Question about written history and The Bible

[daggahead]

Forgive my ignorance, but are there any historical texts from the same era(s) that The Bible was written? If so, is there any mention of Jesus Christ in those writings?

Thanks.

[lost-in-nj]

1. good question...

I for one don't know but wanted to get the fresh popcorn.....
but it is a good question


:popcorn:



lost

[Taverner]

2. There is only the account of Josephus, the official documentarian of Rome in Judea at the time

And the consensus is that his mention of Jesus was added 400 years later - so its a forgery

[Deep13]

3. You raise an interesting point....

IF JC is based on a real person, we have no idea when he lived.

Of course most of the writers during and after the turn of the "first" millenium were outside of Jerusalem and would not have known about him. But the answer to your question is that there are many writings from that time and none of them mention JC or any of the events described in the NT.

[daggahead]

4. It had just dawned on me the other day ...

that I hadn't heard of any other historical writings from that era in that part of the world. You'd think that there would have been MANY, MANY people writing about JC. Wouldn't there have been a lot of writings coming from the Roman Empire denouncing him? It just doesn't make sense.

[Deep13]

6. Part of the problem is that the events Matthew cites ...

...in an effort to isolate the exact time didn't exist. There was no empire-wide census. Augustus only ordered a census for Italy. And he didn't care where anyone's "ancestral" home land was, but only where people and their property was located at the time of the census. Plus that governor he mentions had been dead for years at census time.

One would think that all the fantastical things that happened when JC was killed would have been worth a few lines of ink. Or some of the other purported miracles. Frankly, the earliest versions of the canonical gospels have the fewest miracles. Mark was the oldest written at about 60ish "AD." The writings of Paul are older still by about 10 years and contain NO details about miracles or JC's life. It may be that he was writing about a theoretical son-of-god who was in heaven and was never a man.

No one here asked about theology or any other religious question, but only asked about the historical fact of other writings corroborating purported historical events. So, I don't see why this got banished to R/T "storage room B."

[Schema Thing]

5. he's mentioned twice (?) in the works of Josephus

Thought by some to be forgeries inserted later (one reference is rather obviously a forgery, to my reading).

[Goblinmonger]

8. "Thought by some"?

Thought by pretty much anyone with a couple brain cells to rub together.

[Deep13]

9. Josephus 37-100 c.e.

He was not a contemporary but AT BEST was an after-the fact reporter of hearsay. And as you noted, there is serious doubt that he even wrote what some say he wrote.

[Rabrrrrrr]

7. If there was a Jesus, he was a purely Jewish problem, not a Roman one,

so the Romans would have no reason to write about him. Even if he was executed by crucifixion by the Romans, he would have been one in a long, anonymous, irrelevant line of common criminals executed thusly, and so wouldn't merit mention there, either.

But we do know that there was a movement of people calling themselves followers of Jesus, whom they claimed to be the Christ, and which followers were booted out of the Jewish temple and synagogues and DID become a problem for the Roman Empire and were executed and harassed soon after the date of Jesus' supposed crucifixion.

And we do have clear records outside of the Christian movement of the Romans very much taking attention of those upstart political pot-stirrers who refused to call Caesar "Lord" within a couple decades of Jesus death (supposed or real), who shared with each other, who taught about love, and who gladly sang hymns while being executed in horrible ways for refusing to deny their faith.

it's a fascinating bit of history, in that we have really no record of Jesus existing (other than writings by believers done well after the fact), and he wrote nothing himself (unlike other religious leaders we have throughout history) but yet a major movement began almost immediately AFTER his (supposed?) death, and we do have non-Christian records of that movement. And so if there was no Jesus, it's an amazing story of a movement being pulled basically out of thin air by a bunch of people who DID claim to have known Jesus, and some of whom claimed to have been related (his mother and brothers), and who were - if they had a mutual conspiracy to invent a person named Jesus - unable to pull the conspiracy off smoothly, because they sure as hell did argue a lot and fight amongst themselves, as well as they had absolutely nothing to gain by starting such a movement and had an awful lot to lose (their livelihoods, their respect, their families, and of course, their lives).

[Deep13]

10. The events the NT describes would have been obvious to anyone.

Besides, there are no surviving Jewish accounts either.

"Monday--we lost poor Lazarus today. Poor kid. He was sick his whole life. He's with Jehovah now.

"Friday--You will never believe what happened. Some drifter who knew Lazarus' mother waltzed into town and told the sextan to remove the stone from Lazarus' grave. For some reason they did. Let me tell you, the air quality was suddenly worse than the tannery! It smelled bad! So this guy--Jesus from Nazareth or somewhere--said Lazarus should come out and --get this--Laz. walked right out like we was never dead (despite the smell!) It was the craziest fucking thing I ever saw!"

Granted, any writings would not necessarily have survived. Still, it remains a lack of evidence.

[Lydia Leftcoast]

12. That is precisely the kind of writing that tends not to survive

Once the printing press became available, we have tons of documentation of everything.

In the days before printing, everything had to be hand-copied. Everything. That meant that you had multiple copies only of items that were considered of vital importance. Most personal letters and diaries existed only in single copies (as they would today).

A few literary diaries of Heian Japan (795-1175) survive, but that was because the authors were already well-known for their literature in a small circle of literate people in ancient Kyoto. Besides, that social stratum had large numbers of women who were literate but were kept secluded and had almost nothing to do all day. They became voracious readers and writers and copied manuscripts to circulate among themselves. But those were exceptional circumstances.

If Lazarus's neighbors in Bethany kept a diary, it was of no interest to anyone outside the family.

[darkstar3]

15. Only of interest to Lazarus' neighbors and family?

The man supposedly came back from the dead in front of many witnesses. Are you telling me that we shouldn't expect to find ANY of their accounts, or ANY accounts of the people they told, or ANY evidence of Roman investigation? Somehow, I think that if something that miraculous had happened, a lot more people would have been writing about it.

[Lydia Leftcoast]

17. The Romans investigating it?

They'd pay about as much attention to it as the U.S. forces would to (non-military) rumors coming out of an Afghan village.

Besides, there were no newspapers in those days.

[Rabrrrrrr]

18. Why would Rome care what a bunch of animal Jew peasants said?

And given the low literacy rate, and expense of writing, it's a pretty good bet that no one in that circle wrote anything down, let alone on anything that would survive this long.

It would garner no more attention than the FBI gives to people who claim to be Napolean or to have been taken up for anal probing by aliens.

In any culture and generation, the ignorant barbaric uneducated working class animal poor isn't worth worrying about, unless they start gathering in large numbers.

[darkstar3]

25. To both of you:

Nice focus on the Romans, there, and perhaps you're right, but do you really expect me to believe that verbal reports of a successful resurrection wouldn't have been written down somewhere? We have ONE of the four gospels recounting the resurrection of Lazarus, and NOTHING else. That seems like rather sparse information for such an incredible occurrence. One of you compared the story of Lazarus to stories of UFO abductions, and I consider that comparison very apt. In fact, I think you would be hard pressed to express how a single claim by John of Lazarus' resurrection is any different than a claim by a local yokel of being abducted by aliens.

[trotsky]

31. C'mon, darkstar3, you know very well the answer to this.

Uncorroborated hand-me-down stories that have been through the telephone game for at least a generation or two are adequate testament to the life and works of one Jesus H. Christ. However such support is thoroughly and forcefully rejected (by the same Christians) when it comes to any other claims, whether about a competing religion or any other unusual events, of course.

[darkstar3]

38. I know that, and YOU know that...n/t

[Deep13]

21. Still, it's a lack of evidence.

Nothing can be inferred from a failure to find evidence.

[struggle4progress]

16. Leaving aside theology, and considering only the historical issues about culture,

why should we expect first century reactions to differ much from modern ones?

If stories circulated today among the "trailer park people" that "Lazarus died and buried, but a homeless hobo raised him from the dead a few days later," perhaps the most natural reaction would simply to shake one's head at the credulity of simpletons -- but it was a very natural reaction then as well, all our pride in our modern skepticism notwithstanding. Nor did the story get better: it leads into something like "Remember that homeless hobo who was raised dead trailer trash? He died in shoot-out with the police. But now down in the trailer park, they're saying he came back to life bodily and can walk through walls." And if one met some trailer park people, and found them sincerely convinced of this -- well .. um .. heh-heh ...

http://faculty.maxwell.syr.edu.nyud.net:8090/gaddis/HST210/Nov20/Alexmenos%20Graffiti.jpg
http://faculty.maxwell.syr.edu/gaddis/HST210/Nov20/Default.htm

... The earliest representation is this graffito, scratched on plaster c.200 AD and found in the Paedagogium on the Palatine Hill, possibly a school to train servants in the imperial household. One sees from the caricature that the cross is low to the ground and in the shape of a T ... and, indeed, Tertullian remarks "Now .. our own letter T is the very form of the cross .." ... The Greek inscription reads "Alexamenos worships <his> God" ... http://penelope.uchicago.edu/~grout/encyclopaedia_romana/gladiators/graffito.html

[Deep13]

20. Well, I think enough people might take it seriously to at least...

...spread the rumor. People believe all kinds of weird shit and I'm not even talking about religious claims. We have Mary Madonna showing up in grilled cheeze form, homeopathy, people who talk to ghosts, Fox News viewers, creationism (okay that's religious), astrology and small rumors of every description.

But I'm not even talking about hearsay. Any of the obvious miracles of the NT could have been recorded by any of the witnesses the NT claims were present. It doesn't mean they were recorded or that the writings survived, but their existence cannot be presumed without having them.

[struggle4progress]

23. But there are class issues here. The Romans had a colony there;

and the colonized are typically "trailer trash" in the eyes of their conquerers. Moreover, conquered territories are administered by Quislings, who preserve an appearance of local control while actually siding with the conquerers. The Roman world was pyramidal: few above, many below. The many below did drudgery -- and those above took the attitude "Who cares what they do, or think, or whether some live or die, so long as enough taxes and tribute flow to the empire"

[Deep13]

32. All that is true. Pretty much an "Exhibit A" in proving the evil of imperialism.

There are a lot of reasons why writings, if that largely illiterate society ever made any, did not survive. But a reasonable explanation for the absence of evidence is still a lack of evidence. It rather like wondering why most dinosaur fossils are found in places like AZ where the rock is bare, uplifted and exposed. Well, that's the easiest place to look for them. There may be dinosaurs under the Antarctic ice and they're probably are. But we can't assume it or what those fossils will reveal. Until we find them, it is an absence of evidence.

There are a few remarkable exceptions to this based on circumstantial evidence. One is the probable existence of an early Christian document known as "Q." Luke and Matthew have so much in common that it is probable that both writers were reading from the same notes. This document has never been found, but it must have existed. It's as if two students writing essays separately shared an identical paragraph. They must have cheated. The other is the lack of evidence of the flight from Egypt in Exodus. There is evidence of ancient encampments and settlements from the time of the pharaohs and earlier. The reason we know that there were no Hebrews among them is because all the ones found in the relevant places and from the relevant times contained pork remains. This is something that is known not to be present in early iron-age Hebrew settlements. Simply put, there was no Moses, there was no parting of the sea, there was no slavery in Egypt. Rather, it seems likely that the story of emancipation from Egypt was the result of people who really had escaped from there and seeking refuge in Canaan. This should note be surprising since the whole concept of monotheism was imported from Zoroastrians to the East. Prior to that, the Hebrews had masculine and a feminine god like most of the rest of the world.

[Lydia Leftcoast]

24. They didn't have newspapers, TV, magazines, or any of the other mass media that we have

Local rumors mostly stayed local.

[LAGC]

27. That's all terribly convenient.

So why not have any modern-day resurrections so the press could document it and spread the news of the miracle?

Where are all the miracles today? Why is it that religious miracles always happen in places where no one can corroborate them but some obscure prophet, who just happened to be the one who God talked to?

[darkstar3]

28. You took my next move,

you thieving bastard!!

:toast:

[Deep13]

29. That's probably true. Still, THIS rumor didn't...

...because a few people thought the Jesus story was such a dramatic break from the uncaring Olympian gods that it was worth spreading the news. Of course those were not contemporaneous with the supposed events. The rapid spread of Christianity is part of what makes me think that some part of that belief system was in place before the turn of the millennium. The life story of JC itself is highly derivative. (It was such a memorable story that many of those hearing it for the first time must have remembered parts of it even then.) There were Jewish, Platonic and Zoroastrian mystical traditions which Christianity plagiarizes on the one hand and borrows from the other two. Plus, the Christian god was different from the Olympians in another way too. If there is a foundational writing for the Greco-Roman pagan religion, it is the Iliad. In the Iliad the gods care about kings and great warriors and great civilizations. Christianity as it existed in its pre-Nicean form was for commoners and especially to common women. You see, its advocacy of chastity for religious reasons was the closest a women could get in the pre-contraceptive, patriarchal society to controlling her own reproduction. Of course the male-dominated priesthood later rejected that idea.

This of course may help explain why the new theology was so attractive. It says nothing about the veracity of its claims.

[Lydia Leftcoast]

11. Now one can say that the martyrs outside Judea were merely deluded

but what about the FOUNDERS of the movement?

If L. Ron Hubbard had been confronted and told, "Either you admit that you just made that stuff up, or we'll burn you at the stake," what would he have done?

If Gene Roddenberry had been told, "Admit that Star Trek is fiction, or we'll burn you at the stake," what would he have done?

Yet the founders of the movement are reported to have died rather than deny Jesus.

You can imagine large numbers of people dying for something they THOUGHT to be true. (Look at all the Japanese soldiers in WWII.)

Can you imagine large numbers of people dying for something they KNEW to be false? (Mass martyrdom of Trekkies?)

You can believe that Jesus was divine or not, but it would be hard to prove that most people in the ancient world existed, especially in Judea, where the main city, Jerusalem, was completely destroyed in 70AD. If there ever were any records, they disappeared.

"But," you say, "wouldn't someone have noticed if all those events occurred?"

How do you know they didn't? The Romans would not have understood what was going on, unless they saw Jesus as another guy attracting large crowds of peasants, and in their minds, that usually meant a political rebel. They crucified political rebels all the time, and one more or less wouldn't have registered as significant.

The Jewish records wouldn't have survived unless scattered survivors of the siege of Jerusalem took some family scrolls with them. The Dead Sea Scrolls exist only because a small community hid them in caves in the desert.

Having worked in the area of medieval Japanese, I know how precarious ancient records are. There was no printing press in the ancient world, and everything had to be hand copied. That's why there are huge gaps in the Japanese literary, linguistic, and historical record. If the ONE COPY of something was destroyed in a fire, that was it.

For example, here is the sum total of our evidence for the existence of the author of the Tale of Genji-- 1) The Tale of Genji itself, 2) The author's own diary, 3) A mention in the diary of one other woman who was at the same court. Wealthy women in those days did not reveal their personal names outside the family, and the name she is usually assigned, Murasaki Shikibu, was a combination of "Shikibu" (her father's court rank) with Murasaki, the name of a principal female character in the novel (itself a pseudonym). And this is an author who wrote around the year 1000, many centuries later.

My point is that while there is no contemporary secular proof of Jesus' existence, there is no proof of his non-existence either, and you have the circumstantial evidence of the very early appearance of his followers, within twenty years of his lifetime.

[darkstar3]

13. Specious.

There is no proof that Rush Limbaugh is a child molestor, but there is no proof he DOESN'T molest children either, and we have the circumstantial evidence of his trip to the Dominican Republic (known for sex trafficking) with a bottle of illegal Viagra.

My point? Circumstantial evidence counts for nothing in a court of law for very good reason, and we should all hold ourselves to that standard, even if it means we don't get to treat Rush as a pederast.

[trotsky]

14. And what about the "founders" of the movement?

Do you have real, historical, verified documentation that they indeed were given a chance to recant, refused, and then were tortured/executed as Christians like yourself believe they were?

My point is that while there is no contemporary secular proof of Jesus' existence, there is no proof of his non-existence either, and you have the circumstantial evidence of the very early appearance of his followers, within twenty years of his lifetime.

Compare/contrast with Mohammed.

[Dogtown]

19. What is your source for the claim

that the *founders* of Christianity were threatened with persecutions?

There are certainly records citing the persecution of the followers of Christianity by the Romans, many of the records Roman and verified from multiple sources.

I don't believe that there are any records of the founders of the religion being persecuted, other than passages within the Bible or other Church writings. I don't know of any outside verification for the claim.

To be honest, I don't think there are any records, outside of Church writings, verifying any Christian *followers* actually were given the chance to convert and refused. Roman records are mostly limited to logistics records, ie, "Prisoners killed in the arena today: X number of deserters, X number of murderers, X number of Christians."


I have to admit that I have often thought that the Early Christians weren't 'persecuted' for their beliefs (the Romans were known for being exceptionally tolerant of other faiths). Rather, they were 'prosecuted' for interrupting dinner with their proselytizing. The Romans found it no less annoying than we do, but they were wont to react harshly to social infractions and were not known for their patience.

[Lydia Leftcoast]

22. No, they were persecuted for refusing to burn incense before statues of the emperor or

offer sacrifices to the patron gods of their particular city. The Jews had a special exemption from this requirement, but other people did not.

It was believed that offering the proper sacrifices kept the city safe, and anyone who refused to do so was considered a political traitor. That's why the Christians got into trouble and the worshippers of Mithras didn't.

Don't make stuff up based on your 21st century prejudices.

[darkstar3]

26. And where is your source for this information.

This seems like a very clear historical claim. Surely you got it from somewhere.

[Lydia Leftcoast]

33. A friend of mine whose specialty is late Roman history

Teaches at the University of Minnesota

[darkstar3]

34. And are the materials that your friend uses available for us to read?

Are his lectures or writings? Anything at all that we can read for ourselves?

[Lydia Leftcoast]

35. Don't know--haven't looked

OK, here's his page at the U--

http://cnes.cla.umn.edu/people/admin.php?UID=opn

If you're really interested, look up some of these things for yourself.

[darkstar3]

36. I have tried looking up your claims of early persecution before,

but I had no luck. I was hoping that since you had specifically mentioned persecution of the founders of the Christian faith that you might have based it on more than hearsay.

[Lydia Leftcoast]

37. Do your own research if you really care--

(and I don't think you do).

[darkstar3]

39. Which is another way of saying you didn't do your own. n/t

[54anickel]

42. Had to dig for some old text books....I remember spending a good part of a semester on

the Emperor Cult. Could only find one of the books from that class - Stephen L Harris' "The New Testament - A Student's Introduction". What you mentioned is covered toward the end of that text book in a section called "The Conflict Between Caesar and Christ" and the Chapter on Apocalyptic Hope. If I remember correctly we spent a lot of time looking at Pliny's correspondences with Trajan. It was pretty much a Christian History 101 class.

I believe I've read similar accounts in some of Marcus Borg's works.

[darkstar3]

43. Finally, someone names a book.

It wasn't either of the people bothering to play in this little act, but what the hell, I'll bite.

The problem with any study of Pliny the Younger is that NONE of his original manuscripts survive. Pliny supposedly wrote around the time of 100CE, but the earliest print edition of his works that we have comes from 1502 (Avantius). 1400 years is a long damn time, and only one of the 10 letters we supposedly have (conveniently the atypically verbose one at the end) even mentions Christians. Given that we have no actual source material, and we have evidence to suggest that the material we have may have been doctored like so many other historical documents handled by monks in the past, I must take the classical strong agnostic position regarding Pliny's observance of and concern over the Christian plight: I don't know, and neither do you.

[54anickel]

44. Hmmm, didn't cover that in class. Do you happen to have a source?

Not being a smart-ass, I've not heard that assertion that "NONE of his original manuscripts survive". As to your agnostic position to Pliny's observance - can't really argue with that. Simply pointing to what scholars have tried to piece together in an attempt to explain or understand how Jesus became a god. None of those works would be of interest to you if you consider the basis of Pliny's letters to be a false premise. I didn't realize this was an exercise to convince one way or the other. I personally find the deifying of Jesus to be an interesting topic.

Just came across this while looking for that other text - thought it was interesting - obviously YMMV

http://books.google.com/books?id=Xi5xIxgnNgcC&pg=PA13#v=onepage&q&f=false

[darkstar3]

50. Sure.

http://www.kchanson.com/ANCDOCS/latin/pliny.html

The table describes the letter in question, and also the fact that no original manuscripts survive.

[struggle4progress]

47. What original Roman manuscripts do you imagine remain? To survive,

a manuscript needs to be protected from damp, which is difficult in moist climates, and it will also rapidly deteriorate if carelessly handled by too many people

There are, not 10, but about 120 letters in the Pliny-Trajan collection, the letter XCVII to Trajan is not "atypically verbose," nor is it the "one at the end"

Here is the collection: http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/ancient/pliny-letters.html#TrajPart X

[darkstar3]

49. Now you see my problem.

It's very hard to find reliable source documents.

[struggle4progress]

58. If you only countenance such history as can be documented by

manuscripts in the original hand of a contemporary author, the subject will be very sparse indeed: the Rosetta stone, for example, would seem to be off-limits, since there is no reason to think that Ptolemy V actually carved his decree into the stone himself

[darkstar3]

59. The subject of history IS sparse,

which is why it is very lucky for historians that the timeline of earth's history is so vast.

And when it comes to history, nothing trumps a source document. Except maybe a lot of corroborating source documents. If you're going to make assertions about how things were in the past, it would be good to have such source documents, otherwise your assertions are on shaky ground at best.

[darkstar3]

56. BTW:

I'll admit my mistake in the counting of Pliny's letters, since it seems my google-fu was off last night. Still, I was right about only one of those letters even mentioning Christians, and we still have no actual source material to verify these words were actually written by Pliny.

[struggle4progress]

48. It seems incoherent to complain Pliny was not printed until around 1500

since Gutenberg's press dates from only a few decades before that

[darkstar3]

51. Whether printed on a press or hand-written,

no original manuscripts exist, and that was my point, here and elsewhere in the thread to other people. It is very difficult to find reliable source documents from that time.

[Lydia Leftcoast]

53. So your assertions are just as unprovable as mine

:dilemma:

[darkstar3]

54. And what assertions would those be? n/t

[darkstar3]

60. Nothing to say? I'm still waiting for an answer to my question. n/t

[Lydia Leftcoast]

61. Your assertion that there is no independent evidence of Jesus existing, so

therefore he didn't exist. (I agree with the no independent evidence part; I just don't agree that it's proof of non-existence.)

And I didn't answer because I work out of my home and had a job to finish.

[darkstar3]

62. And where did you find that assertion? Please point to a post # that even implies such. n/t

[Lydia Leftcoast]

63. Everything you've written since you first appeared in this forum

I don't have time to search all your posts, and you're clearly just indulging in recreational arguing, which I don't have time for, now that another job has come in, due at 7PM.

[darkstar3]

64. That is false, and a pathetic attempt at generalization.

You see, as an atheist, I happen to know that I can't prove a negative. I have never attempted to state emphatically and categorically that a historical Jesus didn't exist. I simply remain skeptical of such an existence until such time as evidence is presented to me. That's the way it works for a lot of things.

Of course, Jesus wasn't really what this subthread was about. You were griping earlier in the subthread about specific forms of persecution committed for specific reasons against the founders of Christianity. Just like I would ask someone to provide a source for any historical claim, I asked you to source this information. You couldn't, and changing the subject now does nothing to hide the fact that you made a baseless assertion and completely failed to back it up.

[Rabrrrrrr]

40. Yes - any history book dealing with the Roman Empire of that time

will offer you plenty to enjoy. Whether you go with a modern historical look at the time, or, perhaps, you can go read primary sources from the time written by Romans and others who castigate the Christians, and you can also try to read the primary sources of Christian apologetics of the time.

Doesn't matter to me which route you choose. Either way, you'll find that, yes, from the Roman perspective the problem with those early Christians was that they refused to bow to the godship of Caesar, refused to sacrifice their meat at the altars, and refused to participate in any with the state religion of Rome.

Rome didn't give a shit, really, about anyone's religious beliefs - but they DID care if those religious beliefs became political.

Do you seriously think that the Roman empire would be executing Christians because they violated the Jewish scriptures or some such Jewish-specific bullshit? They couldn't have given a shit. Didn't matter to them at all how much religious discord there was in any of their conquered peoples, so long as that discord stayed local and internal and didn't have any effect on the state religion.

I mean, Jesus - clearly you think religion is bullshit, but even so, that doesn't preclude the fact that, even if the first Christians were utterly fucking deluded, lying, or making shit up - the truth is, their behavior was such that the Roman empire thought them a political movement and they did, in fact, and in all documented truth, execute and harass and otherwise hound the Christians.

I'm sorry so that you can't separate your feeling of the fictional nature of God/Jesus from the very real nature of the people who DID believe the faith to be true and so were, in fact, persecuted.

You can make a plausible and fine argument that those early Christians died and were harassed for a totally false idea; but you cannot make any plausible argument at all that there was no persecution of those people.

Fucking hell. I'd imagine that Dawkins and Hitchins have the intellectual integrity to admit to the fact that, yes, there were Christians way back when, and that, yes, the Roman Empire treated them like criminals.

Goddamn.

[darkstar3]

41. Then it should be easy for you to show us a source.

It's not that I simply reject your claim, or hers, out of hand. It's that I want at least one of you to source. your. shit.

"Any history book..."? Really? Name one please, and I'll be happy to look it up.

[trotsky]

45. Ah but we're not talking about early Christians. You're changing the subject.

I don't think anyone is disputing some of the earliest Christians were persecuted and killed. Just like followers of virtually EVERY religion who have been martyred. Lots of Muslim martyrs - does their existence prove Islam?

No, we are specifically trying to address Lydia's claim that the FOUNDERS of Christianity were given the chance to recant but refused, and were tortured/executed.

We won't find that in "any history book dealing with the Roman Empire of that time." We need a source. Do you have one?

[trotsky]

30. Those goalposts are already well on the move.

Fascinating. Would love to see some kind of documentation of these claims as well. Whatever you can provide.

[Dogtown]

46. Lighten up, Lydia.

It was a joke. You can't possible believe I meant that they were arrested for knocking on the door during supper.




Seems to have given you something to discuss rather than answering my question: are there any reliable (ie, not Biblical) sources for your claim re: Founding Martyrs?


On reviewing the thread, I see you have failed to answer this question by others also, either deflecting or becoming snippy.

I am sincerely interested in the lack of provenance for the very basis of the Christian faith. I would think you would be, also. I think I'll look for a more pleasant person to discuss this with, though.

Someone with facts instead of attitude.

[Lydia Leftcoast]

52. There are people on this forum who find the very idea of religion offensive,

who cannot let a religious topic pass without their snippy remarks (and there is one poster who specializes in posting every bad thing he can find about Christianity but who would probably be very offended if someone posted an article about a scandal in his tradition), who get their ideas from half-baked websites that have no better provenance than the early traditions of Christianity (was it here or on some other website that someone with knowledge of Hinduism demolished some of the oft-stated parallels between Krishna and Jesus?), and are just as dogmatic in their assertions as any fundamentalist (i.e. insisting that is impossible for Jesus to have existed).

And I have attitude? Do you know why it's almost exclusively atheists who post here? For any religious person who ventures in here, it's like a socialist trying to attend a meeting of the Young Republicans.

Look, I am a layperson who absorbed this stuff over the past six decades. I didn't go to seminary (Rabrrrrrr did, though, so ask him.) But my faith is not based on this fact or that fact but on experience. For years, I have insisted in this forum that religion is experiential, not intellectual, a culturally determined way of expressing the inexpressible. For me the experiences have been profound and enriching, emotionally, spiritually, and yes, intellectually, although that's not the primary focus. (By the way, I have had the same type of personal experience at some of the Shinto and Buddhist sites in Japan.) Your mileage may vary.

You take the fundamentalists' assertion that the Bible is all literally true, and you think, "Gotcha!" because you know (as I do) that the Bible isn't literally true. But only someone who is at a very childish level of faith is a literalist.

Having worked in an era of history when real documentation is scarce (medieval Japan), I have more trust in tradition than many of you do, especially when the facts are unknowable. The traditions say that Peter and Andrew were crucified (probably as political rebels who refused to worship the emperor), that John died a natural death in extreme old age (he is almost certainly not the same John who wrote the fourth Gospel or the third John who wrote Revelation, judging from the writing styles), and I don't remember what happened to the others.

Anyway, I do not know of any non-Christian sources for the martyrdom of the disciples. Maybe Rabrrrrrr does, although there are few non-Christian sources for much of anything in that era.

[darkstar3]

55. If you don't like what you're watching, change the channel.

If it is impossible for you to debate and defend your beliefs on the academic level that other people on this forum or wont to go to, then there's more than one simple solution for that problem. Use whichever solution you would like, but don't whine about the fact that religion is discussed from all angles here, because that's exactly what this forum is for.

[trotsky]

57. "For years, I have insisted in this forum that religion is experiential, not intellectual"

And that's fine - but you made an intellectual, factual, checkable claim about your religion. How can you expect NOT to be called upon to provide some evidence to support your claim? And why do you have to be so belligerent and insulting when you are?

You take the fundamentalists' assertion that the Bible is all literally true

No. That's a strawman. I speak only for myself here, but all I want is some insight into the thought processes of individual Christians to understand why they take some parts of the bible literally, and others figuratively or allegorically. You all have different opinions as to which is which.

Anyway, I do not know of any non-Christian sources for the martyrdom of the disciples.

Thank you for your response that you do not have any evidence to support your claim. You could have said that to begin with and avoided this whole subthread.

[AlecBGreen]

66. here's my take

"...all I want is some insight into the thought processes of individual Christians to understand why they take some parts of the bible literally, and others figuratively or allegorically. You all have different opinions as to which is which."

I think you would agree with both of these statements:

1) The Bible is not 100% literal. Some of it is figurative/symbolic.
2) The bible is not 100% symoblic. Some of it is literal.

So the question is, where do you draw the line? I dont think any two Christians in history have believed EXACTLY the same thing about the Bible. That tells me that we (Christians) must each try our hardest to understand it as best we can. While I personally dont believe the Earth was created ~6,000 years ago, I will not begrudge somone for believing that. And believe me, as a Biology & Earth Science teacher, its HARD!

I think the story of Noah illustrates this well. I personally believe there was a great flood long ago. I believe there was a person who had the forsight/intuition/precognition/divine inspiration to see it coming and prepared for it. I believe he built a large vessel and loaded his family & breeding pairs of animals onto it. I do NOT believe he loaded two of EVERY TYPE of animal. I do NOT believe the flood covered the entire earth, killing everyone and all the animals. Why do I believe what I do and disbelieve the rest? Because its what seems sensible to me. It fits with what I believe as a Christian and as a teacher of science.

Im not sure if this is exactly the answer you were looking for but I hope it helps you gain some perspective.

[skepticscott]

65. That's true...it was never really a case of the Romans

trying to get Christians to "convert" back to paganism. The Romans simply didn't approach religion in that way. Even in their conquered territories, the Romans typically had no objections to people retaining their own religious beliefs, as long as they paid at least token homage to the Roman gods, and didn't upset political stability. And in many cases of "persecution", you had a situation where Christians were given every opportunity to pay that token homage by Roman officials who really didn't want to torture or kill anybody ("Come on...just burn a LITTLE incense and we can all go home!"). And when Christians declined, it was not necessarily because of their courage and high principles. They were afraid of the consequences of honking their god off as much as the Romans were.