spin wrote:
Do you not find our only tangible report of christian persecution in the first century
.
NO
Paul persecuted, and he himself was persecuted.
Nero persecuted.
How gormless. Paul persecuted? Like he crucified people or hanged them? Nero persecuted christians? Got any, I mean any, substantive evidence that securely comes from before the end of the 2nd c.?
outhouse wrote:
spin wrote: (Ann. 15.44) highly problematic?
LOL no.
This is convincing. You were never heard from in the Tacitus discussions here. Given
1. that our earliest manuscript of Tacitus is from the 12th century,
2. no classical writer knew anything of christians relating to the fire,
3. that the first ancient writer who wrote about a persecution of christians regarding the Neronian fire was the christian chronicler Sulpicius Severus, and
4. earlier christian writers had no evidence for such christian persecution during the time of Nero except the legends regarding Peter and Paul,
you can stick your LOL with the rest of your nonsense and show a little perspicacity and gumption. You've shown an obvious tendency to rehearse christian scholars rather than demonstrate freethought.
outhouse wrote:
spin wrote:
Did the Romans have any interest in christians qua christians before Decius?
Yes.
Well, prove it, rather than asserting it. You should know better than acting like a dummy.
outhouse wrote:Decius brought on national presecutions, it doesnt mean there were none before hand.
Who gives a fuck what it doesn't mean. Your job, is to get off your ass and demonstrate something for once in your life.
outhouse wrote:
spin wrote: so deeply cauterized that there is no skepticism left in there
There is a difference between HEALTHY skepticism and unhealthy.
And we are trying to teach you about skepticism. In fact there are two types of unhealthy skepticism: a) half-hearted skepticism, where skepticism is a nice idea, but you don't have the energy to get past the idea; and b) denialism, where one rejects things because they don't want them to be veracious. It's a waste of time being a) complaining about b).
Dysexlia lures • ⅔ of what we see is behind our eyes
Note: elsewhere, DiMattei rejects the TF and holds that the "Christ" is indeed a literary creation.
5) If Jesus Christ of the gospels was a literary invention (which he was even from my admission above; so let’s say a literary creation ex nihilo from the Mythists’ perspective) then for what reason?
That is the bottom line in the historicist verse the ahistoricist debate. Acknowledging that the gospel story is a literary work and not an historical account of it's main character is step one. Step two requires answering questions such as what was the motive, what what was the purpose, what was the originator of this story attempting to convey. Saying it's a story, in view of the impact this story has had when viewed as a historical account, is never going to be a sufficient argument in the historicist verse ahistoricist debate. Sure, saying this story re-worked ideas found in the Jewish Bible adds to the mechanics of how the storyteller developed his story - but while that is important it does not address the fundamental questions of what purpose, for what reason, for what audience, was the story created.
On the above paragraph, Well stated and thought out.
However well the ahistoricists/mythicsts might interpret the Pauline letters and their Christ figure - it's the gospel Jesus story that has captured the imagination - and the loyalty - of the Christian world - and it's army of scholars stand ready to fight the battle with the mythicists for the faithful.....
The Pauline spiritual Christ figure is no substitute for the Jesus of the Gospels. They are two very different stories. Each story needs to be addressed on it's own terms before any attempt to 'marry' the two stories. As I've said so many times - as mythicists suggest - don't read the gospels into the Pauline epistles - then, likewise, don't read the Pauline epistles into the gospel Jesus story. Each story needs to stand on it's own feet before any relationship, 'marriage', between the stories can, itself, contribute to a fuller grasp of what the writers of the NT were endeavoring to articulate.
spin wrote:And we are trying to teach you about skepticism. In fact there are two types of unhealthy skepticism: a) half-hearted skepticism, where skepticism is a nice idea, but you don't have the energy to get past the idea; and b) denialism, where one rejects things because they don't want them to be veracious. It's a waste of time being a) complaining about b).
Ah, spin, still stuck on b) all these years later, I see, and still presumptuously and arrogantly blasting those with whom you disagree. Nice to see you've matured.
Pro-tip: Just because Tacitus has been "discussed" doesn't mean that it should be ejected entirely. You know, because skepticism applies both ways.
Chris Weimer wrote:
Pro-tip: Just because Tacitus has been "discussed" doesn't mean that it should be ejected entirely. You know, because skepticism applies both ways.
Why shouldn't the persecution of christians part of Annales 15.44 be ejected? Several of us presented arguments and cited published treatments. It's up to you to take up the argument and refute it if you disagree.
outhouse wrote:
Paul persecuted, and he himself was persecuted.
Of course, Paul gives no indication whatever that he persecuted people while Jesus was alive. Why didn't Paul persecute Jesus? Hadn't he heard of him until he was dead?
1. that our earliest manuscript of Tacitus is from the 12th century
Irrelevant. Plenty of manuscripts are only found in medieval times. That's pretty normal transmission.
2. no classical writer knew anything of christians relating to the fire
3. that the first ancient writer who wrote about a persecution of christians regarding the Neronian fire was the christian chronicler Sulpicius Severus
Except Tacitus. To claim otherwise is a circular argument. You can't a priori deny Tacitus and then say that no one mentions the incident. Moreoever, Suetonius mentions Christian persecution under Nero. It's not hard to figure out that Tacitus was drawing his own conclusions, which the ancient historians did quite often. Fire in Rome started by Nero? Check. Christian persecution under Nero? Double check. Ergo, Tacitus mused, Nero probably accused the Christians to get rid of the accusation that he himself started the fire. It's bait and switch to claim silence surrounding the Neronian persecution (as spin implied by #4) in saying that no one says that Christians were persecuted by Nero by stating that no one after Tacitus until Sulpicius connects it to the fire. spin bungled that one up.
Moreover, there's no motivation for Christians to write such scathing commentary about themselves, accusing themselves of belonging to an destructive superstition (exitiablilis superstitio), being terrible people who hate humanity (odio humani generis) coming from Judaea, that holy place in the time of Sulpicius, but clearly the source of evil (and thus, by extension, the source of a depraved guy named Jesus) who start fires. By contrast, Josephus' Testimonium Flavianum, which clearly has been tampered, says nothing evil about Jesus or Christians at all.
Cui bono? This makes Nero look good (since he was in Antium, and could not have started the fire) and Christians bad.
Suffice it to say, I'm skeptical that this is an interpolation or has been majorly tampered.
Sorry to intrude on this conversation, but I think the main points (of an abstract of ideas on the topic, not a completed work) of my post, and thus also the challenges that mythicsts rarely acknowledge let alone face have not been clearly presented here. The OP citing my point #5 misleads, since indeed #5 was an ad hoc addition, which I intended to bear little substantive quality to my original points. Let me try to address them again.
1) The first issue is acknowledging the flawed METHODOLOGY employed by Mythicists. For example, if it is the the case that the existence of a historical 1st c. Jew from Galilee rests on no literary evidence of this man in the time period he existed, no literary remains produced by himself, and no mention of him by any historian, etc., (which by the way would entail 98% of the people living then, see next paragraph) then the mythicists USE EXACTLY THE SAME METHODOLOGY in arguing for the non-existence of Jesus --- i.e., there is both no evidence of his existence NOR of his non-existence! If you're going to attack a position (the historicity of Joshua the Jew) then you cannot argue against it NOR can you argue its opposite using the same problematic methodology --- i.e., the non-evidence of existence or non-existence.
In fact, the methodology is more flawed, and suspect, when it comes to the mythicists' claims, i.e., in attempting to argue non-existence from lack of evidence. Since the overwhelming fact of all ancient pre-Google societies is that for 98% of the people that lived THERE IS NO EVIDENCE FOR THEIR EXISTENCE! So adopting the same methodology that the mythicists use in denying Jesus' historicity, why stop there? Indeed Joe the farmer of the Judean plans, his wife Betty and their 3.5 kids, AND 98% of other peasants of the ancient Palestinian landscape also did not exist according to this same methodology! This flawed methodology today would amount to something like claiming that if your name doesn't come up in Google search, you don't exist! If my analogy is errand, fine, but don't let it distract from my main point here.
2) The mythicists in general lack knowledge about literary conventions of the ancient world. A proper understanding of what "historians" were doing when they gave, for example Alexander the Great Aphrodite as his mom, or talked about the Roman emperor Vespasian performing miracles of his own in the Roman forum, etc., etc., etc. is prerequisite for understanding what the gospel writers were doing in carving, creating, etc. the literary (and theological) Christ. If the literary portrait of Christ is ahistorical, which most biblical scholars would conclude---or if Plutarch's Aphrodite mom for Alexander is ahistorical---it is a fallacy (constructed on ignorance about ancient literary conventions) to then jump to the conclusion that Jesus, or Alexander, therefore did not exist. This furthermore just reeks of childish and sloppy methodology and assumptions.
3) There is usually a blurring---an inability to properly distinguish based on ignorance about ancient literary conventions and what ancient writers were doing---between 2 radically different questions and/or quests. 1) Is the portrait of Jesus the Christ in the gospels historically accurate? and 2) Did Jesus exist? Most mythicists---untrained in ancient literature in general---assume that if the answer to the 1st question is no, then the second one is no. Completely errant! Or in general, they do not distinguish these 2 questions. Indeed, even more thorny, by what methodology and criteria would we draw conclusions to these questions?
4) And lastly, both the historical and literary evidence of late Christianity (late 2nd -- 3rd c. ff.) does indeed paint a mythical Christ. He is assimilated with and into other mythic dying-and-rising deities---Horus, Adonis, Dionysus, etc.---and into the strange mythic world of Gnosticism. Again, the mythicists make some fundamental mistakes here---being as they are untrained in ancient literature. This form of late Christianity is totally non- and in some cases even anti-Jewish---a late pagan development. Mythicists, and thus their name, erroneously project this form of Christianity back onto the purely Jewish "Jesus movement" (no such thing as Christianity existed yet) of the mid first c. as if this were the roots of Christianity---i.e., a mythic Jesus. Errant again!
These methodological flaws and assumptions founded on ignorance of the field of study generally go unacknowledged by Mythicists. But these present serious challenges to their claims. Again, this is just an initial pondering of the topic, which is much more complex, a prolegomena as it were.
So Paul writing in the middle of the first century has a Jesus who followed the Israelites around in the Exodus, and a Jesus who was the agent through whom God created the world, and this is not 'the roots of Christianity'?
And Paul has a Jesus whose body and blood are conjured up in a ritual cult meal, and this is not 'the roots of Christianity'?
How could Paul think that Jesus did not exist? He had been revealed through Scripture and was the agent through whom God created the world? Of course he existed in Paul's view.
Welcome, srd44 !
Your post show that the christian religion is not very different from the religion of Zeus/Jupiter, at least in the minds of the non-Jewish people living in the 1st century in Rome or Athens.
Well stated and thought out. 
