1st & 2nd C writers who missed Christianity

Discussion about the New Testament, apocrypha, gnostics, church fathers, Christian origins, historical Jesus or otherwise, etc.
User avatar
MrMacSon
Posts: 8798
Joined: Sat Oct 05, 2013 3:45 pm

Re: 1st & 2nd C writers who missed Christianity

Post by MrMacSon »

arnoldo wrote: Mon Sep 18, 2017 2:46 pm
FWIW, this author states that the Pauline writer(s) was addressing teachings based on Philo of Alexandria in certain writings.

https://books.google.com/books?id=aDbaq ... lo&f=false
Cheers. That's interesting.
... Traditionally, the Acts of the Apostles has provided the framework for the lives of Paul. In recent years, however, the historical value of the Acts has been called into question. Despite the accuracy of many details, they have been linked in ways which reflect the interests of Luke rather than objective reality. Critical assessment is called for if they are to be incorporated into a life of Paul. The prime source for a reconstruction of the Apostle's life must be his own writings. Recent advances in the study of the letters have brought to light new depths which enables them to be used for biographical purposes. The originality of this book lies in the combination of these two approaches, which are reinforced by close attention to the social and cultural aspects of Paul's ministry as revealed by archaeology and contemporary texts—and it transforms a fountain of theological ideas into a human being. https://books.google.com.au/books?id=aD ... navlinks_s
The first review on the page I linked to [in that quote] elaborates [paragraphed by me] -
A dry historical tome that would be more aptly titled "Paul: A Cultural History.'' The difficulties of doing ancient biography are compounded when one of the two major sources available is believed to be historically unreliable and corrupt. One of New Testament scholar Murphy-O'Connor's primary objectives is to demonstrate why Luke's account of Paul's life, contained in the Book of Acts, is an inaccurate basis for biography. Point well taken, but where to go from there? The author relies heavily on Paul's own letters, but the portrait available from them is incomplete at best. Paul revealed relatively little about his personal life, preferring to call attention to his mission.

Some surprising hypotheses do emerge from this work. First, Murphy-O'Connor conjectures that Paul was not a bachelor, but a widower who had lost his family in some sort of tragedy. The psychological evidence for this is slim, and the historical evidence is nonexistent. Much stronger are the author's deductions about the letters themselves; he makes an excellent case for 2 Thessalonians as a genuine Pauline letter, a minority opinion among New Testament scholars.

He also challenges Rome as the traditional site of Paul's imprisonment and demonstrates why Ephesus was a far more logical locale. The primary contribution of the book is not that it is a biography of Paul, but that it opens the door to Paul's world through geography, Roman history, and Jewish-Christian conflict. Unfortunately, the prose is mired in academic passivity and such dense phrases as ``abstracting from the spurious clarity of the philological argument.'' The book is so weighed down with cultural history that there is relatively little about Paul himself, and what there is seems to be mostly speculation. Acts, though historically imprecise, makes for a much better story.
https://www.kirkusreviews.com/book-revi ... or/paul-2/
Bernard Muller
Posts: 3964
Joined: Tue Oct 15, 2013 6:02 pm
Contact:

Re: 1st & 2nd C writers who missed Christianity

Post by Bernard Muller »

to MrMacSon,
Your OP is about argument from silence.
But in the first century or very early in the second one, Josephus, Tacitus, Suetonius & Pliny the younger reported on Jesus, or/& Christ, or/& Christians.
And Christians may not have multiplied as quickly as you think.
For the persecution of Christians in Rome during Nero's rule, that could have been suffered by a few hundreds of them only.

Cordially, Bernard
I believe freedom of expression should not be curtailed
User avatar
MrMacSon
Posts: 8798
Joined: Sat Oct 05, 2013 3:45 pm

Re: 1st & 2nd C writers who missed Christianity

Post by MrMacSon »

Bernard Muller wrote: Mon Sep 18, 2017 5:33 pm to MrMacSon,
Your OP is about argument from silence.
Yes, it is. Ben Smith has addressed that, too.
The argument from silence can be a fallacy, but it can also be a valid argument when there is unexpected silence.

Bernard Muller wrote: Mon Sep 18, 2017 5:33 pm
But in the first century or very early in the second one, Josephus, Tacitus, Suetonius & Pliny the younger reported on Jesus, or/& Christ, or/& Christians.
'reported on' is overstatement. There is good evidence that most if not all of the mentions of Josephus and Pliny the Younger are likely to spurious, as may be Tacitus Annals 15.44. Suetonius' references are too vague to contribute much.

Bernard Muller wrote: Mon Sep 18, 2017 5:33 pm
For the persecution of Christians in Rome during Nero's rule, that could have been suffered by a few hundreds of them only.
I don't think there were persecution of Christians in Rome during Nero's rule. Nor do people like Brent Shaw.
User avatar
arnoldo
Posts: 969
Joined: Sat Oct 12, 2013 6:10 pm
Location: Latin America

Re: 1st & 2nd C writers who missed Christianity

Post by arnoldo »

MrMacSon wrote: Mon Sep 18, 2017 4:04 pm
arnoldo wrote: Mon Sep 18, 2017 2:46 pm
FWIW, this author states that the Pauline writer(s) was addressing teachings based on Philo of Alexandria in certain writings.

https://books.google.com/books?id=aDbaq ... lo&f=false
Cheers. That's interesting. . .
IIRC correctly, Murphy-O'Connor's hypothesis is that the philosophy of Philo influenced Apollos who visited the Corinthian Church.
Paul's First Epistle to the Corinthians (55 AD) mentions Apollos as an important figure at Corinth. Paul describes Apollos' role at Corinth:

I planted, Apollos watered, but God gave the growth. (1 Cor 3:6)

Apollos' origin in Alexandria has led to speculations that he would have preached in the allegorical style of Philo. Theologian Jerome Murphy-O'Connor, for example, commented: "It is difficult to imagine that an Alexandrian Jew ... could have escaped the influence of Philo, the great intellectual leader ... particularly since the latter seems to have been especially concerned with education and preaching.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apollos

Paul the Uncertain
Posts: 994
Joined: Fri Apr 21, 2017 6:25 am
Contact:

Re: 1st & 2nd C writers who missed Christianity

Post by Paul the Uncertain »

A point arising, the quote is from Bernard:
And Christians may not have multiplied as quickly as you think.
Yes, there is a range of serious possibilities, especially since hard numbers are unavailable. Round numbers, though, suffice to show that early growth need not have been especially rapid.

Suppose, as some believe, that the last big Roman push against the Christians, circa 300, failed in part because there were millions of Christians. Say nine million. Suppose further that the whole thing began, circa 30, with just Peter, James and John, Paul's reputed pillars.

Three million fold growth in 270 years is an average annual increase (net gain: you also have replace drop outs and deaths along the way) of about 5.7%. That may have been front-loaded, but wasn't necessarily. There are also "tipping point" phenomena (explosive growth after a relatively few cool kids become Christian). Natural increase, people born to Christian families, is unavailable at the very beginning.

There is also illusory front-loading. The definition of Christian appears to have changed over time, from what may have been light constraints on belief and decent behavior in Paul's churches, to highly regulated beliefs and rules for every aspect of life by the mid-Fourth Century. It could well be that what grew fast at the start wasn't the same as what there were millions of centuries later.

We don't know the details of actual growth, but slow and steady growth of self-identification with an evolving label is a possible solution.
Bernard Muller
Posts: 3964
Joined: Tue Oct 15, 2013 6:02 pm
Contact:

Re: 1st & 2nd C writers who missed Christianity

Post by Bernard Muller »

Murphy-O'Connor's hypothesis is that the philosophy of Philo influenced Apollos who visited the Corinthian Church.
That's exactly what I always thought. I also contend that Apollos is, by far, the most likely author of 'Hebrews': http://historical-jesus.info/hjes3x.html

Cordially, Bernard
I believe freedom of expression should not be curtailed
Bernard Muller
Posts: 3964
Joined: Tue Oct 15, 2013 6:02 pm
Contact:

Re: 1st & 2nd C writers who missed Christianity

Post by Bernard Muller »

to MrMacSon,
The argument from silence can be a fallacy, but it can also be a valid argument when there is unexpected silence.
And who decide when it is unexpected, if not yourself and a few others.

Cordially, Bernard
I believe freedom of expression should not be curtailed
User avatar
MrMacSon
Posts: 8798
Joined: Sat Oct 05, 2013 3:45 pm

Re: 1st & 2nd C writers who missed Christianity

Post by MrMacSon »

Mr MacSon wrote:The argument from silence can be a fallacy, but it can also be a valid argument when there is unexpected silence.
Bernard Muller wrote: Tue Sep 19, 2017 5:18 pm And who decide when it is unexpected, if not yourself and a few others.
The fact that the faith was supposed to have started after ~30 CE and it is asserted the faith was documented by Paul, and Matthew, Mark, Luke, +/- John in subsequent decades. Yet we don't hear much more until the end of the 2nd C.
Last edited by MrMacSon on Wed Sep 20, 2017 2:20 pm, edited 1 time in total.
Paul the Uncertain
Posts: 994
Joined: Fri Apr 21, 2017 6:25 am
Contact:

Re: 1st & 2nd C writers who missed Christianity

Post by Paul the Uncertain »

Of course, everyone is entitled to their own estimate of unexpectedness. Still, without some firm estimate of adherence numbers over time, it is hard to resolve diagreements about what to expect.

For example, suppose the 5.7% figure for the first 270 years is somewhere in the ball park. Suppose growth was front-loaded, to the extent that when Pliny wrote in 112 or so, Christians were a visible movement even far away from Judea, after having enyoyed 11.4% average annual growth (twice the 270-year assumed rate) from a base of 3, over the course of about 82 years.

That'd be about 21,000 adherents, enough to be a worrisome presence even in the boonies. Pliny mentions somebody who said they'd been an adherent (about?) 25 years before, or the later 80's. The earliest seriously possible and widely entertained extant non-Christian mention of Jesus is the modern sanitized rewrite of the received Testimony of Josephus. If based on anything authentic, then that would date to the early 90's.

Suppose through 60 years, the movement had averaged 14.25% (2 1/2 times the supposed 270 year average) annual growth. That'd be about 9,000 adherents circa 90, plenty to have been a worrisome presence in population centers.

Keep going back. Paul was a busy beaver, and not the only one, he says. Suppose through the first 25 years (that is, until about when Paul is often estimated to have written), the movement had grown at an annual rate of 22.8% (four times the supposed 270-year average). That would come to a bit more than 500 souls, enough to be a presence in selected population centers and to have disagreements among themselves about the unverifiable and abstruse.

These are just back of the envelope calculations, and "average annual growth rate" breaks down as time shortens. Mark 1:16-20 depicts one scenario for the recruitment of Peter, John and a James (with one more guy for good measure). The movement grows from one to five, about 400% an hour. I suspect that rate was unsustainable.

But realistically attainable growth rates easily account for what little we can now observe. That includes the absence of any extant writing about the movement, until about the time when there might well have been something to notice and then write about. First insiders write, then outsiders join in. Yeah, that could have been what happened. Not necessarily, but not a big surprise, either.
Bernard Muller
Posts: 3964
Joined: Tue Oct 15, 2013 6:02 pm
Contact:

Re: 1st & 2nd C writers who missed Christianity

Post by Bernard Muller »

to MrMacSon,
The fact that the faith was supposed to have started after ~30 CE and it is asserted the faith was documented by Paul, and Matthew, Mark, Luke, +/- John in subsequent decades. Yet we don't hear much more until the end of the 2nd C.
That's because you reject the pertinent passages in Josephus, Tacitus, Suetonius and Pliny the Younger.
And you post-date all the canonical writings, as also the Didache, gospel of Thomas, epistle of Barnabas, 1Clement, Cerinthus, Papias, Ignatian letters, epistle of Polycarp, apologies of Aristides & Quadratus, Epistula Apostolorum, Basilides, Cerdo, Marcion, Valentinus, Justin Martyr's work, and more.

Cordially, Bernard
I believe freedom of expression should not be curtailed
Post Reply