NO RESURRECTION REQUIRED! How Christianity Probably Began.
Paulogia | 29 April 2024
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Isnl9A50ySY
- Michael Lorton
- @malvoliosf
- Is Simon-Peter actually necessary? Wouldn’t a chance combination of rumors and forgery more than explain what happened?
- Paulogia
- @Paulogia
- There is ample extra-Biblical evidence that someone named Peter was a leader of the early church, so your scenario doesn't quite fit in my opinion.
- Michael Lorton
- @Paulogia Are you thinking of 1 Clement? Almost everyone who knew Jesus would have been dead 96CE, so Clement was repeating something he was told. Maybe Saul made up the stories about Simon-Peter.
In the balance, your theory I think has much to recommend it — all it requires is one distraught man making an honest mistake, and the rest is just the rumor-mill — but it’s not the only possibility.
- Hans-Georg Lundahl
- @hglundahl
- @malvoliosf Clement was consecreated bishop by St. Peter.
Note, episcopal consecration and accession to a specific see are two distinct things. Just after Peter consecrated him, he would have been more like Cardinal-Bishop than Pope.
But, supposing you pretend to put that down to "legend" (however that item is supposed to work) ... (yes, I know a thing or two about legends, that being a form of literature I enjoy and have studied on an amateur level, and with the Iliad at University) .... Clement succeeded Anacletus who succeeded Linus who directly succeeded Peter (and was elected by Peter on the deathbed).
You are kind of arguing as if James Madison could have been entirely wrong and a victim of Dweems in believing that the first president of the US was George Washington. Or Stephen of Bois could have been wrong in believing William the Conqueror was the first Norman King in England. Or as if Edwy could have been wrong in believing Athelstan was the first King of the English.
- Michael Lorton
- @ Tertullian claimed Clement was consecrated bishop by Peter. Everything we know about Clement, apart from an ambiguous fragment of a letter he might have authored, is rumor, hearsay, and guesswork.
- Hans-Georg Lundahl
- @malvoliosf It's tradition of the Church.
You want to dispute Tertullian?
Dispute Dweems, not on the cherry tree, but on George Washington being the First President.
You are obviously all of this time as far as we can see dealing with a Church that has an organisation capable of good oral transmission of information.
- Michael Lorton
- @hglundahl Well, it’s also a tradition of the Church that Jesus was the Messiah. As I don’t believe that, obviously, I am willing to be somewhat skeptical of Church traditions.
- Hans-Georg Lundahl
- @malvoliosf That's a traditional assessment ... not a direct claim of observed fact.
If you mean miracles, yes, those are observable facts, and if you don't believe traditions on these, it would be decent to explain how the error occurred.
Church traditions have a high degree of good transmission. They constantly make this claim, and they constantly back it up by agreeing, in the main, even when not being obviously able to check with each other from Jerusalem to Rome to Lyons on every item.
- Michael Lorton
- @hglundahl How did the error of reporting miracles occur? How does any error occur?
In this case, one person wanted something to be true — Jesus walked on water, Jesus rose from the dead, whatever — and he told another person it had really happened, and the other person believed it.
- Hans-Georg Lundahl
- @malvoliosf "one person wanted something to be true"
"he told another person it had really happened, and the other person believed it."
Yes, but how?
If the early Church had been so disorganised as to allow free spreading or rumour, no problem. But this is not what we see in the sources.
@malvoliosf You may also adress how one man wanted Jesus walking on the water to be true, if there were no previous reports of it.
The originator of an error is not in the same position as a defender of an already established text.
- Michael Lorton
- @ There is no shortage of apocryphal, non-canonical, dubious, and outright fraudulent texts surviving from the early church, including far more apocryphal Gospels than canonical ones: the Gospel of Thomas, the Gospel of Basilides, the Gospel of Mary, even the Gospel of Judas, among others.
I don’t know if originality in a claim is an indicium of truth. Some of Jesus’s miracles were old standbys (like raising the dead and calming the waters) among miracle workers, but even if one were unique, that might be because it really happened, or it might be because the inventor was creative.
- Hans-Georg Lundahl
- @malvoliosf You are equivocating.
Gospel of Thomas or of Judas are NOT from the Church. They are not just para-Gospels, they are from para-Churches.
As you know, there were no shortage of those either.
"raising the dead"
Rare. Elias, and then Elisaeus by his bones.
"calming the waters"
Where? Moses per Red Sea is at least not an exact parallel.
"because the inventor was creative."
I can totally relate to the idea of a defender now being involved in wishful thinking, but why would a creative inventor be there?
If people who had originally followed Jesus just for His doctrine without seeing a miracle were around after He suppposedly died but didn't rise, why would they suddenly start inventing miracle after miracle?
Paulogia hypothesises a kind of bottle-neck of one to three people (Peter, possibly John and James too) between the original followers of the living Jesus and the original believers in the Resurrection. Given what our sources say (and yes, they are mainly Christian) this is entirely unrealistic. If there had been such a discontinuity, why the TF? And no, "paradoxa erga" and "he was the Messiah" do not sound like Christian interpolations.
I think there is ONE very key flaw to all of the following:
one) in the early 1st Century among the apocalyptic preachers active in Judea was one Jesus of Nazareth
two) this Jesus said or did did controversial things which led to his crucifixion on a cross a common practice at the time
three) the resting place of Jesus's body was unknown to his followers
four) this Jesus had some followers while he was alive but most disappeared into lives never recorded by reliable history never to be heard from again all except Simon Peter and possibly John
five) distraught after the death of his mentor Simon Peter became sincerely albeit mistakenly convinced that Jesus had appeared to him
six) James the brother of Jesus became part of Peter's Jesus movement perhaps also one of the disciples named John
seven) stories about Jesus spread through person-to-person evangelism with the focus on recruiting new followers rather than accurately transmitting historical events details were embellished or invented to eliminate obstacles to belief and the narratives most successful at winning converts were repeated as the movement grew Peter was not personally present to confirm or correct the adopted narratives
eight) Paul a Pharisee who had been persecuting the new Christians out of a sincere belief that he was serving God experienced a non-veridical vision of the allegedly resurrected Jesus. Profoundly affected by this experience Paul became a Believer and began recruiting for Christianity and writing letters outlining his theology
nine) Paul met Peter and John but they didn't see eye to eye ten) several decades later Greek speaking individuals who had never met Jesus or Peter began documenting these circulating stories about Jesus the sayings attributed to him and their interpretations of these narratives
eleven) occasionally some early Christians engaged in disruptive behavior and faced consequences as a result however early Christians generally lived relatively peacefully rarely facing ideological persecution although it did occur at times they were accepting of others kind to the poor and widows and consequently grew in numbers
twelve) centuries later in 303 ad Christianity was temporarily outlawed in Rome but it gained legal protection 10 years later and soon became the Roman Empire's first official religion marking its transformation toward the institution we know today
Because the poor benighted Hebrews were incompetent at organisation, and because it's so easy for people who were in the Jesus Freaks (of the 1960's and 1970's) to retroactively describe their organisation like it reads like the Anglican Church with a Lambeth Conference?
I think people who retroactively describe their experience as highly organised were not living something highly disorganised. I mean collective experience.
The difference this makes is a difference between lecturing and a game of telephone.
1:05 Bart Ehrman has by those words:
- outed himself as a loyal Humean
- disqualified himself as a Historian (except to fellow Humeans).
He also is, like any Humean, confusing prior probability in expectation of the event and subsequent probability in assessing whether it happened.
Confer the two statements:
"I feel I'm going to win a million on Lotto" (very improbably)
"so and so won a million on Lotto" (entirely reasonable)
3:58 "treason" ... 1) would that have been applicable to a non-Roman? 2) aren't you assuming a fairly uniform legal practise of Romans as regards non-Roman Provincials, which might not have existed?
- underachiever
- @AgnosticApologist
- Sedition or blasphemy, depending on who you ask. The sense of the word 'treason' is close enough for government work.
“We have no king but Caesar.” (John 19:15)
“You have heard the blasphemy. What is your decision?” And they all condemned him as deserving death. (Mark 14:64)
- Hans-Georg Lundahl
- @AgnosticApologist I would say, sedition was clearly not applicable, as Jesus didn't carry arms against Romans and told Pilate "my kingdom is not of this world" ... should have been good enough.
- underachiever
- @ My bottom line is that they saw him as a threat to Roman authorities, and so they charged him with whatever in order to stop him. What those exact charges were seem irrelevant to me when the context is already clear. He was an ideological threat. If your argument is more historically nuanced I’ll have to defer.
@ I’ll also add that the problematic nature of translation when it comes to precision in semantics muddies the waters significantly.
- Hans-Georg Lundahl
- @ Would you mind to nuance the pronoun here:
"they saw him as a threat to Roman authorities"
Who "they"?
If you mean "the Jews" (i e Jewish enemies of Jesus, like St. John as narrator uses the word), who of themselves could not crucify anyone, they preferred viewing him as a blasphemer, which would have meant nothing to Pilate.
If you mean Pilate, why would we presume he was duped, when the Gospel account says the opposite?
- underachiever
- @hglundahl No thank you. We're getting overly bogged down in semantics.
- Hans-Georg Lundahl
- @AgnosticApologist I think it really does matter.
Romans knew the difference between sedition and preaching (and they had no claims to doctrinal authority, so didn't see preaching as a threat), so, we would not expect Pilate to simply make a mistake.
We have no Jewish sources saying Jesus committed sedition against the Romans. Jewish sources that might refer to Jesus place Him (if so) in pre-Roman times.
We have only late and dismissive Roman voices about sedition.
We have the Christian voice for a very different scenario.
Now, if He had been a seditioner, there might have been some merit to the idea of His followers being heavily underorganised and therefore unable to check rumour mills among them. But if He was instead a teacher, who had students, these students were capable of organising the transmission of events, just as He had transmitted His idea of the Law.
- underachiever
- @hglundahl My emphasis is on ideological threat. The Romans might have distinguished between sedition and preaching, but the political climate of the time, much like now, might have led them to view Jesus' actions as subversive ('woke') even if they were not overtly seditious. Jesus was not simply a preacher in the traditional sense; his message about the coming Kingdom of God, his claim to authority, and his association with the idea of a new kingdom could have been seen as a direct challenge to Roman rule. Even without formal sedition, the Romans might have perceived his movement as destabilizing.
- Hans-Georg Lundahl
- @AgnosticApologist Romans didn't care tuppence about woke versus based.
Roman élite tended to be 1/3 woke and 2/3 based, but they were based enough to consider Provincials being different from them [as] being easier to dominate.
"his message about the coming Kingdom of God, his claim to authority, and his association with the idea of a new kingdom could have been seen as a direct challenge to Roman rule"
We have no direct indication these exact words had come to Pilate's ears.
If anything, it was His insisting (twice over) that the fore-court of the Gentiles should serve as such, and Pilate might get worried the Centurions could go soft if they were not crowded out of that court by merchants and sacrificial animals and money-changers.
Even if this were so, at least this allows for fully respecting the indication that Jesus per se was a teacher and able to organise teaching, and therefore the Church surviving Him would not have been one highly disorganised rumour-mill. Paulogia's scenario basically presupposes it's worse than the South Korean internet.
4:51 "a notion nearly as impossible as a resurrection"
1) Not if the condemnation was made unwillingly, as we read of Pilate.
2) Not if someone who was influential petitioned.
Confer a bit Navalny ... Putin had reasons to not allow him out of things alive, but he somehow didn't feel up to banning a very honourable funeral. True, in this case, Russia had fairly uniform laws about burials, so condemned criminals (Navalny's legal status, I'd say an undeserved one) can be buried openly and solemnly.
5:12 "arising centuries later"
According to Protestant critics of the papacy, for instance.
The safest bet with a tradition in general is, it goes back to the event.
The second safest bet is, you have some stronger evidence about the event, and you have some pretty good scenario about why the tradition came to include an error.
(Manuscript tradition of LXX where Methuselah begets at 167 rather than 187, a) it's contrary to Samaritan and Masoretic — not the worst — b) it involves Methuselah dying after the Flood, c) the previous verse or the one before that involves the numeral sixty more than once).
[Quoting larger chunks from transscript in the following]
"stories about Jesus spread 7:21 through person-to-person evangelism with 7:24 the focus on recruiting new followers 7:26 rather than accurately transmitting 7:28 historical events"
Totally reconstructed, no way near any tradition about how the tradition actually spread.
I mean speeches before mass audiences are more like it.
"as the movement grew Peter was 7:40 not personally present to confirm or 7:42 correct the adopted narratives"
He was personally present in places like Antioch and Rome to as late as under Nero.
"the Jesus 7:45 movement grew for many decades before 7:47 the first gospels were written so 7:49 Scholars generally agree that it spread 7:51 primarily through personal evangelism 7:54 and Word of Mouth rather than through 7:56 written texts or formal institutions"
As those formal institutions would be Catholic ones, this is the self serving reconstruction by Protestants (not primarily Evangelicals).
St. Matthew, the author of the gospel that we have under his name, was a Galilean, the son of Alpheus, a Jew, and a tax-gatherer; he was known also by the name of Levi. His vocation happened in the second year of the public ministry of Christ; who, soon after forming the college of his apostles, adopted him into that holy family of the spiritual princes and founders of his Church. Before his departure from Judea, to preach the gospel to distant countries, he yielded to the solicitations of the faithful; and about the eighth year after our Saviour's resurrection, the forty-first of the vulgar era [A.D. 41], he began to write his gospel: i.e., the good tidings of salvation to man, through Christ Jesus, our Lord. |
See Butler's Saints' Lives, September 21st
The intro to Mark has no date given.
[St. Luke's] gospel, therefore, he wrote as he heard it; but the Acts of the Apostles, from his own observations; and both, as some believe, about the same time in which his history of the Acts finishes, towards the year of Christ 63. But the received opinion now is, that St. Luke wrote his gospel in Achaia, in the year 53, ten years previously to his writing of the Acts, purposely to counteract the fabulous relations concerning Jesus Christ, which several persons had endeavoured to palm upon the world. |
ON the fourth Gospel, we agree it was late ...
"10 several decades later 9:36 Greek speaking individuals who had never 9:38 met Jesus or Peter began documenting 9:41 these circulating stories about Jesus 9:43 the sayings attributed to him and their 9:45 interpretations of these narratives"
Pretty much the wishful thinking of Tovia Singer.
" the 9:48 case against the traditional authorship 9:50 of the gospels is strong"
Not really.
"(12) centuries later in 303 ad 11:41 Christianity was temporarily outlawed in 11:44 Rome but it gained legal protection 10 11:47 years later and soon became the Roman 11:49 Empire's first official religion marking 11:51 its transformation toward the 11:53 institution we know today"
Actually, Christians were persecuted far longer than that, after Nero, who's using Senatus Consultum de Bacchanalibus as precedent, Pliny the Younger consults on what to do with people staunchly refusing to sacrifice to idols.
While these people are not directly guarantors of the Resurrection accounts, they are guarantors of having received them in what was to them a credible form (like eyewitnesses known and known to be martyred, like written texts, like an Institution known as the Catholic Church).
The idea the latter was basically a by-product of Constantine is the wishful thinking of Hislop ... (a Protestant who definitely hated Catholicism).
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