evidence for Christianity before the third Roman Jewish conflict

[dewitness]

You might be aware that Epictetus mentions Christians from around 110 A.D. He taught at Nicopolis, the place where Titus mentions there being a Christian community. If you have Christians there at this date you must surely date the Christian movement's beginning several decades before.

You seem not to understand the issue. The mention of the word Christians does not automatically mean it refers to the Jesus cult.

Based on Justin Martyr, Simon Magus, the magician and his followers were called Christians since the time of Claudius c 41-54 CE.

Simon Magus the magician was considered a God and was worshiped as a God by almost all Samaritans and some from other nations.

The followers of Menander a disciple of Simon Magus were also called Christians.

There appears to have been people called Christians or Chrestians but they were NOT from the Jesus cult.

Justin's First Apology

.... There was a Samaritan, Simon, a native of the village called Gitto, who in the reign of Claudius Caesar, and in your royal city of Rome, did mighty acts of magic, by virtue of the art of the devils operating in him. He was considered a god..... And almost all the Samaritans, and a few even of other nations, worship him, and acknowledge him as the first god........ And a man, Meander, also a Samaritan, of the town Capparetaea, a disciple of Simon, and inspired by devils, we know to have deceived many while he was in Antioch by his magical art.

He persuaded those who adhered to him that they should never die, and even now there are some living who hold this opinion of his.

And there is Marcion, a man of Pontus, who is even at this day alive, and teaching his disciples to believe in some other god greater than the Creator. And he, by the aid of the devils, has caused many of every nation to speak blasphemies, and to deny that God is the maker of this universe, and to assert that some other being, greater than He, has done greater works.

All who take their opinions from these men, are, as we before said, called Christians..

[dewitness]

Acts of the Apostles is an extremely significant book based on the fact that it is Canonised and is found in virtually all Codices that have been recovered with a New Testament.

Once Acts is examined it is observed that the author claims that Jesus had already ascended in a cloud BEFORE there were people called Christians.

In Acts it is stated that people were first called Christians in Antioch under the teaching of SAUL and Barnabas.

Acts 1.26-28

Then departed Barnabas to Tarsus, for to seek Saul: 26 And when he had found him, he brought him unto Antioch.

And it came to pass , that a whole year they assembled themselves with the church, and taught much people. And the disciples were called Christians first in Antioch.

27 And in these days came prophets from Jerusalem unto Antioch.

28 And there stood up one of them named Agabus, and signified by the Spirit that there should be great dearth throughout all the world: which came to pass in the days of Claudius Caesar.

There were NO persons called Christians when the supposed Jesus was on earth.

The so-called Jesus of Nazareth NEVER EVER started the Christian movement based on Acts.

In Sinaiticus gMark, on the day Jesus was Killed the Jews rejected him and considered him a blasphemer and in addition his disciples had fled when he was arrested, Peter had denied knowing Jesus and Judas had betrayed him. In the same Sinaiticus gMark, the disciples were not told that Jesus was resurrected so that they could meet him in Galilee.

Sinaiticus gMark shows that there was NO Christian cult up to the day the supposed Jesus of Nazareth was crucified.

How did the Jesus cult start??

The start of the Jesus cult of Christians is a product of fiction.

The author of the Acts of Apostles INVENTED or COPIED a most fictitious chronology for the start of the Jesus cult.

It is claimed that the disciples of Resurrected Jesus were incapable of or without the power to start Christianity WITHOUT a Holy Ghost.

The start of the Jesus cult of Christians is DIRECTLY related to a fiction story about a Holy Ghost and a Blinded man called Saul.

In Acts 9, a character called Saul is Blinded by a bright light and hears a voice claiming to be of Jesus.

Later, the Blinded Saul RECEIVES a Holy Ghost and then his Blindness is instantly cured.

Acts 9:17 NAS

So Ananias departed and entered the house, and after laying his hands on him said, "Brother Saul, the Lord Jesus, who appeared to you on the road by which you were coming, has sent me so that you may regain your sight and be filled with the Holy Spirit." 18 And immediately there fell from his eyes something like scales, and he regained his sight, and he got up and was baptized.

It is clear that the story of the conversion of SAUL is utter fiction but it gets worse.

Saul is Paul.

Saul became a Christian by Fiction.

The story in Acts of the Apostles about Saul and Christians is a product of fiction.

In the Pauline Corpus, Saul is Paul

Acts of the Apostles and the Pauline Corpus are products of fiction and do not represent the history of the Jesus cult of Christians.

[avi]

You might be aware that Epictetus mentions Christians from around 110 A.D.

You may not be aware, hanery, that I am not aware of very much at all, but I am especially uninformed regarding Epictetus. The best information about him, that I have been able to uncover, suggests, contrarily that he wrote nothing whatsoever, about christians or christianity.

I am aware that you neglected to include a link to a reference, supporting your contention.

I am guilty of the same offense, you will note that I have failed to offer any links to web sites supporting my view that
(a) "Paul's" epistles were composed after the gospels, and
(b) they had been written in the middle of the second century, a decade after the third Roman Jewish conflict.

avi

[avi]

It has already been proven that the letter was an E by ultra-violet light.

You did not prove it. You reported what others proved.

a. That's not the issue, spin. No one cares whether or not dewitness reported it, or proved it. (He certainly never implied, or suggested, that he had himself, personally, "proved" it, so your "criticism" of his post, strikes me, at least, as non-sequitur.) The issue is whether or not this document bears witness to obvious tampering. It does, in my opinion.

b. The real question here, then, in my view, becomes this: We are in possession of a document in which at least ONE error had been introduced, deliberately, to compel acceptance of a change in the interpretation of the author's original intent, so, then, why should we feel at ease employing this corrupted text to prove anything? What other errors had been deliberately introduced, even before the copying of the manuscript? Was that single letter, an oversight, one of the "corrections" to the original text, which the scribe had neglected to include as he prepared the new copy?

In that regard, the mystery of the first verse of Mark, 1:1, seems pertinent: Codex Sinaiticus excludes the words "Son of God", but, unless I am badly mistaken, Vaticanus includes the words.

I draw the conclusion from that presumed discrepancy, that Vaticanus arose AFTER Sinaiticus had been created. Some authority came along, and decided that "son of God" needed to be added. There is a long history of political forces at work, changing the original texts, to conform to some preconceived notion. For the underlying quest to determine the sequence of events leading up to creation of the Christian church, it is imperative to identify, to the best of our ability, the condition of the texts used in seeking reconstruction. I argue that even the most egregiously distorted texts, were nonetheless originally crafted after the third Roman Jewish conflict, not before.

I would be keen for some forum member to identify the text or texts written earlier than 140 CE, which could serve to disprove my opinion.

[andrewcriddle]

You might be aware that Epictetus mentions Christians from around 110 A.D.

You may not be aware, hanery, that I am not aware of very much at all, but I am especially uninformed regarding Epictetus. The best information about him, that I have been able to uncover, suggests, contrarily that he wrote nothing whatsoever, about christians or christianity.

See testimonia
Epictetus said:

Therefore, if madness can produce this attitude of mind toward the things which have just been mentioned, and also habit, as with the Galileans, cannot reason and demonstration teach a man that God has made all things in the universe, and the universe itself, to be free from hindrance and to contain its end in itself, and the parts of it to serve the needs of the whole?

Galileans is regarded by most scholars as a reference to Christianity. (As in Julian.)

Andrew Criddle

[dewitness]

You might be aware that Epictetus mentions Christians from around 110 A.D.

You may not be aware, hanery, that I am not aware of very much at all, but I am especially uninformed regarding Epictetus. The best information about him, that I have been able to uncover, suggests, contrarily that he wrote nothing whatsoever, about christians or christianity.

See testimonia
Epictetus said:

Therefore, if madness can produce this attitude of mind toward the things which have just been mentioned, and also habit, as with the Galileans, cannot reason and demonstration teach a man that God has made all things in the universe, and the universe itself, to be free from hindrance and to contain its end in itself, and the parts of it to serve the needs of the whole?

Galileans is regarded by most scholars as a reference to Christianity. (As in Julian.)

Andrew Criddle

In other words, Epictetus did not mention the Jesus cult but it was presumed that any mention of Galileans refer to Christians. That is wholly unacceptable.

The passage you quoted is similar to the Creation story in Hebrew Scripture so can also refer to Jewish Beliefs.

1. Josephus the Jew claimed he was in control of the government of the Galileans.
2. Judas the Galilean was a Jew of the Fourth sect and believed in GOD alone.
3. Galileans were Jews of Galilee.


Life of Josephus

He then sent his brother Simon, and Jonathan, the son of Sisenna, and about a hundred armed men, to Jerusalem, to Simon, the son of Gamaliel, (16) in order to persuade him to induce the commonalty of Jerusalem to take from me the government over the Galileans, and to give their suffrages for conferring that authority upon him.

Josephus' Antiquities of the Jews 13.5.6.

But when he heard that the generals of Demetrius's forces were come to the city Cadesh with a numerous army, (the place lies between the land of the Tyrians and Galilee,)for they supposed they should hereby draw him out of Syria, in order to preserve Galilee, and that he would not overlook the Galileans, who were his own people...

Antiquities of the Jews 18.1. 6.

But of the fourth sect of Jewish philosophy, Judas the Galilean was the author. These men agree in all other things with the Pharisaic notions; but they have an inviolable attachment to liberty, and say that God is to be their only Ruler and Lord.

[avi]

You might be aware that Epictetus mentions Christians from around 110 A.D. He taught at Nicopolis, the place where Titus mentions there being a Christian community. If you have Christians there at this date you must surely date the Christian movement's beginning several decades before.

andrewcriddle
See testimonia http://www.textexcavation.com/testimonia.html

Therefore, if madness can produce this attitude of mind toward the things which have just been mentioned, and also habit, as with the Galileans, cannot reason and demonstration teach a man that God has made all things in the universe, and the universe itself, to be free from hindrance and to contain its end in itself, and the parts of it to serve the needs of the whole?

Dissertations 4.7.5-6

So far as I can determine, Andrew, "Dissertations" is a conglomerate, from which, the more popular "Encheiridion", had been condensed, by Arrian.
http://ia700301.us.archive.org/25/items ... icrich.pdf

If one then searches Encheiridion, here's what we find:
References to: Quantity of citations in the text of Epictetus/Arrian
Plato.......................6
Socrates.................30
Hercules..................9
Zeus......................40
Zeno.......................8
Jesus......................0
Paul, or epistles........0
Galileans.................0
Philo of Alexandria.....0
Josephus.................0

I conclude from this, and from having spent the better part of two days, reading the English translations of Encheiridion, plus The Discourses, and The Golden Sayings, that Epictetus was neither a Christian, nor a witness for Christianity. Here is a typical comment from the writings of Epictetus' "Enchiridion"

Thus Socrates became perfect, improving himself by everything, attending to nothing but reason. And though you are not yet a Socrates, you ought, however, to live as one desirous of becoming a Socrates.

These are not the words, in the early part of the second century, of someone who had encountered Jesus, or one of his apostles,
or who has become a follower of a presumed nascent Jesus movement.

I continue to believe that there is NO evidence of Christianity before the middle of the second century, at the earliest, assuming that the copies extant today, in our possession, represent genuine compositions created in the second century (Justin Martyr), and not one or two (or ten) centuries later, as works of literature, as seems to me to be the more probable. I deny that Paul's writings were found anywhere before the conclusion of the third Roman Jewish conflict.

This forward to the English translation of Encheiridion, is most instructive, explaining the "Christian" interest in Epictetus' writings:

The style of the Dissertations, ...contain also many repetitions, redundancies, incoherencies; and are absolutely devoid of any sort of order or system in their arrangement. Each chapter has generally something of a central theme, but beyond this all is chaos. ...
Arrian compiled and condensed from the Dissertations the small handbook of the Stoic philosophy known as the Encheiridion of Epictetus. This little work...had the distinction....of being adopted as a religious work in the early Christian church.

So, Epictetus' work had been adopted, not unlike Thomas Aquinas' adoption of Aristotle. This adoption did not imply that Epictetus served as witness to the existence of Jesus, any more than did Aristotle's writings.

Galileans is regarded by most scholars as a reference to Christianity. (As in Julian.)

Sorry, Andrew, I simply disagree with you here.

Julian lived two centuries after Epictetus. I sincerely doubt that the trouble in Galilee, in the second century, continued in the same form two centuries later. Galileans under Julian, could well have been Jews, or Christians. Galileans under Trajan, could also have been Jews, or some other sect, including Zoroastrians, or followers of Hercules. I deny that the early second century use of the term, "Galileans",
is synonymous with "early christians". First, we would need to establish that Epictetus actually used the term, and thus far, I haven't found it. Secondly, we would need to affirm that he had met christians, who were called by him, Galileans. I haven't found that text, yet.

avicenna

[Leucius Charinus]

There should have been bishops of Rome and other major cities including Peter, Clement, Ignatius and Paul who were executed in Rome.

You seem to be citing hagiography.

That's incorrect spin. These citations are derived from the authorship of the so-called gnostic heretics and the genre of New Testament Apocrypha, aka the non canonical acts and gospels, aka the Gnostic acts and gospels.

Christian hagiography is classified as a separate genre, seen as the invention of Athanasius c.360 CE in his awe-inspiring fictional "Life of Anthony", and derive from the authorship of the orthodox bullshit artists who were imperially sponsored tax-exempt Bishops of the Church.

[Peter Kirby]

I remembered that I didn't put Epictetus on my site for a reason. In the period between 70 and 135 AD, nobody (especially among the educated) in the Roman Empire could have been ignorant of the troubles caused in the east that resulted in the rise of a new imperial dynasty. That Epictetus calls them Galileans instead of Judeans may just be his way of distinguishing them from the peaceful Jews, or his way of indicating that much of the war was fought in Galilee, or a synonym for the fourth way of the Zealots... all of which appear even more likely if we do not suppose very wide-spread and severe persecution of Christians in the period prior to 110 AD (without which, it would be difficult to remark on their madness in the face of death as a common and known item).

I also look forward to any more exact citation and context for the quotation attributed here to Epictetus.

[Leucius Charinus]

Epictetus is referring to the lawless wild zealot inhabitants of Galilee - and "their madness in the face of death". (What happened at Masada?) The idea that he is referring to Christians, an idea that has been around for quite some time (an example is reflected in the introduction of "Against the Galilaeans" by the Emperor Julian, by Wilmer Cave Wright) is essentially an example of confirmation bias.

Julian, like Epictetus, always calls the Christians Galilaeans because he wishes to emphasise that this was a local creed, "the creed of fishermen" ...

Andrew furnished a fair source at: http://www.textexcavation.com/testimonia.html

Ειτα υπο μανιας μεν δυναται τις ουτως διατεθηναι προς ταυτα και υπο εθους οι Γαλιλαιοι, υπο λογου δε και αποδειξεως ουδεις δυναται μαθειν, οτι ο θεος παντα πεποιηκεν τα εν τω κοσμω και αυτον τον κοσμον ολον μεν ακωλυτον και αυτοτελη, τα εν μερει δ αυτου προς χρειαν των ολων;

Therefore, if madness can produce this attitude of mind toward the things which have just been mentioned, and also habit, as with the Galileans, cannot reason and demonstration teach a man that God has made all things in the universe, and the universe itself, to be free from hindrance and to contain its end in itself, and the parts of it to serve the needs of the whole?

Emperor Julian was the first to popularise (NEGATIVELY) the term as applied to the Christians, and he did this by legislating that the Christians were to henceforth be known as "Galilaeans". It is possible to offer suggestions why Julian did this. Namely that he saw the Christians as " lawless wild zealots" who were in the process of destroying the old traditional values of the Greek intellectual tradition and the reverence of Plato, Asclepius and the pagan conceptions of divinity.