Dead Sea Scrolls Geez Samaritan Pentateuch. parallels to Ras Shamra that no one had access to until the 20th century. The use of motifs from Narmer in Shemot.
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Best way to abort Christianity after Constantine?
- Thread starter Hassungṙengjang
- Start date
Yeah…. no. Not even close, my dude. Modern estimates out the Christians at maybe a quarter of the Empire by that time, and one also has to understand that Early Christianity was highly syncretic on the ground as evidenced by a multitude of mystical texts in which Jesus is identified with Dionysus, Adonis, and Serapis. Again, I already got plenty of imagination happening on the first page of this thread and I was satisfied with what I got from other users and then along came unimaginative folks like yourself who have a very rudimentary understanding of the period… no offense. But seriously, they were not “like half” the Empire at that point. They were a loud minority concentrated principally within the urban East, particularly Anatolia, the region which played perhaps the biggest role in the development of what was later called Proto-Orthodoxy.
So… what? Have you ever actually read the Septuagint next to the Hebrew Bible before instead of just reading what a bunch of scholars who are NOT Classical Philologists have to say about how to date these texts? Do you speak more than one language? Cuz you actually don’t have to be particularly proficient in either Ancient Greek or Tiberian Hebrew to be able to tell that the Greek is the original. Something that anyone who speaks a second language knows is that you don’t start talking in highly specific terms until you’re extremely proficient. Before then, your translations of what you want to say have a tendency to be fairly generalized. When comparing the Hebrew to the Greek, the Greek reads in a very sophisticated literary style in which a lot of very specific cultic metaphors are used left and right, whereas the entire Talmud exists to interpret what the Hebrew is saying because the Hebrew reads in such generalist terms that it’s actually quite difficult to make sense of. Reading it in Greek, the text makes perfect sense. Reading it in Hebrew, you need multiple schools of scholars to interpret it over a 500 year period and write down their debates over what this or that vague statement actually means in a library of books.
Ok, so most of that was very difficult to follow.That falls in to more a religious debate that we s
Can't have here but also no on that last one early chirstian iconoclasm for pagan temples was motivated not because of hatred of the world or what ever it was because you know their interpretation that pagan temples were idolatry.
As for literature that wouldn't be iconoclast anymore and while some destruction did occur the prevailing christian though from antiquity till now was Greco roman classics were ok I mean they were pagan but they had wisdom the chirstian kept many of the works most of them died of because of neglect of the socio economic reality rather than the chirstians not wanting them.
The Great Myths 8: The Loss of Ancient Learning - History for Atheists
The idea that we only have a fraction of Greek and Roman learning and literature because most of it was destroyed by Christians is a common assumed truism in much New Atheist discourse. But this is substantially a simplistic myth based on a number of misconceptions and errors of fact. If...historyforatheists.com
irrelevant to what I said because while scholars might say the old testament and what were the believes of it's writers by the 1st century AD the founders of Christianity lived under rabbinical Judaism which had a set of believes like the God of Israel the old testament God is the only God, prophets exist, if was so Jewish that Paul had to fight the early christians on whether gentile converts had to follow the laws.
Some branches of gnosticism rejected that notion of old testament God was God, gnostic ideals of escaping the physical world were against Paul view of resurrection
Again utterly irrelevant because by the first century AD Jewish monotheism was established it had been so for 6 centuries prior to Jesus and no the first chirstians would have been similar to Jews as seen by Paul arguing with Jewish christians rather than gnostics who rejected many Jewish claims
I'm but even if weren't what you said is so ridiculous that no scholar of early Christianity would take you seriously
Is it myth vision podcast? Because I have seen them and I don't remember a single video of them saying anything about second temple Judaism being similar to gnosticism
Why do you think Christians had such a problem with idolatry? A problem you seem to have outgrown, cuz here I am in Siena and all I see is idols of your Jesus and your Virgin Mary and your saints everywhere, but still. The problem was not merely related to the worship of idols, it was a problem with the idea of Gods that performed functions in the material world that were represented in material forms that they were called to inhabit in the form of said idols. Christians have a very long literary tradition of disdaining creation and many Christians have even speculated that it would be better if the creation had never happened to begin with. This is why Christians are so obsessed with excising various parts of human nature.
And don’t try to argue for a second that the Christians did not burn the Ancient World to the ground in a wanton display of bloodlust. They only preserved what they thought they could use either to demonstrate how “silly” Paganism was or to frame the Ancients as “preparing the way” for Christianity. Less than 10% of Ancient Greek literature survives and probably around 1% of Latin, and the Christians have made a point over the last 1500 years of NOT TRANSLATING Ancient Greek pharmacological literature, even in the present. Most of your scholars on Early Christianity know absolutely nothing about Ancient Pharmacology and so the numerous references to sexual and psychedelic rituals in the New Testament are completely lost on them. Jesus was NOT a Rabbinical Jew, he wasn’t even dealing with Rabbinical Judaism as we understand it. The closest thing we can pin him down to being was a Dionysian mystic of some sort, but he was by far absolutely NOT in the sphere of Rabbinical Judaism as we understand it and that was not even a thing at the time. If it was, the New Testament would not be littered with references to sex rituals and psychedelics being practiced IN JUDAEA. Your absolutely right that no scholar of Early Christianity takes this stuff seriously, but myself and a growing number of Pagans don’t really take THEM seriously.
And no, I’m talking about Russell Gmirkin, Carl Ruck, and D.C. Ammon Hillman. Look them up.
It was a “winner” religious idea at the time. Not surprising, given the context of large bureaucratic empires that seemed to trail on into seemingly infinite decline. Times change, though. I would argue that the idea of a Golden Age before the present is quite different from believing that the world is “fallen” from a “perfect” state and that humanity needs “redemption” from “sin”, or that the best a person can hope for is to escape this world or for their consciousness to be snuffed out. Again, this is all Axial Age religion, and it arguably starts with the notion in Iran that the world is some sort of battleground between forces of light and darkness.
And no, it’s not a bias toward the extent sources. The fact of the matter is that we have no attention even to the concept of Jewish monotheism before the 270s BCE, and it would seem that that concept even still took some time to sink in. Why do you think the Jewish temples in Jerusalem and Elephantine have no recorded denunciations of one another’s religious practices if one was monotheistic and the other was polytheistic? And if Jewish monotheism really does date back to the time of Hezekiah or Josiah or whatever other mythical king, why is the temple at Elephantine polytheistic and despite the multitude of papyri that come from there, there is no mention whatsoever of Moses and Abraham? Why is the earliest mention of Moses from Hecataeus of Abdera? Because the Old Testament is a Greek document produced by Jewish scholars in Alexandria in tandem with a bunch of other scholars and clerics of conquered peoples at the time who had been called to deposit their religious and legal literature in the library, and the Jews once again found themselves in a foreign metropolis and they once again imbibed a bunch of foreign religious material… in this case from the Greeks.
Anyways, why are we talking about this? This is not pertinent to the title or discussion of this thread. I’ve already said that I have a POD for this and I’m not interested in debating the merits of Christianity or its history, and I asked for the thread to be closed. That’s an invitation for everyone to STOP POSTING in it until the mods close it. Thank you! Good day.
Idk, a quick search had said that by around 350 AD around 30 million were Christians. By the time Julian comes to power the Church has had official backing from the emperors for decades while pagan influence was declining, with Constantinople lacking pagan influence. According to this article. You don’t gotta be rude and say someone is unimaginative because they don’t agree with you. Christianity’s spread has already spanned the empire before Constantine and its power and influence grew rapidly during his rule and sons’s rule. That’s a fact. Hell it was already spreading elsewhere outside the empire like in Persia and amongst the goths. It would be hard to stop the spread of Christianity when paganism was heavily divided and not all of its cults were super inclusive iirc while Christianity showed incredible resilience to survive persecution and continue growing and spreading. That wasn’t slowing down and so Julian would’ve been fighting a very entrenched religion by this point and could cause issues if he pushed against it. I don’t see why it’s unimaginative to say something is unlikely given the circumstances, sometimes that’s how it is. But if you’re gonna be a dick about it because people disagree with you then farewell and have a good day, I’m done here.
Because they came from Judaism which states that one shouldn't gave any gods before me, hence all those temples to Zeus were problematic for the same reason as well that both and christians didn't sacrifice to the emperor as they did not and could not consider him define
For most christians is a clear difference between idolatry and iconoclasm having a painting on Jesus on a church is not the same bowing to a statue of hera.
If that was the case icons a mainstay of eastern Christianity and the many pre nicean portrays of Jesus wouldn't exist yet they do iconoclasm tendencies existed in early Christianity? Yes but they weren't popular .
Name them because I can think of no church fathers that said it would have better if god never created in fact quite the opposite about what you said about nature is bad
John of Damascus says “Whenever any creature freely rebels and becomes disobedient to Him who made him, he has brought the evil upon himself. For evil is not some sort of a substance, nor yet a property of a substance, but an accident, that is to say, a deviation from the natural into the unnatural, which is just what sin is"
Sin was seen as divination from the natural order
I will because it seems you get your idea based of the movie agora or the darkening age book, now did destruction like that occur? Yes was the ancient world burned to the ground bu displays of bloodlust? No
For one laws were issued to protect both ancient art and temples see C.Th. 16.10.15 and C.Th. 16.10.18
To quote lavans the archeology of late antique paganism
"As a result of recent work, it can be stated with confidence that temples were neither widely converted into churches nor widely demolished in Late Antiquity. …. In his Empire-wide study, Bayliss located only 43 cases [of desacralisation or active architectural destruction of temples] of which a mere 4 were archaeologically confirmed.” (Lavan,
“The End of the Temples: Toward a New Narrative?” in Lavan and Mulryan, p. xxiv) ... In regions such as Africa, Greece and Italy, temple preservation seems to have been a more prominent process than temple destruction"
so of the hundreds of temple around the the empire 43 were destroyed, most temples became ruins or destroyed not because of mobs ruining around because of neglect in the same manner some churches today are bulldozed simply put the decline of followers + the cost to maintain meant that later in to the middle ages people began to use them as construction material and or repurpose them .
this is what happens to many buildings in Rome well in to middle ages as the city declined they became ruins and people used them for construction material.
If you bothered to read what I sent you know this a very simplistic view so since you don't want to read let me quote.
"there is actually no evidence of any such “systematic” or even sporadic but extensive attempt at extinguishing ancient learning. And if this had happened as Grayling claims, we would indeed have plenty of such evidence."
"What is actually surprising is not how little of this kind of material that was fairly incompatible with Christianity survives, but actually how much of it made it to our time. Even some of the pagan hymns written by the fervently anti-Christian Iamblican, Proclus, – whose mystical Academy in Athens Grayling laments – can be read today because they were preserved by Christians. And if works like this have survived to our time, they represent a fraction of what was actually preserved.
On the whole, therefore, pagan works were not the great threat to Christianity that polemicists like Grayling imagine. Even ones that were not compatible with Christian theology were often still preserved and studied and the rest were either broadly compatible – Plato minus the transmigration of souls, or Aristotle ignoring his eternal, uncreated cosmos, for example – or theologically neutral. After all, works of mathematics or natural philosophy were not exactly going to excite the alarm of even religious zealots.
Contrary to Grayling’s fantasies, schools and academies continued to operate across the Christian world both after Theodosius and after Justinian and, as Reynolds and Wilson state categorically, “there was in general no attempt to alter the school curriculum by banishing the classical authors” (p. 50). "
As for the Ancient Greek pharmacological literature this is wrong Brill's Companion to the Reception of Galen says galen was very influential in the byzantine empire so much so that to quote
"The late Byzantine period also evidenced the gradual replacement of traditional Greek pharmaceutical dosage forms with new ones"
Yes these people didn't translate pharmacological ancient Greek so much so it was used as the standard of pharmacology for centuries.
Like do you know them personally ? Modern scholarship knows well about ancient Greek and christian views on sexuality
Of course he wasn't rabbinical Judaism came as an evolution of second temple Judaism which Jesus and his apóstoles were .
Dude hellenized Jews existed the gospels using Greco roman ideals or representations like Jesus turning water into wine doesn't mean it wasn't Jewish given how the gospels talk about Jewish elements and purpose of GMatthew is to show Jesus was the Jewish messiah or how Paul again has to figth the Jewish christians In the early years to allow gentiles not to follow the law of Moses
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Oh gnostic informant ok let's see
Russell Gmirkin doesn't ever mention that Jesus was closer to gnostics at least not in any profesional work I seen his main thesis is an unrelated topic that the Torah wasn't written and compiled until 280 bc a theory mind you that is rejected by the concensus that the Torah was a result of the Babylonian exile centuries prior .
Carl Ruck says the historical Jesus never existed so he is a fringe a Richard carrier unlike carrier he is correct about similarities about Dionysian influence on Christianity but his conclusion of no historical Jesus and that Christianity didn't start as Jewish religion like all attempt at mythicism has not been accepted by academia given how it contradicts all our evidence .
As for Hillman he goes against the most accepted theory that the naked fugitive something g mark got from amos and whose book original sin and ritual child rape in the final chapters, the author's hypothesis on ritual child rape supported . He describes how he believes the ritual was performed and even claims Cyril of Alexandria participated and commented on it yet offers no real quotes the supposed ritual found on mark that you keep yapping about ( the nT does talk about sexuality and sex but let's see) as mentioned contradict the amos interpretation yet never expands on it also it has no notes, or bibliography
when proposing a new thesis and especially one the goes against a more popular historical interpretation one must bring evidence to override the close or out right concensus he didn't it's a pretty good example a of bad book
I'm sensing a pattern here man if you dislike Christianity fine good on you but jeez man stop using dark ages myths worthy of bad scholarship like the darkening age or fringe historians like the one above who btw one of them doesn't even talk about Jesus.
Because everything you said thus far is fringe or outright myths
Burton K Wheeler
Moderator
You’re being unnecessarily rude to people who disagree with you on religious topics. You need to understand that
A. Religious debates are somewhat orthogonal to the purpose of this board and indeed to the original topic of your own thread.
B. Your personal religious beliefs are rather idiosyncratic and not everyone is going to be immediately familiar with the ins and outs of them.
All that is to say a bit more patience with other posters is called for than you’re displaying, so please treat everyone with respect.
Burton K Wheeler
Moderator
I don’t see any reason to. There’s plenty of ways it can generate productive discussion with or without your contributions.
I’m gonna go to bed now, it’s late here. I don’t see a way to unfollow the thread on my end, so if there is such a thing, if you could let me know how to do that it in my inbox, I would very much appreciate it.
You’d need to have actual counters to Christian beliefs come from theological aspects of it and not from repression of state solely. Julian the Apostate was trying to counter Christianity in his own time trough this method but he didn’t really seem to fully grasp all of it and holes or unsatisfactory explanations it has and this attack it on it. Which is not surprising, Christianity alongside Judaism was an outside context problem. A god that is omnipotent, omniscient and Omni benevolent can’t exist without contradicting himself or making himself irrelevant. Jesus never directly claimed to be god, his divinity is interpreted trough sentences like “Before Abraham was I am”. In the same chapter in John 8:54 he claims God is his father, not that he is God himself. Jesus prays to God in multiple places in Bible. The authenticity of Bible could be attacked, especially if you bring forward all the gospels and how different they are and Jesus within them is. You could go after the massive change in personality of God between Old and New Testament. Is this ancient creator being that knows all somehow unaware of future and thus reacts with wrath, anger, destruction at slightest of irritations and yet in New Testament is a hippy of live and let live.
Burton K Wheeler
Moderator
Sure, though it’s probably not worth engaging with OP if he’s not reading it.
Fair. While op kinda shutdown my desire to continue I wouldn’t mind as while I think it was too late to do what he was asking I feel a surviving paganism could happen if more organized.
What I found so far is that anytime between 350 and 400 is when the entire empire definitely became majority Christian.