I just meant if anyone had new questions to add or new assertions about the movie or whatever, now would be a good time to post them (in the interest of the thread)... I was hoping to go see the movie Wednesday so I can just come back here and give my definitive take on the movie and let people respond to that however they like... we'll see how the old work schedule pans out.
This is the longest thread I've ever started (not that I'm responsible for that, but I do feel a little residual paternal responsibility) and a thread that hasn't degenerated into toxic name-calling after three pages. I'm with Moogs.
If anyone wants to discuss this movie, and not trade insulting remarks,
then you may be better off going to MacNN.
"Jesus was not gay." < Nice. If you can't say something positive or at the very least with a little respect for others with differing beliefs than yourself, then what good are your own beliefs?
Take a good long hard look in the mirror next time. Can you honestly say you have made the smallest difference in anyone's life? If not, then there is your opportunity to enact some change. If you think after reading this, you can tell me the same thing, believe me, I have taken this advice.
As opposed to the Jewish community being responsible 2000 years ago? Is that it?
Why? Because according to The Official Roman Edition a small number of subservient Jews supposedly went along with the execution of a popular Jewish Rabbi antithetical to the political situation in a country suffering the brutality of Roman occupation?
Again, I'm not trying to be confrontational about this, but what you said made me curious. If it were up to you, how would you portray the Passion of Jesus Christ?
Again, I'm not trying to be confrontational about this, but what you said made me curious. If it were up to you, how would you portray the Passion of Jesus Christ?
A little historical truth would have been nice.
For example: "You can't serve God and mammon."
It would be very obvious to any Israeli living under the imperial boot of Rome that when Jesus said: "You can't serve God and mammon", he's referring to Rome as mammon, and God as Israel. Yes, Jesus advocated harmony - between Jews - as a united front against the Roman occupiers and the puppet regime subservient to them. (You can hear similar voices today in modern Israeli politics). But the Gospels as we have them today are a Roman whitewash of the real history of Israel and it's people. And you don't need to be secular or nonChristian to clearly see and understand this.
A little historical truth [emphasis mine] would have been nice.
That's a big word for a discussion that is predicated almost entirely on historical *assumptions* (no matter which version you believe). However, where there is TRUTH, there is PROOF. Care to elaborate on your "truth"?
Quote:
But the Gospels as we have them today are a Roman whitewash of the real history of Israel and it's people. And you don't need to be secular or nonChristian to clearly see and understand this.
Whitewash... so that means it's largely false in your eyes? Not saying it isn't false (it may well be), but can you help sway me to your way of seeing this, and serve up some irrefutable facts to back up your statement that the Roman version is basically "false" and your version (whichever that is) is "true"?
....Like all religious stories, I have a hard time accepting them on face value unless I have some sort of factual data. All my earlier comments are based on common understandings of demographics (Christ lived in an area predominantly populated by Jews) and biology (crucifixions are bloody / unsightly) and psychology (visual tellings of gruesome stories are more shocking that verbal tellings), etc, etc.
Starting to get the picture? I never had an agenda or set-in-stone opinion on the matter, but you clearly do. Even so, I'd love to hear the version you believe to be true and why. I might learn something after all...
I've given you an example. Work your way from there. All you need is a little common sense to understand. It's common knowledge that the account of Jesus has been tampered with. It also common knowledge that those that did the tampering were hostile to Jews.
I've given you an example. Work your way from there. All you need is a little common sense to understand. It's common knowledge that the account of Jesus has been tampered with. It also common knowledge that those that did the tampering were hostile to Jews.
It is well known that the Gospel of John was written for an audience of Gentiles, but that cannot be said of Mark or Matthew at all (and I don't recall if Luke was writing for a Jewish audience or not). Mark and Matthew were Jews writing for Jews who believed that Jesus Christ was the Messiah. So are saying that someone hostile to the Jews altered those Gospels? I find that rather difficult to believe.
It is well known that the Gospel of John was written for an audience of Gentiles, but that cannot be said of Mark or Matthew at all (and I don't recall if Luke was writing for a Jewish audience or not).
Luke, and its second half, Acts, were written as a two-part apologetic work that it was hoped would show the Roman Empire that they had nothing to fear from the emerging, separate Christian religion.
No you haven't. All you've done is imply my statements and/or Roman historical perspectives are false. You have not given one single statement of what you believe to be true. What is your version of the story (generally)? Out with it.
No you haven't. All you've done is imply my statements and/or Roman historical perspectives are false. You have not given one single statement of what you believe to be true. What is your version of the story (generally)? Out with it.
LOL.
Although I think I made myself very clear, it's interesting that you would press me. Especially considering I didn't press you on your evasive non-answers. But I can see you're getting feisty and wanting to get yours. So here it goes:
I don't believe Jesus was at all sympathetic or even neutral towards the Roman authorities. Any such depiction implied in the Gospels would be an obvious falsehood. Moreover, I believe Jesus was at the vanguard of a fermenting nationalist rebellion that wanted to oust the Romans from Judea. I also don't believe Jesus made any claims to being divine or having divine powers. Jesus was a popular Rabbi among the common folk because he was antithetical to the thieving murderous Roman beasts and their cronies in Jerusalem. And that was why he was crucified. Jesus could never have been a threat to the Jewish religious authorities, because they too, like everyone else, naturally wanted the Roman occupiers out of the country. Common sense also dictates that should Jesus have made any heretical claims (being the son of God, being born a virgin birth, etc.), he would have met his death by stoning (Jewish punishment), and not by crucifixion (Roman punishment).
I've given you an example. Work your way from there. All you need is a little common sense to understand. It's common knowledge that the account of Jesus has been tampered with. It also common knowledge that those that did the tampering were hostile to Jews.
I've seen this ridiculous claim a number of times in this thread and it's never accompanied by any sort of proof (with good reason.)
When was the New Testament "tampered" with? There are all sorts of manuscript evidence and tens of thousands of fragments of the New Testament in museums all over the world.
Muslims use the same claim that the Gospels were "tampered" with, and the Koran was not. But there are exisiting Bibles from Muhammad's time that say the same thing the Bible does today. (Accounting for spelling, grammar and language changes over time, of course.)
Tampering with scripture is a serious charge that believers are specifically told will send them straight to Hell. (Rev. 22) History records the herculean efforts to copy manuscripts by hand before the printing press. After pages were hand-copied, the number of words and letters on each page would be counted (and also the words, down the center of the page, I believe) to ensure that not a word was left out.
The Christian keepers of the New Testament inherited a rich legacy from their Jewish predecessors. Right now in Ottawa, there is an exhibition of parts of the Dead Sea Scrolls, some of which are 1000 years older than any manuscripts of the Bible that were previously known. These show NO DISCREPANCIES between the Scrolls and present Bible manuscripts.
From some of the posts here, one would guess church leaders over the years have casually changed the Bible accounts to suit their own prejudices. AFAIK, there is no support for any such contention.
The Gospels were written from four different points of view and highlight different aspects of the events they describe. But as discussed earlier in the thread, the accounts are dated with the lifetimes of those who saw the events (whether written by eyewitnesses or not.)
As at AppleInsider, when Believers make posts about issues they tend to reference the scriptures that they think support their point of view. That also held true for early Christians, and it may surprise some of you to note there are many, many surviving first and second century church fathers whose written debates about events and issues survive to today. The scriptures they quote are essentially the same as in today's Bibles. (Again, accounting for spelling, grammar and language changes over time.)
To the many proponents of the "Gospels Were Tampered With" argument:
I've seen this ridiculous claim a number of times in this thread and it's never accompanied by any sort of proof (with good reason.)
Er... mistranslations aren't unheard of. I can dig up a few if you'd like, I have a great-aunt who is fluent in Rabbinical Hebrew, Ancient Greek and some Coptic specifically to study this.
Some of them utterly change the tone of much of Christianity, in my opinion.
Then there are the gospels that weren't altered... just thrown out completely. Thomas comes to mind.
You're right of course, errors have been made in translating and recording the text sometimes.
Everyone's favorite is The Adulterer's Bible, which got it's name from the English versions put out by the Queen's Printer and left out the "not" in the commandment about adultery. The Printer was jailed for that error.
But my point was more along the lines that the original manuscripts that are used as source documents for translation (textus receptus etc.) exhibit few changes over time and no discrepancies in theology.
As for the Gospel of Thomas and others, I haven't done a serious study on them, but I've heard there is some pretty wacky theology present in most of those writings, and the church is better off without them.
It's more than that. When I say tampered, I really mean tampered.
There's very little doubt the Jesus story has been tampered with to please those at the Council of Nicea, who then decided that Jesus should be God, Man and son of God, among other things. That is common knowledge.
Also, the Dead Sea Scrolls predate the Gospels. They only include Jewish scripture (i.e. Torah/Nevihim/Ktuvim - TANAH). That is also common knowledge.
[B]There's very little doubt the Jesus story has been tampered with to please those at the Council of Nicea, who then decided that Jesus should be God, Man and son of God, among other things. That is common knowledge.
Maybe among conspiracy buffs. Those of us who have studied legitimate Christian history don't see any evidence of this. The books of the NEw Testament that have come down to us do not differ in any noteworthy ways from any of the pieces of the documents we have found that date to the early Christian era, whether from Nag Hammadi or other sites. Please, if these works have been redacted, show us your proof.
Those who seek to build an evil conspiracy that "changed" the Christian religion around 300 have to rely on very unscrupulous tactics to "prove" their point, first by presuming that the documents of the Gnostic heretics should be viewed as of equal orthodoxy as those of the Christian church, and second by ignoring the great wells of writing from early Church leaders, Polycarp, Clement, etc, which universally support the orthodox, not the Gnostic, point of view. Primitive Trinitarian theology is present in Christian writing dating back to the early second century (and the nucleus of it can be found in the Scriptures themselves). The Trinity was not a doctrine that was invented to satisfy the Romans, it was one that was finally defined and set down after the Roman government lifted the veil of persecution.
But it wasn't set down at Nicea. The Nicean Creed was actually finalized at a second Ecumenical Council in Chaldecon, and it was here that the final status of the Paraclete was determined, and the creed we know today was finalized.
A Synod at Hippo, meeting between these two Councils, determined, upon approval by Rome, the formal canon of the Bible, which matched that used in Rome prior to the Synod. Several books not normally used in most of Christendom, including Revelation, 3 John and Hebrews, were canonized, while several books popularly used in services and treated with the reverence of scripture, including the Shepherd of Hermas, the Didache and the Epistle of (Pope) Clement to the Ephesians were left out, not due to issues of Orthodoxy, but because they were not considered Apostolic in Source.
None of the Gnostic works (The Gospel of Thomas, the Gospels of Peter & Paul, The Acts of Mary) were in wide use at the time, as Gnosticism had been pushed aside by the mid-100s.
The Christianity that emerged from the Nicean-Chadleconian period was more defined and organized than that which entered it with the Edict of Milan in hand, but it was not fundamentally different. All of the noteworthy traits that were present in formalized Christianity were found widely in pre-Nicean Christianity, including primitive Trinitarianism and the common Biblical canon (give or take a few regional variances). In fact, the earliest Christian writings in the post-Apostolic period, the letters of the Fathers, provide ample evidence that speaks of linearality of belief from that point to modern Christianity (and also evidence of most of the uniquely Orthodox/Catholic practices, such as the sacraments of infant baptism and confession, prayers for the dead, veneration of the saints and Mary, the concept of apostolic succession, etc).
Only by ignoring the wealth of writings available to us from the earliest Church Fathers, the evidence of the near-extant fragments and passages of the New Testament texts and the fact that not all documents referring to Jesus should be held in equal orthodoxy can conspiracy theorists support the notion that Christianity was somehow perverted in the post-Milan period.
The post-Apostolic, pre-Milan era clearly speaks to a religion that was organizing into a nascent form of what we would today recognize as either Roman Catholicism or Eastern Orthodoxy.
[B]The idea that Christ = God would be a good example - something that was heresy until the Council of Nicea as you say.
Except that it wasn't heresy. It is a belief clearly present in the Gospels and writings of the New Testament, which we have no reason to consider redacted until proof of such is presented, and in the writings of the Early Church Fathers.
Quote:
And remember that the early history of the church is a history of the violent eradication of 'heresy', it seems likely that the eradication of people was also extended to textual matters.
Later history was, sadly, when the Church began to mix itself with the power of the state. But the early Gnostic heresy was generally combatted with preaching and writing, not swords and gallows.
Quote:
But your theory that Christ was speaking to the Jews alone and 'plotting' against Rome is clearly wrong.
Clearly Roman authorities feared him, because of the beliefs of the Jews of the day, particularly the Zealots, regarding the coming Messiah. Otherwise he would have been stoned, not crucified.
But your theory that Christ was speaking to the Jews alone and 'plotting' against Rome is clearly wrong.
For a start there is the fracas in the temple which surely wouldn't have endeared JC to the Jewish authorities and indeed there were many revolutionary 'terrorist' outfits around at the time. Jesus didn't join or support them.
He attacked the money changers, who in turn attacked the sovereignty of Judah through Roman currency. Any amateur "economist" would understand that. And the average guy on the street, having any nationalist feelings, would applaud Jesus for doing that.
Maybe among conspiracy buffs. Those of us who have studied legitimate Christian history don't see any evidence of this. The books of the NEw Testament that have come down to us do not differ in any noteworthy ways from any of the pieces of the documents we have found that date to the early Christian era, whether from Nag Hammadi or other sites. Please, if these works have been redacted, show us your proof.
So the earliest fragments date to early third-century. That still leaves 200 years after the death of Jesus to invent and reinvent, the Jesus story.
Comments
then you may be better off going to MacNN.
"Jesus was not gay." < Nice. If you can't say something positive or at the very least with a little respect for others with differing beliefs than yourself, then what good are your own beliefs?
Take a good long hard look in the mirror next time. Can you honestly say you have made the smallest difference in anyone's life? If not, then there is your opportunity to enact some change. If you think after reading this, you can tell me the same thing, believe me, I have taken this advice.
Originally posted by JewelsVernz
As opposed to the Jewish community being responsible 2000 years ago? Is that it?
Why? Because according to The Official Roman Edition a small number of subservient Jews supposedly went along with the execution of a popular Jewish Rabbi antithetical to the political situation in a country suffering the brutality of Roman occupation?
Again, I'm not trying to be confrontational about this, but what you said made me curious. If it were up to you, how would you portray the Passion of Jesus Christ?
Originally posted by rampancy
Again, I'm not trying to be confrontational about this, but what you said made me curious. If it were up to you, how would you portray the Passion of Jesus Christ?
A little historical truth would have been nice.
For example: "You can't serve God and mammon."
It would be very obvious to any Israeli living under the imperial boot of Rome that when Jesus said: "You can't serve God and mammon", he's referring to Rome as mammon, and God as Israel. Yes, Jesus advocated harmony - between Jews - as a united front against the Roman occupiers and the puppet regime subservient to them. (You can hear similar voices today in modern Israeli politics). But the Gospels as we have them today are a Roman whitewash of the real history of Israel and it's people. And you don't need to be secular or nonChristian to clearly see and understand this.
Originally posted by JewelsVernz
A little historical truth [emphasis mine] would have been nice.
That's a big word for a discussion that is predicated almost entirely on historical *assumptions* (no matter which version you believe). However, where there is TRUTH, there is PROOF. Care to elaborate on your "truth"?
But the Gospels as we have them today are a Roman whitewash of the real history of Israel and it's people. And you don't need to be secular or nonChristian to clearly see and understand this.
Whitewash... so that means it's largely false in your eyes? Not saying it isn't false (it may well be), but can you help sway me to your way of seeing this, and serve up some irrefutable facts to back up your statement that the Roman version is basically "false" and your version (whichever that is) is "true"?
....Like all religious stories, I have a hard time accepting them on face value unless I have some sort of factual data. All my earlier comments are based on common understandings of demographics (Christ lived in an area predominantly populated by Jews) and biology (crucifixions are bloody / unsightly) and psychology (visual tellings of gruesome stories are more shocking that verbal tellings), etc, etc.
Starting to get the picture? I never had an agenda or set-in-stone opinion on the matter, but you clearly do. Even so, I'd love to hear the version you believe to be true and why. I might learn something after all...
Originally posted by Moogs
Care to elaborate on your "truth"?
I've given you an example. Work your way from there. All you need is a little common sense to understand. It's common knowledge that the account of Jesus has been tampered with. It also common knowledge that those that did the tampering were hostile to Jews.
Originally posted by JewelsVernz
I've given you an example. Work your way from there. All you need is a little common sense to understand. It's common knowledge that the account of Jesus has been tampered with. It also common knowledge that those that did the tampering were hostile to Jews.
It is well known that the Gospel of John was written for an audience of Gentiles, but that cannot be said of Mark or Matthew at all (and I don't recall if Luke was writing for a Jewish audience or not). Mark and Matthew were Jews writing for Jews who believed that Jesus Christ was the Messiah. So are saying that someone hostile to the Jews altered those Gospels? I find that rather difficult to believe.
Originally posted by rogue master
It is well known that the Gospel of John was written for an audience of Gentiles, but that cannot be said of Mark or Matthew at all (and I don't recall if Luke was writing for a Jewish audience or not).
Luke, and its second half, Acts, were written as a two-part apologetic work that it was hoped would show the Roman Empire that they had nothing to fear from the emerging, separate Christian religion.
Kirk
Originally posted by JewelsVernz
I've given you an example.
No you haven't. All you've done is imply my statements and/or Roman historical perspectives are false. You have not given one single statement of what you believe to be true. What is your version of the story (generally)? Out with it.
Originally posted by Moogs
No you haven't. All you've done is imply my statements and/or Roman historical perspectives are false. You have not given one single statement of what you believe to be true. What is your version of the story (generally)? Out with it.
LOL.
Although I think I made myself very clear, it's interesting that you would press me. Especially considering I didn't press you on your evasive non-answers. But I can see you're getting feisty and wanting to get yours. So here it goes:
I don't believe Jesus was at all sympathetic or even neutral towards the Roman authorities. Any such depiction implied in the Gospels would be an obvious falsehood. Moreover, I believe Jesus was at the vanguard of a fermenting nationalist rebellion that wanted to oust the Romans from Judea. I also don't believe Jesus made any claims to being divine or having divine powers. Jesus was a popular Rabbi among the common folk because he was antithetical to the thieving murderous Roman beasts and their cronies in Jerusalem. And that was why he was crucified. Jesus could never have been a threat to the Jewish religious authorities, because they too, like everyone else, naturally wanted the Roman occupiers out of the country. Common sense also dictates that should Jesus have made any heretical claims (being the son of God, being born a virgin birth, etc.), he would have met his death by stoning (Jewish punishment), and not by crucifixion (Roman punishment).
Originally posted by JewelsVernz
I've given you an example. Work your way from there. All you need is a little common sense to understand. It's common knowledge that the account of Jesus has been tampered with. It also common knowledge that those that did the tampering were hostile to Jews.
I've seen this ridiculous claim a number of times in this thread and it's never accompanied by any sort of proof (with good reason.)
When was the New Testament "tampered" with? There are all sorts of manuscript evidence and tens of thousands of fragments of the New Testament in museums all over the world.
Muslims use the same claim that the Gospels were "tampered" with, and the Koran was not. But there are exisiting Bibles from Muhammad's time that say the same thing the Bible does today. (Accounting for spelling, grammar and language changes over time, of course.)
Tampering with scripture is a serious charge that believers are specifically told will send them straight to Hell. (Rev. 22) History records the herculean efforts to copy manuscripts by hand before the printing press. After pages were hand-copied, the number of words and letters on each page would be counted (and also the words, down the center of the page, I believe) to ensure that not a word was left out.
The Christian keepers of the New Testament inherited a rich legacy from their Jewish predecessors. Right now in Ottawa, there is an exhibition of parts of the Dead Sea Scrolls, some of which are 1000 years older than any manuscripts of the Bible that were previously known. These show NO DISCREPANCIES between the Scrolls and present Bible manuscripts.
From some of the posts here, one would guess church leaders over the years have casually changed the Bible accounts to suit their own prejudices. AFAIK, there is no support for any such contention.
The Gospels were written from four different points of view and highlight different aspects of the events they describe. But as discussed earlier in the thread, the accounts are dated with the lifetimes of those who saw the events (whether written by eyewitnesses or not.)
As at AppleInsider, when Believers make posts about issues they tend to reference the scriptures that they think support their point of view. That also held true for early Christians, and it may surprise some of you to note there are many, many surviving first and second century church fathers whose written debates about events and issues survive to today. The scriptures they quote are essentially the same as in today's Bibles. (Again, accounting for spelling, grammar and language changes over time.)
To the many proponents of the "Gospels Were Tampered With" argument:
When and Where? Put Up or Shut Up.
Originally posted by Frank777
I've seen this ridiculous claim a number of times in this thread and it's never accompanied by any sort of proof (with good reason.)
Er... mistranslations aren't unheard of. I can dig up a few if you'd like, I have a great-aunt who is fluent in Rabbinical Hebrew, Ancient Greek and some Coptic specifically to study this.
Some of them utterly change the tone of much of Christianity, in my opinion.
Then there are the gospels that weren't altered... just thrown out completely. Thomas comes to mind.
Everyone's favorite is The Adulterer's Bible, which got it's name from the English versions put out by the Queen's Printer and left out the "not" in the commandment about adultery. The Printer was jailed for that error.
But my point was more along the lines that the original manuscripts that are used as source documents for translation (textus receptus etc.) exhibit few changes over time and no discrepancies in theology.
As for the Gospel of Thomas and others, I haven't done a serious study on them, but I've heard there is some pretty wacky theology present in most of those writings, and the church is better off without them.
Originally posted by Kickaha
Er... mistranslations aren't unheard of.
It's more than that. When I say tampered, I really mean tampered.
There's very little doubt the Jesus story has been tampered with to please those at the Council of Nicea, who then decided that Jesus should be God, Man and son of God, among other things. That is common knowledge.
Also, the Dead Sea Scrolls predate the Gospels. They only include Jewish scripture (i.e. Torah/Nevihim/Ktuvim - TANAH). That is also common knowledge.
Originally posted by JewelsVernz
[B]There's very little doubt the Jesus story has been tampered with to please those at the Council of Nicea, who then decided that Jesus should be God, Man and son of God, among other things. That is common knowledge.
Maybe among conspiracy buffs. Those of us who have studied legitimate Christian history don't see any evidence of this. The books of the NEw Testament that have come down to us do not differ in any noteworthy ways from any of the pieces of the documents we have found that date to the early Christian era, whether from Nag Hammadi or other sites. Please, if these works have been redacted, show us your proof.
Those who seek to build an evil conspiracy that "changed" the Christian religion around 300 have to rely on very unscrupulous tactics to "prove" their point, first by presuming that the documents of the Gnostic heretics should be viewed as of equal orthodoxy as those of the Christian church, and second by ignoring the great wells of writing from early Church leaders, Polycarp, Clement, etc, which universally support the orthodox, not the Gnostic, point of view. Primitive Trinitarian theology is present in Christian writing dating back to the early second century (and the nucleus of it can be found in the Scriptures themselves). The Trinity was not a doctrine that was invented to satisfy the Romans, it was one that was finally defined and set down after the Roman government lifted the veil of persecution.
But it wasn't set down at Nicea. The Nicean Creed was actually finalized at a second Ecumenical Council in Chaldecon, and it was here that the final status of the Paraclete was determined, and the creed we know today was finalized.
A Synod at Hippo, meeting between these two Councils, determined, upon approval by Rome, the formal canon of the Bible, which matched that used in Rome prior to the Synod. Several books not normally used in most of Christendom, including Revelation, 3 John and Hebrews, were canonized, while several books popularly used in services and treated with the reverence of scripture, including the Shepherd of Hermas, the Didache and the Epistle of (Pope) Clement to the Ephesians were left out, not due to issues of Orthodoxy, but because they were not considered Apostolic in Source.
None of the Gnostic works (The Gospel of Thomas, the Gospels of Peter & Paul, The Acts of Mary) were in wide use at the time, as Gnosticism had been pushed aside by the mid-100s.
The Christianity that emerged from the Nicean-Chadleconian period was more defined and organized than that which entered it with the Edict of Milan in hand, but it was not fundamentally different. All of the noteworthy traits that were present in formalized Christianity were found widely in pre-Nicean Christianity, including primitive Trinitarianism and the common Biblical canon (give or take a few regional variances). In fact, the earliest Christian writings in the post-Apostolic period, the letters of the Fathers, provide ample evidence that speaks of linearality of belief from that point to modern Christianity (and also evidence of most of the uniquely Orthodox/Catholic practices, such as the sacraments of infant baptism and confession, prayers for the dead, veneration of the saints and Mary, the concept of apostolic succession, etc).
Only by ignoring the wealth of writings available to us from the earliest Church Fathers, the evidence of the near-extant fragments and passages of the New Testament texts and the fact that not all documents referring to Jesus should be held in equal orthodoxy can conspiracy theorists support the notion that Christianity was somehow perverted in the post-Milan period.
The post-Apostolic, pre-Milan era clearly speaks to a religion that was organizing into a nascent form of what we would today recognize as either Roman Catholicism or Eastern Orthodoxy.
Kirk
Originally posted by segovius
[B]The idea that Christ = God would be a good example - something that was heresy until the Council of Nicea as you say.
Except that it wasn't heresy. It is a belief clearly present in the Gospels and writings of the New Testament, which we have no reason to consider redacted until proof of such is presented, and in the writings of the Early Church Fathers.
And remember that the early history of the church is a history of the violent eradication of 'heresy', it seems likely that the eradication of people was also extended to textual matters.
Later history was, sadly, when the Church began to mix itself with the power of the state. But the early Gnostic heresy was generally combatted with preaching and writing, not swords and gallows.
But your theory that Christ was speaking to the Jews alone and 'plotting' against Rome is clearly wrong.
Clearly Roman authorities feared him, because of the beliefs of the Jews of the day, particularly the Zealots, regarding the coming Messiah. Otherwise he would have been stoned, not crucified.
Kirk
Originally posted by Kirkland
The Trinity was not a doctrine that was invented to satisfy the Romans
So why was it invented?
Originally posted by segovius
But your theory that Christ was speaking to the Jews alone and 'plotting' against Rome is clearly wrong.
For a start there is the fracas in the temple which surely wouldn't have endeared JC to the Jewish authorities and indeed there were many revolutionary 'terrorist' outfits around at the time. Jesus didn't join or support them.
He attacked the money changers, who in turn attacked the sovereignty of Judah through Roman currency. Any amateur "economist" would understand that. And the average guy on the street, having any nationalist feelings, would applaud Jesus for doing that.
Originally posted by Kirkland
Maybe among conspiracy buffs. Those of us who have studied legitimate Christian history don't see any evidence of this. The books of the NEw Testament that have come down to us do not differ in any noteworthy ways from any of the pieces of the documents we have found that date to the early Christian era, whether from Nag Hammadi or other sites. Please, if these works have been redacted, show us your proof.
So the earliest fragments date to early third-century. That still leaves 200 years after the death of Jesus to invent and reinvent, the Jesus story.