The quest for the historical Christian communities

[neilgodfrey]

This just makes me curious to know what can we know about the Christian communities within which the New Testament writings originated? Hopefully more than the mere dass ("that they existed") to which German scholarship in Bultmann had retreated concerning the question of the historical Jesus.

I ask because I've seen several writers say pretty much the flat opposite to Furnish: that we can't blithely assume that any particular Christian writing is evidence for a Christian community and that, if it is, we may know nothing else about it. (We have immediate evidence for an author but only indirect evidence for any possible community or communities of which the author was a part.)

What do we know about the Christian communities?

As you probably know Richard Bauckham argues that the evidence is against the assumption of such distinctly sealed communities.

[outhouse]

What do we know about the Christian communities?

Because much of the text are compilations. Had they not been communities collecting pieces, you might see more text similar to the attributed epistles that were not compilations. "for the most part".

Do you have a reason to distrust the headers of Pauline epistles that state they are co authored?

Do you think survival in the Diaspora was a community effort in the different Pater Familias Paul may have visited?


Why not a community, is a better question ?

[outhouse]

As you probably know Richard Bauckham argues that the evidence is against the assumption of such distinctly sealed communities.

I would doubt they were sealed as well.

I found the article poorly written. Why do people still use the word church when these were houses, Pater Familias.

Your not going to find some lone scribe isolated with conspiracy in his eyes. These people did not live like us, they lived much more social lives then we do.

Which is backed by the article below.

a network of communities with constant, close communication among themselves.

Yet it goes south here.

In other words, the social character of early Christianity was such that the idea of writing a Gospel purely for one’s own community is unlikely to have occurred to anyone.

Which is completely ignorant, as it ignores the diversity and need to gather sources that matched more what was important to said communities.

To me it is idiocy to ignore how many different types of versions of this mythology was floating round. People claiming he was all man an Aramaic Jew, all they way to just spirit in human form. You had diversity in when he became divine, birth, baptism, crucifixion and on and on with maddening diversity.