If Discussing Early Christianity Were a Sport What Would the Rules Be?

Discussion about the New Testament, apocrypha, gnostics, church fathers, Christian origins, historical Jesus or otherwise, etc.
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GakuseiDon
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Re: If Discussing Early Christianity Were a Sport What Would the Rules Be?

Post by GakuseiDon »

Secret Alias wrote: Fri Sep 23, 2022 1:56 pm2. Rules governing the dating of Jesus
(a) there was no consensus in antiquity as to when Jesus lived or even if he "lived" or "existed" in the ordinary sense of the word, at all. One might restrict the discussion to existence of Pilate a historical figure to whom Jesus seems to have been attached. Nevertheless there was no agreement what year (i) Jesus first 'appeared', (ii) when Jesus was crucified and (iii) how many years lay between (i) and (ii).
Is it accurate to say that in antiquity there was "no agreement what year" Jesus was crucified? It makes it sound like there were arguments in antiquity about what year Jesus was crucified. I don't think that was the case. There may have been various ideas, but I don't think they particularly cared what year that was. Trying to identify the year of crucifixion is a modern fascination. There was criticism of gnostics using the generation of Aeons to donate numbers of months and years, but even there "what year" is not being argued. In antiquity, crucifixion under Pilate seemed to be enough.

Perhaps a better wording might be: "there were no concerns in antiquity over getting agreement on what year (i) Jesus first 'appeared', (ii) what year Jesus was crucified and (iii) how many years lay between (i) and (ii)."

That goes onto my own contribution: that an ancient writer doesn't mention something doesn't mean they didn't know it. E.g. "Paul didn't know X about Jesus" vs "Paul doesn't mention X"
Last edited by GakuseiDon on Fri Sep 23, 2022 2:52 pm, edited 2 times in total.
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MrMacSon
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Re: If Discussing Early Christianity Were a Sport What Would the Rules Be?

Post by MrMacSon »

Secret Alias wrote: Fri Sep 23, 2022 6:58 am
My point was just to bring attention to some facts I've thought about for a while:
  • By the time of Irenaeus a creed was established to 'acknowledge' that Jesus was crucified under Pilate. I've never understood that. It might be that there were dissenting voices i.e. that Jesus was crucified at a generic 'time' or another time or it may be that Irenaeus was finding common ground that everyone could agree on (= ecumenism).
  • there were those who said that Jesus appeared in the 7th year of Pilate
  • Luke says that it was fifteen year of Pilate1
  • Irenaeus says that there were many many years from appearance to crucifixion (something like 19)
  • the apostolic tradition of Hippolytus which seems to be related to (4) and possibly goes back to Papias
That's a wide range of dates. From 20 CE to some time in the 50s. And I think more accurately we can say:

a) an appearance either in the 7th year OR the 15th year1 (or possibly also the 15th of Tybi?)1
b) a crucifixion a year later or 19 years later (the three year ministry idea seems to have developed from a literal reading of John which wasn't intended cf the ending of chapter 21 of John were an intentional vagueness characterizes the whole composition viz there were MANY Passovers and these were just SOME of the Passovers).
1 Luke 3:1-3 and, apparently, an embellishment of the incipit of the Marcionite Euangelion:


3 In the fifteenth year of the reign of Emperor Tiberius, when Pontius Pilate was governor of Judea, and Herod was rulera of Galilee, and his brother Philip rulerb of the region of Ituraea and Trachonitis, and Lysanias rulerc of Abilene, 2 during the high priesthood of Annas and Caiaphas, the word of God came to John son of Zechariah in the wilderness. 3 He went into all the region around the Jordan, proclaiming a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins


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MrMacSon
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Re: If Discussing Early Christianity Were a Sport What Would the Rules Be?

Post by MrMacSon »

Secret Alias wrote: Fri Sep 23, 2022 8:41 am 3. modern scholarship overestimates or misrepresents or deliberately distorts the historical understanding or 'reality' of the man Jesus.
fify (& me & perhaps others: I think it's a very good overview)


3. modern scholarship overestimates, misrepresents or deliberately distorts the historical understanding or 'reality' of the man biblical Jesus

I don't know why this has come to be. I assume it is a reaction to the 'mythical' aspects of Jesus being taken to be both man and God to have supernatural powers and supernatural 'effects' - i.e. resurrection, healing etc. But this scholarly reaction to 'theology' has created what can be argued to be a worse lie. A worse lie because, in a field that is supposed to be 'sensitive' to and based on 'historical reality,' a wholly artificial and ultimately modern construct has been created.

It's like when Netflix does a period piece in an age where blacks, gays, Jews, women were all subordinate and a 'new reality' is presented where society at large is the complete opposite (inclusive etc). I don't know how scholarship gets sucked into this false construct called 'the historical Jesus.' But I think it stems from the same forces which 'fast track' inclusive values (i.e. that you can pick and choose what 'facts' to accept and ignore based on subjective presuppositions. I don't know which is 'cause' or 'consequence' here.

Perhaps it also has something to do with the cutting of jobs in theology and the academic study of religion and Christianity in particular (as the university was to a large extent 'built around' the study of the Bible and now is trying to get away from that). Whatever the case may be the reaction to both inherited Biblical 'assumptions' about Jesus and religious scholars trying to maintain their livelihood for the next 20 - 40 years there is this unprecedented (and ultimately 'dishonest') attempt to make Christianity about something 'real' historical and ultimately 'practical' (i.e. a sociological as well as historical approach to early Christianity). You can't take the myth out of Christianity. The myth is essential to Christianity.

When you start speaking about the historical Jesus (by basically subtracting all the 'myth' out of what has been passed down to us) you end up with something artificial and ultimately worthless. The 'historical Jesus' is a wholly illegitimate modern construct. It is a turning of a blind eye as it were to the man Jesus[es] of antiquity. The [main] Jesus [of] antiquity is a historical 'fact' and that 'fact' was inseparable from myth.

With respect to the sociological origins of earliest Christianity, rather than a movement rooted in historical 'fact' and the preservation and perpetuation of historical 'facts,' earliest Christianity [almost certainly] originated from a 'secret' tradition which, by the end of the second century, was an underground (and ultimately outlawed)* association which was vehemently opposed to 'historical truth' and did everything to obscure 'history' in favor of 'holy spirit' whether by active prophetic movements, fantastic allegories, wild compositional 'mythmaking' which ultimately leads to pseudo-historical books like the Acts of the Apostles where lies are taken as 'truer than truth' merely because they were produced via 'the holy spirit.'

The point here is that any emphasis of 'history' or the 'historical' in the study of early Christianity can't go much beyond the second century. If there were first century documents, they were 'recomposed' or 'reconstituted' in 'the holy spirit' and so subsequently became for all intents and purposes 'second century testimonials.'

Marcionism preserves a 'hope' that something was faithfully preserved from the first century but even this 'Samaritan' emphasis within Marcionism (for lack of a better terminology שמר = 'to guard/preserve') viz. the limiting of Christianity to a closed set of documents/traditions might in itself be only testament to the anti-historicism, the hostility to truth and 'reality' as such among contemporaries which was further refined by other 'revisionists' like Irenaeus, Origen and ultimately Eusebius.

Bottom line: historical truth doesn't exist in our surviving evidence from earliest Christianity and any attempt to derive 'historical facts' from anti-historical documents is hopeless fully and is more of a sign of desperation (and job security) among professional scholars. They should know better but can't because they are 'feeding a family' (or 'many' in the case of divorced professors).


* I don't think Christianity was ever outlawed: most if not all the persecution claims are almost certainly false
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neilgodfrey
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Re: If Discussing Early Christianity Were a Sport What Would the Rules Be?

Post by neilgodfrey »

This rule book is getting unwieldy. How about SA just cuts to the chase and says mountainman be banned from discussion? :cheeky:

(along with anyone else who questions SA's readings of the church fathers??)
Secret Alias
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Re: If Discussing Early Christianity Were a Sport What Would the Rules Be?

Post by Secret Alias »

Rules don't mean bans. Rules can just be admonitions. Like offside. Obviously not a sports fan. What's this mountainman fetish anyway? Has been only relevant insofar as an example of the ability of the internet to enhance stupid ideas.
Secret Alias
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Re: If Discussing Early Christianity Were a Sport What Would the Rules Be?

Post by Secret Alias »

Is it accurate to say that in antiquity there was "no agreement what year" Jesus was crucified?
In the second century yes. In the fifth century no.
Secret Alias
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Re: If Discussing Early Christianity Were a Sport What Would the Rules Be?

Post by Secret Alias »

along with anyone else who questions SA's readings of the church fathers??)
I don't see how one could write a history of post Temple Judaism without consulting the Jewish "fathers" (אבות). Or the founding of America without consulting the "founding fathers." Who is our "on the ground" reporter then for second century Christianity? Pete the mountainman? Oh I forgot he doesn't accept a second or third century Church. Maybe you can draft Giuseppe as our authoritative "voice" for the period. Until then the Church Fathers are the best we have.
Secret Alias
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Re: If Discussing Early Christianity Were a Sport What Would the Rules Be?

Post by Secret Alias »

Trying to identify the year of crucifixion is a modern fascination
I think we're in agreement here. But WHY or HOW DID IT BECOME such an innovation. I think we changed Christianity into something it wasn't before. It's sort of like Judaism. Jews don't spend a lot of time analyzing the Pentateuch. It is what it is and they move on. But "the study of the historical Jesus" is such a modern vulgarity. Yuck.
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neilgodfrey
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Re: If Discussing Early Christianity Were a Sport What Would the Rules Be?

Post by neilgodfrey »

Secret Alias wrote: Fri Sep 23, 2022 4:03 pm
along with anyone else who questions SA's readings of the church fathers??)
I don't see how one could write a history of post Temple Judaism without consulting the Jewish "fathers" (אבות). Or the founding of America without consulting the "founding fathers." Who is our "on the ground" reporter then for second century Christianity? Pete the mountainman? Oh I forgot he doesn't accept a second or third century Church. Maybe you can draft Giuseppe as our authoritative "voice" for the period. Until then the Church Fathers are the best we have.
So your naive approach to the documents is the only valid one? Literary analysis be damned?
Secret Alias
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Re: If Discussing Early Christianity Were a Sport What Would the Rules Be?

Post by Secret Alias »

My point is we should try to incorporate the Church Fathers into any understanding of early Christianity. This is controversial?
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