The Biggest Lie in the Study of Earliest Christianity

[Secret Alias]

People are so fucking stupid. They only pick up ancient books as ammunition for their own narcissistic arguments. Don't people even consider that they might be wrong - that whatever stupid conclusions that they might have come up with looking back towards antiquity 2000 years removed, maybe just maybe a few miscalculations however microscopic might lead to being thousand and thousand of miles off course? Let the sources speak for themselves. We should just pick up a book and ask 'what is this?' and then pick up another source and ask the same question and do this a thousand times and then add up all the answers from all these 'what is this?' questions and come to a meta-conclusion about early Christianity from that rather than starting from a popular misconception - 'Jesus had a wife,' 'Jesus was gay,' 'Jesus was a Republican,' 'Jesus didn't exist,' 'Jesus was a peasant revolutionary' - and working backwards.

[Charles Wilson]

"Jesus was a Republican"?

I didn't KNOW that! WOW!

CW

PS: It's what Garner Ted Armstrong called "Churchianity". You are onto something, as usual. For example, concerning "The Samaritans":

"As Coponius, who we told you was sent along with Cyrenius, was exercising his office of procurator, and governing Judea, the following accidents happened. As the Jews were celebrating the feast of unleavened bread, which we call the Passover, it was customary for the priests to open the temple-gates just after midnight. When, therefore, those gates were first opened, some of the Samaritans came privately into Jerusalem, and threw about dead men's bodies, in the cloisters; on which account the Jews afterward excluded them out of the temple, which they had not used to do at such festivals; and on other accounts also they watched the temple more carefully than they had formerly done. A little after which accident Coponius returned to Rome, and Marcus Ambivius came to be his successor in that government..."

Sometimes history is a bit accidental. This appears important. It certainly is worded strangely. "Of course those wicked Samaritans dropped some bodies in the Cloisters. It's what wicked Samaritans do..."

Really?

[MrMacSon]

The more practical argument (IMHO) is that whatever Christianity was in the first century of its existence it was changed and ultimately corrupted by Imperial pressure as Brent notes happened in various other cultures in the period.

Maybe, maybe not. A couple of questions arise -

1. When was Christianity's [or the various Christianities'] first century of proper existence?

2. When is there good evidence of Imperial pressure?

Is Brent's reference to "responses to Severan images of imperial power" realistic -

Brent argues that Augustus' revolution represented a genuinely religious reformation of Republican religion that had failed in its metaphysical objectives. Against this backcloth, Luke, John the Seer, Clement, Ignatius and the Apologists refashioned Christian theology as an alternative answer to that metaphysical failure. Callistus and Pseudo-Hippolytus gave different responses to Severan images of imperial power [Severan = 193 to 235 ad]. The early, Monarchian theology of the Trinity was thus to become a reflection of imperial culture and its justification that was later to be articulated both in Neo-Platonism, and in Cyprian's view of episcopal Order.

'Contra-cultural theory' is employed as a sociological model to examine the interaction between developing Pagan and Christian social order.

Brent (2015) 'The Imperial Cult and the Development of Church Order: Concepts and Images of Authority in Paganism and Early Christianity before the Age of Cyprian' Vigiliae Christianae, Supplements, Vol. 45. https://brill.com/view/title/6684

Brent also refers to "Luke, John the Seer, Clement, Ignatius and the Apologists [as having] refashioned Christian theology as an alternative answer to the 'metaphysical failure' " of 'reformation of Republican religion after Augustus'; but they may have been just fashioning early Christian theology or just fashioning pre-Orthodox Christian theology.


This is noteworthy commentary by Stephan-Alias [paragraphed by me] -

... the manner in which the earliest Church Fathers identify and enumerate the various 'sects' of Christianity. Of course scholarship acknowledges that the term 'sects' or 'heresies' has to do with philosophy. How couldn't they? But this doesn't mean that all the sects were actual philosophical schools. It only means that whoever was compiling the list of 'species' in effect he was a philosopher, he was influenced by later Aristotelian enumeration efforts. The naming of many of the sects with similarly strange nomenclature (a kind of Latinized Greek) is especially peculiar given the same sorts of traits in the Markan gospel (albeit not identical nomenclature per se only the Latinized part) and also the same Latinized Nomenclature in Acts. The Church Father who named all the heresies was bookish. He was a scholar. He had access to a library and to the various things written about Christianity in the past (hence also the additions to Luke-Acts from Suetonius, Josephus etc).

The new Christianity was established in a library or libraries. This information was quickly passed on to pagan critics like Celsus. There was a battle going on in the libraries, among the elite. The changes that took place in Christianity in the late second century were top-down changes. They were guided by this strange philosophical 'sect-book' - look out for these, look out for those. These 'sect-books' were rapidly copied in loose forms similar to a lost original. They were like bird-watching notebooks for ancient ornithologists. Or maybe the example is a guide book for various species of plants. Watch out for these, they're poisonous, these cause upset stomach etc.

And to address a point from the beginning -

The focus of mythicists is misguided. You can't prove that Jesus didn't exist.

But one can assign a probability or a range of probability --eg. 25-30%; 45-55%, etc.

[Secret Alias]

No you can't.

[outhouse]

Nothing more then not paying tribute to the Roman deities brought on punishment that generated stereotypical views upon the organization.

[Secret Alias]

But Jews didn't worship Roman gods. That alone can't be the reason

[MrMacSon]

But Jews didn't worship Roman gods. That alone can't be the reason

outhouse seems to be referring to Jews not worshipping Roman gods -

Nothing more then not paying tribute to the Roman deities brought on punishment ...

[though I don't know what he means by " that generated stereotypical views upon the organization."]

And of course 'not paying tribute to the Roman deities' brought on the punishment of the fiscus Judaicus, which I wonder might help us date some aspect of the basis Christian texts: see http://www.earlywritings.com/forum/view ... f=3&t=3575 [and note Mark 12.14, Matt 22.17, 17.242-27; and Luke 20.22].

which brings up the more substantive aspects of my post in this thread -

1. When was Christianity's [or the various Christianities'] first century of proper existence?
   .
2. When is there good evidence of Imperial pressure?
   [and]
3. "Is Brent's reference to 'responses to Severan images of imperial power' realistic?"

[Secret Alias]

I am not getting this. There is no evidence that Jews were punished for failing to worship Roman gods late in the first century.

[MrMacSon]

I am not getting this. There is no evidence that Jews were punished for failing to worship Roman gods late in the first century.

Fair enough. I was more referring to the fact they were punished for being Jews, which, of course, meant the would not have worshipped Roman gods. Perhaps there was a requirement for them (and others) to at least acknowledge Ron=man gods and they weren't [even] doing that?

Anyway,

a. When is there good evidence of Imperial pressure against Christianity?

b. When was Christianity first known to properly existence?

[Ulan]

The usual answer to question b is that Christianity was recognized as separate religion by the Roman Empire when Nerva limited the fiscus judaicus to religious Jews in 96 CE. Of course, to come to this conclusion requires some interpretational work (see M. Heemstra 2010).

What Nerva's decree tells us for sure is that, under Diocletian, being an ethnic Jew was sufficient to be subjected to difficulties, which changed to religious observance under Nerva.