evidence for Christianity before the third Roman Jewish conflict

[Stuart]

There are some interesting comments by Livia Capponi about the earlier Diaspora Revolt in Hadrian and the Christians edited by Mark Rizzi

I just have to comment on the e-book. It looks interesting but it's criminal to price it at $95.

For the publishing house, they are getting at least $65 a copy. But I bet the authors are getting less than $2. The traditional publishing house deal is a bad deal for scholars who have low volume books. It results in almost no money for the author, and a prohibitive pricing scheme just to have a hard copy around. Who the heck is going to spend $95 on a what really is a research paper?

The idea of research is maximum accessibility for maximum review and dissemination of your work. Its worldwide, everybody is electronic now. Going the route of e-book puts out your work for say $7-10 and gives the authors $5-7 per copy. Skip the paper version, unless the demand becomes great enough. More people will see your work, it will be reasonably priced for anyone to load on their tablet, and you'll make 5x or 7x the money per sale, and with a lower price you'll probably see an exponentially greater sales.

Get with the 21st century.

[Peter Kirby]

There are some interesting comments by Livia Capponi about the earlier Diaspora Revolt in Hadrian and the Christians edited by Mark Rizzi

I just have to comment on the e-book. It looks interesting but it's criminal to price it at $95.

For the publishing house, they are getting at least $65 a copy. But I bet the authors are getting less than $2. The traditional publishing house deal is a bad deal for scholars who have low volume books. It results in almost no money for the author, and a prohibitive pricing scheme just to have a hard copy around. Who the heck is going to spend $95 on a what really is a research paper?

The idea of research is maximum accessibility for maximum review and dissemination of your work. Its worldwide, everybody is electronic now. Going the route of e-book puts out your work for say $7-10 and gives the authors $5-7 per copy. Skip the paper version, unless the demand becomes great enough. More people will see your work, it will be reasonably priced for anyone to load on their tablet, and you'll make 5x or 7x the money per sale, and with a lower price you'll probably see an exponentially greater sales.

Get with the 21st century.

Quite right!

[dave b]

I would agree with an earlier poster that Celsum in his attack on Christianity doesn’t appear to mention Paul.

You would think that would be a bit of a so called ‘elephant in the room’ if you accept the dating of contra Celsum as second century?

What 2nd century critic of Christianity would fail to attack or even mention Paul?

Is it possible that it Celsum was writing in the First century?

Origen assumes that Celsum had died along time ago and suggests two potential authors one from the time of Nero and the other from the time of Hadrian.

Modern intellectuals in their hubris dismiss this as nonsense.

With the idea that they are better informed 2000 years later to date it, than another more contemporary intellectual from circa 240AD.

As if modern intellectual historians have more material available to them now than Origen had then.

Modern intellectual historians date it based on the strong inference in a quotation of Celsum from Origen that there was at the time Celsum wrote more than one emperor.

Which Origen appears to miss as a potential dating point.

Which narrows it down, according to them, to two dates of dual emperorship in the 2nd century.

Although, based on that, there is a third hypothetical date of 69AD.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Year_of_the_Four_Emperors

The second very strange thing about the Celsum document, apart from ignoring the front man Paul, is the absence in such a document to any formal dedication to any emperors which must be strange to the point of unique for such an extensive ‘political’ defence of Roman Empire document.


The Celsum that Origen speculated was the author was most probably this one; when there was more than one emperor.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aulus_Marius_Celsus


It is hypothetically conceivable I suppose that despite this characters ability to bend with the wind he may have been reluctant to nail his allegiance at such a difficult time.

If you were to outrageously contemplate a circa 70AD for Celsum you would need to look for things in it that shouldn’t be there; as well as things that should be that aren’t.

Like the absence of Paul.

Celsum talks about heresies and internal Christian disputes like Marcionism and Valentinianism without mentioning the names of the 2nd century advocates.

However Celsum does name one heretic when he can, but that is a first century one?


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simonians

You would have thought that the well documented 2nd century squabble over the
Marcion Gospel and disputes over tampering with the original would have been a tempting target for Celsum.

You would also have expected Celsum to have had a pop at the Christians burning Rome thing?

Which was Tacitus mantra by 110AD?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Fire_of_Rome

[andrewcriddle]

Celsum talks about heresies and internal Christian disputes like Marcionism and Valentinianism without mentioning the names of the 2nd century advocates.

However Celsum does name one heretic when he can, but that is a first century one?


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simonians

You would have thought that the well documented 2nd century squabble over the
Marcion Gospel and disputes over tampering with the original would have been a tempting target for Celsum.

Celsus knows of Marcellians who follow Marcellina and Harpocratians who follow Salome... This is almost certainly a (garbled) reference to the 2nd century Carpocratiians Marcellina was a woman Carpocratian leader in the 2nd century.

Andrew Criddle

[dave b]

Yes that is a good example but there maybe another one.

I suppose I read contra celsum and then sort of thought about it.

From a different hypothesis on the date and what it is etc.

Then to test it you need to read it again and name and date check it etc.

Which I have over the last couple of days.

It is quite a big book.

I think one of the problems with -isms, -ians and -ites is that Origen can appear to take the ideas/theology associated with them, as laid out by Celsum, and attribute and originate them to his more contemporary proponents.

There is a potential problem that some of these so called heresies may have had antecedents.

And for that matter some of these heresies may have been closer to the more original interpretations.

Thus, Marcionism; that the old testament god was a bit of a shit compared to JC and therefore there was a disconnect and theological dissonance.

And other more radical ‘christian’ later ‘Gnostic’ like theology, that is also in contra celsum, about the material world being an illusion simulated by ‘Satan’.

Which persisted or re-appeared with the Cathars.

Actually it is not quite as cranky as it sounds as it has kind of modern variants eg the film matrix and the modern computer simulation theories which is doing the rounds with level headed scientists of some repute.

https://www.scientificamerican.com/arti ... imulation/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simulation_hypothesis

These so called heretics from around 150AD obviously thought that the ‘orthodox’ interpretation/ theology we have now; was heresy.

And we have to rely on people like Irenaeus to date this Carpocrates of Alexandria associated stuff anyway.

The more powerful argument for a post 130AD date would be the Antinous and the cult which Celsus actually names.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antinous

And that was obviously dated circa 130 AD and is fairly well documented with a lot of concrete and metal coin evidence etc.

..Celsus scoffingly alleges,

…."Believe that he whom I introduce to thee is the Son of God, although he was shamefully bound, and disgracefully punished, and very recently was most contumeliously treated before the eyes of all men;" …


But it remains weird that Celsum doesn’t pull a ‘recent’ Paul into the argument?

[MrMacSon]

Origen assumes that Celsum had died along time ago and suggests two potential authors one from the time of Nero and the other from the time of Hadrian ...

Modern intellectual historians date it [The True Word/Discourse] based on the strong inference in a quotation of Celsum from Origen that there was at the time Celsum wrote more than one emperor (which Origen appears to miss as a potential dating point).

Which narrows it down, according to them, to two dates of dual emperorship in the 2nd century¹.

Although, based on that, there is a third hypothetical date of 69AD.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Year_of_the_Four_Emperors


The second very strange thing about the Celsum document (apart from ignoring the front man Paul), is the absence in such a document to any formal dedication to any emperors which must be strange to the point of unique for such an extensive ‘political’ defence of Roman Empire document.


The Celsum that Origen speculated was the author was most probably this one¹; when there was more than one emperor.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aulus_Marius_Celsus


It is hypothetically conceivable I suppose that despite this characters ability to bend with the wind he may have been reluctant to nail his allegiance at such a difficult time.

If you were to outrageously contemplate a circa 70AD for Celsum you would need to look for things in it that shouldn’t be there; as well as things that should be that aren’t - like the absence of Paul.

Celsum talks about heresies and internal Christian disputes like Marcionism and Valentinianism without mentioning the names of the 2nd century advocates.

However Celsum does name one heretic when he can, but that is a first century one?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simonians


You would have thought that the well documented 2nd century squabble over the Marcion Gospel and disputes over tampering with the original would have been a tempting target for Celsum.

You would also have expected Celsum to have had a pop at the Christians burning Rome thing?
.

¹ There are several reasonably prominent people by the name of Celsus in the mid-late 1st century to the early 2nd c, though of course Origen's Celsus does not have to be one of them -

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Celsus_(disambiguation) --

• Celsus (or Kelsos), an opponent of Christianity quoted by Origen
• Aulus Cornelius Celsus (c. 25 BC – c. 50 AD), an encyclopedist best known for his medical writings
• Aulus Marius Celsus, a Roman senator who's career began under Nero
• Tiberius Julius Celsus Polemaeanus, commonly known as Celsus (ca. 45 – before ca. 120); Roman senator, consul. Ephesus
• Publius Juventius Celsus (AD 67– AD 130), a Roman jurist, praetor, governor, consul
• Tiberius Julius Candidus Marius Celsus, aka Tiberius Julius Candidus; a Roman senator who lived during the Flavian dynasty.

[dave b]

I have not read all the previous posts.

However as to early dateable Christian documents there is the epistle of Barnabas.

It is very well documented and cross referenced in 2nd century material and there is a hard late 4th century copy of it in codex sinaticus.

It is dated at between 70AD and the second revolt of 132AD

…..This passage clearly places Barnabas after the destruction of the Second Temple in AD 70. But it also places Barnabas before the Bar Kochba Revolt of AD 132, after which there could have been no hope that the Romans would help to rebuild the temple. The document must come from the period between the two revolts….

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epistle_of_Barnabas

Tertullian, a level headed intellectual for an early christian, wrote around 210AD an attack on Marcion another well documented figure from around 140AD.

Marcion had said around 140AD, according to Tertullian, that there were loads of gospels kicking around then that had been tampered with and which had drifted from the originals.

And that Marcion said that he had restored the gospel of Luke to its original, the others being so corrupted that they were beyond restoration.

The so called Marcion gospel of Luke is available from Tertullian’s extensive quotations from it; not much different really to what we have now.

It is highly improbable that Tertullian would invent or forge a story casting doubt on the ‘detailed’ authenticity of extant gospels.

Marcion’s theology was very radical; basically wanting to dump the old testament as immoral crap and the god in it as some defective or inferior one to the real one.

Marcionism was a major heresy that continued for sometime and addressed the long running theological paradox as to why a good god would create or permit evil etc.

[The ‘long running’ argument was addressed by Plato in his republic and there was an earlier one whose name began with X? ]

I don’t know what Bart D. Ehrman, who is famous for gospel drift, thinks of Marcion’s gospel of Luke.

Any answers?

On Contra Celsum again it is a very strange document.

Apart from being unattributed and undedicated and no mention of Paul.

It is a dogs dinner as far as where is the author coming from?

Epicurean, Platonist, neo Platonists, bog standard Hellenistic/ Roman pagan polytheist; as well as ‘my Jewish friend said that Christianity is shit’ in order to develop another argument.

After having himself, Celsus, already trashed Judiasm.

The Hadrian era date ie circ 130Adv would make some kind of sense as regards a lack of dedication to an emperor.

As it trashes the Hadrian Antinous cult and the deification of Hadrian’s supposed ‘gay’ lover.

There is also the possibility that it was, ie Contra Celsum, a all things to all men general attack on christianity so that anti christians could pick out of it what they wanted and thus a composite of anti christian material.

It is also possible that it was a rolling document that ran into several editions.

If the christians can interpolate and amend their ‘gospel’ documents why can’t anti christians?

And Origen has the 7th edition?

It could be that the ‘original’ Celsus’ was a creation of the intellectual centre in the east.

Drafted by a committee and ‘ghost’ written to turn it into an integral polemical document?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Library_of_Celsus


The absence of Pauline material juxtaposed with overtly spurious material linking up christianity with irrelevant sects and theologies like the Antinous one.

Can only suggest one of several things.

Celsum didn’t recognise Paul as important or relevant to Christianity at the time he wrote it, because he wasn’t.

Celsum regarded Paul’s material as vacuous Stoic gibberish and beneath intellectual contempt; and a bod falling off his donkey during a epileptic fit and going sun blind and believing that his recovery was a divine miracle was nothing of note.

But it so easy to have a pop that it is difficult to understand why he left it alone.

You would have also expected Celsum to pull in the Pauline obey the emperor because God put him there stuff.

If just to draw out, again, the chaotic nature of ‘extant’ Christian theology?

Maybe Celsum’s central critique of Christianity being a religion of the stupid, low class, women and uneducated etc didn’t sit well with Paul as a member of ruling class and elite?

My interest is early Christianity being a proto theological communism.

Engels adopts the idea that the revelation of John was written or dated at the time of Nero.

https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/w ... /index.htm

Around 1844 Marx and Engels following Fuerbach thought that early Christianity was a theological expression of ‘instinctive’ communist ideals.

They changed their minds after Stirner wrote his book in 1845.

Then Darwin in his second book around 1870 gave a scientific base or explanation of cooperative ‘social instincts’.

Then after that a theological expression of ‘instinctive’ communist ideals was back up for grabs.

And Kautsky ran with it with a massive 5 volume tome


https://www.marxists.org/archive/kautsk ... /index.htm


Modern post 1920 Marxism put it back in the trash can as metaphysical garbage used to justify oppression etc