How did early Christian texts just go missing?

Discussion about the New Testament, apocrypha, gnostics, church fathers, Christian origins, historical Jesus or otherwise, etc.
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DCHindley
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Re: How did early Christian texts just go missing?

Post by DCHindley »

rakovsky wrote:
Secret Alias wrote:So the only way a person could write a story about black people is if the story writer was black?
No, but if someone is a black nationalist and then "coincidentally" "discovers' a lost 2nd c. document reasonably but uniquely alluding that Jesus was black, the "coincidence" seems to me an argument against its legitimacy.
As far as I, and I suspect you, know, is that the only thing that argues for M Smith being "gay" is the fact that he never married. He was originally an Episcopal priest for a while, but they, along with Anglicans generally, are free to marry. He was not "defrocked" or cast out of the priesthood for some misdeed. He simply asked to be released from his vow, and this was granted.

J D Crossan was a Roman Catholic priest (the non-marring kind, although priests of some RC rites actually can marry) who asked to be relieved of his vow, but he did that to marry a nun, who also asked to be relieved. I have never heard of anyone claiming to be Smith's lover, male or female.

Now Smith (M. not Ben) *was* even homelier than me, if that is even possible, so perhaps like the adolescent who redirects his/her unrequited sexual passions into guitar or piano playing, Smith redirected his into scholarship. Of course, by that analogy, I should have been a modern Lou Gehrig, but I had to settle for being Charlie Brown's favorite baseball player, Joe Shlabotnik, demoted to the minor leagues for a .004 batting average.

What you seem to be doing, rakovski, is simply assume that Smith was actively promoting homosexuality. You are going to have to come up with something better than "everyone knows ..." My orthopedic surgeon is happy to be a Trump supporter, and whenever I visit him he talks about Obama as if he wore an Arafat style head scarf and routinely carried an AK-47 with him, as he was "the most activist president ever in the history of the universe." Really? If you ask blacks (I have) he was not an activist at all.

DCH
Last edited by DCHindley on Mon Mar 20, 2017 3:53 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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rakovsky
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Re: How did early Christian texts just go missing?

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Michael BG wrote:
rakovsky wrote: So if I go to Cana, Sepphoris, or Nazareth in 100 AD and everyone in the area is saying that Nazareth was just founded 10 years before (90 AD) vs. 70 years before, obviously that would be the kind of fact that discussions with villagers could easily bring out.
Now you are saying that you can discover if something is false rather than true, such as the existence of Nazareth.
So what?
What I said that if Nazareth didn't exist in 30 AD, talking to villagers in 100 AD could bring that out. Nowhere did I say "you can discover if Nazareth's existence was false rather than true"

Are suggesting that I had been saying you could find out only what is true and not what is false?

My point was that you can find out relevant significant information. If you find out something is false, you have still gathered information, as to the falsity.
We have no idea what records the Romans kept at Caesarea after 70 CE relating to earlier events. If there are no records regarding Jesus or James or Joseph of Arimathea or Paul what difference does it make?
What you have just referred to would be an instance where "you can discover if something is true" (James' or Joseph of Arimathea's existence being true).
If the only people you can find in 100 CE who say they know about the life of Jesus are Christians what difference does it make?
If you do a good survey in 100 CE and no one like Josephus (writings dated c.90-100) heard about Jesus, it would be evidence tending to suggest Jesus was not a real person but a myth held only by the mythicists.
It would not be proof, but still relevant information.

I have no idea why you think that a serious researcher in 100 AD couldn't find out significant information about Jesus' story.
If people in Galilee had the Ben Pandera story in 100 AD, for example, then their holding the story would be significant information.
There is plenty of significant information, like the existence of Nazareth that could be gathered. Another significant piece of information: you could gather and compare the stories about Jesus given by the Christian bishops. If they went beyond the NT story, that would be relevant. If they included gnosticism or they heard of what we call the Mandylion of Edessa or the Turin Shroud, that would be relevant. There is plenty of relevant interesting information.

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rakovsky
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Re: How did early Christian texts just go missing?

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DCHindley wrote: Obama as if he wore an Arafat style head scarf and routinely carried an AK-47 with him, as he was "the most activist president ever in the history of the universe." Really? If you ask blacks (I have) he was not an activist at all.

DCH
Obama is not the most activist president, certainly. He seems to be in the Clinton mold. He even hired H.Clinton.
But....
If Obama found a secret ancient copy of a Christian writing alluding to Jesus being part of a "student radical" who went on to become a moderate king.....

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Re: How did early Christian texts just go missing?

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Secret Alias wrote: On the other side of the coin, you have Jesus and a disciple and some hints at ritual nudity which is paralleled by the Alexandrian baptism of the catechumen in the fragment. So the Alexandrian Christians are all gay now? Smith is gay, the Alexandrian Church is gay, Jesus and the disciple are gay - all to make an argument for forgery?
Robert Price of the Center for Inquiry (skeptics org.) writes about how M.Smith saw Jesus as gay:
In his analysis of the text, Smith had claimed to find the depiction of Jesus’ homosexual practice. But the portions of the text, chiefly the phrase, “and he stayed the night with him,” is only employed as a euphemism for a sexual tryst in modern times. And in light of his scene of the naked youth wearing only a sheet approaching Jesus for nocturnal initiation, Smith seemed to want us to read the similarly half-clad youth at Gethsemane as another nubile nudist seeking out Jesus for a sexual experience, only to be rounded up by the Gay-bashing cops, led by Judas (whose catty homosexual jealousy I suppose we might infer from his kiss and his betrayal!). But homosexuality was not persecuted in this manner in the ancient world. Rather, it represents the treatment of Gays in 1950s America, at the very time Smith claimed to have discovered the text. Carlson avoids mentioning Smith’s own homosexuality and the hatred he reportedly bore the church for opposing it
http://www.robertmprice.mindvendor.com/ ... l_hoax.htm

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Secret Alias
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Re: How did early Christian texts just go missing?

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But how does that get around the fact that you are trying to connect two unproven hypotheses to arrive at your proof i.e. Smith was not gay and the text is not gay to arrive at the gay text was written by a gay author.

Top Gun might have had a gay subplot. It might have been written by a gay writer. But where's the evidence? Tarantino doesn't provide any actual evidence and he misquotes the film to make his "clincher" argument. Those promoting the gay theory about Secret Mark act in a near identical manner.

It's all a bunch of nonsense. It just so happens that homosexuality has an effect on religious minds. It causes a bizarre reaction where normally rational people act impulsively and irrationally.

It might be because most religious people secretly want a stiff cock up their ass. But I wouldn't spend much time developing that thesis because it's stupid, but no more or less stupid than the whole gay theory about Morton Smith and/or Secret Mark
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Michael BG
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Re: How did early Christian texts just go missing?

Post by Michael BG »

rakovsky wrote:I have no idea why you think that a serious researcher in 100 AD couldn't find out significant information about Jesus' story.
Indeed!
I have tried to explain that there is very little which would be significant.

Perhaps my:
Now you are saying that you can discover if something is false rather than true
was badly worded.

If the Romans have no records regarding Jesus or James or Joseph of Arimathea or Paul it has no significance. It is not evidence that they existed and it is not evidence that they didn’t exist. It is only evidence that when you got to search the records no records existed. How is this significant?

I am saying if you find no evidence does this make the claim false? The alternative can be said. If you do find evidence such as:
If the only people you can find in 100 CE who say they know about the life of Jesus are Christians what difference does it make?
Does this make the claim false?

If you discover Nazareth was a new settlement in 90 CE how is this significant? If you discover that Nazareth had existed for at least 70 years in 100 CE how is this significant?

(I don’t think it is significant if Jesus lived in Nazareth or didn’t. It makes no difference to me and very little difference about what Jesus did during his lifetime assuming he did live.)
rakovsky wrote: If people in Galilee had the Ben Pandera story in 100 AD, for example, then their holding the story would be significant information.
You would know that the story was known in 100 CE and not created after this date. What difference does it make? The story could have been created within one year of Jesus’s death as soon as some people went round saying that they had seen Jesus after his death.

It you could find Gnostic Christians in 100 CE why would it be significant rather than interesting?

If Christians had stories not recorded in our gospels what difference does it make?

Today we have written “evidence” and we have to use our intellectual facilities to determine if we think which parts if any we think are historical. In 100 CE you hopefully will have people who can tell you stories, but you will still need to use your intellectual facilities to determine if you believe these stories as history. Even if you found Roman records there is still the possibility that what you are shown has been manufactured. This is why while lots of the information you gather might be interesting most will not be the killing blow to determine historicity.

However I do concede that there is one thing which would be significant and that would be no Christians at all! I think it would be hard to maintain that Christianity started in the first century and continued down to today if there were no Christians at all in 100 CE.
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Re: How did early Christian texts just go missing?

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Michael BG wrote:I do concede that there is one thing which would be significant and that would be no Christians at all! I think it would be hard to maintain that Christianity started in the first century and continued down to today if there were no Christians at all in 100 CE.
Nice. You found something significant that you might be able to learn if you lived in the realm that Christians evangelized in 100 AD.

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Re: How did early Christian texts just go missing?

Post by rakovsky »

Secret Alias wrote:
Top Gun might have had a gay subplot. It might have been written by a gay writer. But where's the evidence? Tarantino doesn't provide any actual evidence and he misquotes the film to make his "clincher" argument. Those promoting the gay theory about Secret Mark act in a near identical manner.
(A) Tarantino is a Hollywood insider and excellent director with great insights on film.
(B) The screenwriter said that the director made those changes intentionally and that now the implication of a gay aspect is "unavoidable."

Both A and B are evidence as to a gay aspect to the movie, whether you ultimately find that evidence persuasive.

Do you think X MEN had a gay aspect?


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DCHindley
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Re: How did early Christian texts just go missing?

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I never detected a gay subplot in Top Gun. I think it was modeled after the behavior of fighter pilots involved in the navy Tail-Hook scandal, who were hardly gay in any way shape or form.

Can we change the channel?

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Re: How did early Christian texts just go missing?

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My point DCH was not to encourage speculation about "gay subplots" and conspiracies but rather to ridicule them. Tarantino is obviously mocking the act of over analysing movies. It is not a "dissertation." It's done tongue in cheek at a party scene in an art house film. The whole act of determining "who is gay" and "gay conspiracies" is worse than stupid. Only someone stupid - *cough* rakovsky - would not see that Tarantino and I are making fun of his seriousness
“Finally, from so little sleeping and so much reading, his brain dried up and he went completely out of his mind.”
― Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra, Don Quixote
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