented, and the fragment is our only witness!"

Hopkins shows no doubt as to the christian nature of the paintings, but wonders about the flavor of christianity. He believes the diatessaron resolves the issue somehow.

I guess there is some sort of conspiracy theory lurking behind this web of nonsense.

What do we learn from this post? Quite a bit about avi, but nothing new about the gospel frescoes at Dura.

spin

I'm working solely within the conspiracy theory parameters that mountainman has built around this ignoble rubbish of his.

He wants purely tactile evidence, so I can't argue for the existence of a christian church history that included Justin, Irenaeus, Tertullian, Clement A., Cyprian, Origen or any of the other well-known church fathers with their own personal foibles. In mountainman's mind this not very perspicacious Eusebius could have invented all that, including the heresies in the short space of time he had the emperor's ear.

All those christian biblical fragments found at Oxyrhynchus and Tebtunis evincing different scripts and that have been dated palaeographically prior to the time of Eusebius could according to the wacky conspiracy theory have been produced by experts under Eusebius in both Greek and Latin where necessary.

If the mind does not boggle with these constrictions, I'm sorry. I'm not going to go any further than one sure falsification of this utter tripe.

You are talking through your hat.

Where is all the written evidence from the Mithraists? You don't have a fucking skerrick, so get real, Robert Tulip. You can't just build conjectures on the whisp of your fantasy and expect anything more than derision.

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ETA: This all doesn't mean that bogus pasts don't get constructed. They do, but we cannot work from lack of surviving material culture to force a conclusion that there was no culture. History is a lot messier than this. This is why it is best not to work with conclusions already in hand.

stephan huller

I also wonder what archaeological evidence Falashas have left in Ethiopia. In two hundred years let alone two thousand years there could just as easily be mountainmen who claim these people were legendary.



What about the Mandaeans? How readily would archaeology pick up their existence? The Samaritans would likely be mistaken for some sort of 'Jews.' Oh wait a minute, that still happens today and they haven't even died out yet.

stephan huller

Here's another religious group whose 'archaeology' is disappearing - the followers of Sabbatai Sevi in Smyrna.

Duvduv

The Samaritans do not want to be considered Jews of the tribe of Judah. They consider themselves to be descendants of the other 10 tribes, and NOT the Cuthites who adopted the Torah after the exile of those tribes, which is the traditional Jewish narrative.

There is no point in seeking archaeology on the Sabbateans of the last 350 years. They operate(d) as secret sects who believe they observe the authentic messianic-age Judaism rather than pre-messianic Judaism. The Kapanjis seemed to originally have retained the most Jewish practices in the past, but it appears today that this is true moreso of the Konyoso sect.

As far as the Ethiopians are concerned, although their practices correspond in many ways to traditional Jewish ones, it remains a huge mystery as to why their proximity to the flourishing Jewish communities of Yemen did not afford them ongoing contact with the Yemenites (or even Egyptian Jews), especially given their knowledge of how to get straight to Jerusalem.

Furthermore, there are NO relics whatsoever of anything related to traditional Judaism that would serve to link them to the original Jews who they believe settled in Ethiopia.

Finally, there are not even any Yemenite rabbinical writings that even mention any contact with the Beta Israel/Falashas at all. The only references are sparse and brief coming from Rabbi David ben Zimri who served as chief rabbi of Egypt about 300 years ago, and Rabbi Ovadiah Bartenura about 400 years ago.

These are major unresolved issues.

stephan huller

Celsus identifies Christians as operating as a secret sect a hundred and fifty years after the founding of Christianity. Origen's first point, his most important is described as follows:

The Christians of the first three hundred years of Christianity were probably more like the Sabbateans than most people recognize. It is interesting to note that a number of high ranking Turks were only identified as Sabbateans when their precious house was threatened. I don't think you've thought this through carefully enough. The question is the lack of physical evidence. The Sabbateans had great influence in Izmir (Smyrna). Yet when this physical relic is destroyed as it is scheduled to be, future historians would only have written records about the sect.

stephan huller

But that's the point. Whether you think they are legitimate or not, they exist. I know I spent half my life hoping to find a sexy Falasha woman to combine two of my life interests and then this happened:



Your negative attitude toward the Falashas is symptomatic of why won't allow yourself to accept the existence of Christianity. You feel they aren't 'legitimate.' But that's not the question in the thread. The question has developed into whether it should be surprising that there is very little in the way of physical evidence for the Christian 'secret sect' in its first two hundred years. The answer for anyone that doesn't hate Christians is - no it is not. The most important bit of physical evidence for the Sabbateans is about to disappear. The Falashas have left Ethiopia and little will remain. So too the Mandaeans.

avi

page 79 "Between Rome and Persia: The Middle Euphrates, Mesopotamia and Palmyra Under Roman Control", Routledge 2007.

An Online Encyclopedia of Roman Emperors by Walter E. Roberts and Michael DiMaio, Jr.

http://www.lib.utexas.edu/maps/atlas.../syria_map.jpg

http://www.lib.utexas.edu/maps/middl..._wall_2004.jpg

Conclusion: Evidence demonstrates that Julian and some of his army were visiting the tomb of Emperor Gordon, but, though they lingered in the area for ten days, from 28 March to 07 April, they never stepped foot in Dura Europos.

We attain this logical conclusion, because, obviously, no Roman Emperor would be at all curious to learn first hand, the nature of the destruction, of his principal outpost on the frontier. Clearly there there would have been no military value in examining the ruins. Which General in charge of 30,000 soldiers, advancing into hostile territory, would have had the slightest interest to learn precisely how his troops had been slaughtered?

Robert Tulip

It is not my fantasy, it is the view of Christian origins promoted by the Professor of Religion at Princeton University, Dr Elaine Pagels. As I say in my review of her book The Gnostic Paul, Stephan’s aspersions about “hating Christians” have nothing whatsoever to do with whether one finds it surprising that there is basically no surviving direct evidence of Christianity from its earliest centuries. It is a scholarly question, not one of hatred. Such well-poisoning by Stephan Huller harms collegial enquiry.

For most people, whose information on these matters comes mainly from church sources, the conflict between the myth and the reality is highly surprising if they find out the systematic distortion of history by the church. Sure, some small pieces of evidence have survived from Before Constantine, and I would disagree with Mountainman on that. But Pete is alerting us to how very thin the actual “BC” records are, and how much potential there was for mischievous skulduggery in tampering with the records.

What is astounding is that the church had so little veneration for its original autograph manuscripts, whether by Paul or Irenaeus or anyone else from “BC”, that it failed to protect any of them.