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Post by documentus on Nov 27, 2011 21:02:57 GMT
Sources: historyhuntersinternational.org/2011/03/06/the-vacuum-of-evidence-for-pre-4th-century-christianity/"Not a single artefact of any medium – including textual – and dated reliably before the fourth century can be unambiguously identified as Christian. This is the most notable result of our archaeological survey of sites, inscriptions, libraries, collections and so on from the Indus River to the Nile and north to Britain. Taking into account the vast volume of scholarly works claiming expert opinion for the exact opposite point of view, let me clarify terms. There is, of course, much archaeology interpreted commonly as Christian. This does not contradict the bald statement above. The difference lies between data that spells out Christian clearly and unambiguously, and that which expert opinion claims to look as though it is Christian. There are very many texts claimed to be Christian and composed before the fourth century, though the documents themselves are not dated to that early period. We have found no text before the fourth century which mentions either Jesus Christ, or the term ‘Christian’." "The greatest challenge faced by scholarship in this field is to escape “the glittering web” of false assumptions and rather, to ground thinking within a secure framework of reliable archaeology. This will lead to profound change. The history of the Roman Empire – how it came into being, how it related to both Judaism and the panhellenic world, and how it moved into the Byzantine period – begs revision. The history of divine men has yet to be written."
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Post by fortigurn on Nov 27, 2011 23:26:09 GMT
lol @ website. For those interested, the multiple levels of fail begin with appeals to HP Blavatsky, of Theosophist fame. I expect this site to be seized on with glee by Neil Godfrey and Earl Doherty, who will no doubt praise its scholarly value.
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Post by sankari on Nov 28, 2011 5:55:46 GMT
'Including textual'? Seriously? This is so stupid, even stupid people know it's stupid.
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Post by unkleE on Nov 28, 2011 8:42:29 GMT
G'day documentus, welcome to this forum. Do you intend to hang around? If so, it might be helpful to provide some basis for what you are saying. For example:
"Not a single artefact of any medium – including textual – and dated reliably before the fourth century can be unambiguously identified as Christian"
From my reading, I cannot think of a single historian who would agree with this. So are you interested in historical evidence?
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Post by fortigurn on Nov 28, 2011 13:52:37 GMT
From my reading, I cannot think of a single historian who would agree with this. So are you interested in historical evidence? You must have missed this part. So there you go.
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Post by documentus on Nov 28, 2011 17:18:48 GMT
@unclee Thank you for your welcome, You must have misunderstood, the text quoted are in quotation marks and the source of this quotation is at the start. Historians must base their "history" on archaeological evidence(including icons,coins, manuscripts, etc)! If you read the site from which the quotes are taken then the author's request/claim is simple: To be more definitive: we have not found a single usage of the term 'Christ' in any text, sacred or otherwise, which can be dated directly to any time before the 4th century The site has approximately a years worth of articles. The author of the article responds in the comments section thus(direct quotation): Dear Readers, This post is being discussed by others, across the web, more than all our other posts combined and not a single example of the term Christ or Christian from before the 4th century has been offered in refutation. There is some continued confusion, however, between fact and opinion, which should not surprise, as we see examples of such confusion every day in news reporting. It is a fact that many hold the opinion that there is christian archaeology in the 3rd century; it is not a fact - as far as I am aware - that there is such archaeology. To be more definitive: we have not found a single usage of the term 'Christ' in any text, sacred or otherwise, which can be dated directly to any time before the 4th century. This, despite an enormous number of claims to the contrary, including authoritative, letter-by-letter transliterations - all of which are factually wrong. How can centuries of scholarship be wrong on a matter of fact? Because they assume that an abbreviation can be a 'nomina sacra' - a sacred name - and, believing in either Christ, or the judgment of others who believe in Christ - understand such an abbreviation to translate to 'Christ'. Also, because monks falsified scared texts on a massive scale, vast amounts of archaeological evidence have been destroyed, and even when Chrest is written clearly, it has been 'translated' as Christ. If we assume this was not all fraud, then these false translations are based on assumptions - the presumed scholarship for Christianity is no more than a house of cards. Archaeologists work within the historical framework given to them, so all the archaeology is interpreted on these assumptions. The archaeology must also be no more reliable than the proverbial. That's 1,700 years of scholarship blown away. The notion that christianity has a solid basis in history and archaeology is demonstrably false, as we show here. That is but one conclusion, for there are many more to be drawn on this. There are many other divine men in Classical Antiquity, produced by the same chrestic process and scholars have largely failed to treat them with any more intellectual integrity than they have the Greek magical Jesus. Best regards, John fortigurn"lol @ website. For those interested, the multiple levels of fail begin with appeals to HP Blavatsky, of Theosophist fame." There is no appeals to HP Blavatsky, the context of what the author was saying is as follows: Those making claims have a duty to support them with reliable evidence and cogent argument, in which greater weight is given to reliable data and primary sources. As no such data has ever been available to support the tradition of a first-century Jesus Christ, the burden of proof for historicity has fallen on texts. Examination of the earliest texts shows a history quite different to that of tradition.
An earlier attempt (by the author, below) at interpreting the use of Chrest, whilst good, makes the basic error of assuming that there is evidence for a (Jesus-centred) Nazarene cult in the first decades of the first century of the modern era:
All this is evidence that the terms Christ and Christians, spelt originally Chrest and Chrestians [chrestianoi] were directly borrowed from the Temple terminology of the Pagans, and meant the same thing. The God of the Jews was now substituted for the Oracle and the other gods; the generic designation “Chrestos” became a noun applied to one special personage; and new terms such as Chrestianoi and Chrestodoulos “a follower or servant of Chrestos” — were coined out of the old material. This is shown by Philo Judaeus, a monotheist, assuredly, using already the same term for monotheistic purposes. For he speaks of theochrestos “God-declared,” or one who is declared by god, and of logia theochresta “sayings delivered by God” — which proves that he wrote at a time (between the first century B. C., and the first A. D.) when neither Christians nor Chrestians were yet known under these names, but still called themselves the Nazarenes. The notable difference between the two words [chrao] — “consulting or obtaining response from a god or oracle” (chreo being the Ionic earlier form of it), and chrio “to rub, to anoint” (from which the name Christos), has not prevented the ecclesiastical adoption and coinage from Philo’s expression [Theochrestos] of that other term [Theochristos] “anointed by God.” Thus the quiet substitution of the letter, for [e] for dogmatic purposes, was achieved in the easiest way, as we now see. - The Esoteric Character of the Gospels, Studies in Occultism by H. P. Blavatsky, Theosophical University Press Online Edition Further, let everyone read it for themselves and offer any evidence against what the author is saying. It has been said that Newton was very interested in Alchemy and the Bible yet it was his scientific theories(facts) that are at the foundations of modern science. His musings on Alchemy and the Bible have no categorically no value! @ sankari "'Including textual'? Seriously? This is so stupid, even stupid people know it's stupid." It what way is it stupid? Did you see the actual texts the author cited: Could you please offer textual sources that would correct this 'stupid' as you call it.
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Post by turoldus on Nov 28, 2011 19:49:57 GMT
To the authors' credit, they make their agenda quite clear:
Reply History Hunters International 7 months ago
The fakes and frauds come thick and fast, which is no surprise, as the history of this particular religion is a fraud, much of the scholarship is - as politely as I can put it - unsound, the various Churches have faked relics and sites on an industrial scale, and now we have the mass media promoting any sensationalist story to try and stay afloat.
There is no reliable, contemporaneous evidence for Jesus Christ and none for Christianity until the 4th century, and then the 'testimonia' appears: unsupported claims for an earlier Tradition, claims for texts which we do not have and therefore cannot examine. - The correspondence between Pliny and Trajan, for example: where are the originals? - The trial of 'Justin Martyr': where is the original court document? - 'Against Heresies' by Irenaeus of Lyons - where is the original text? And so on: unsupported claims. My colleague and I were shocked to note that just a few days ago, the Wikipedia entry for 'Testimonia' was deleted, entirely. We checked who did this and found it was a declared Christian. We can only imagine that the Christian 'mafia' in Wikipedia - the same clique which banned all reference to our work here - is afraid of where our argument is going. Our opponents in this one-sided 'debate' are fundamentally dishonest, as fraudulent as the Lead Codices and all the other faked relics.
Source: http://historyhuntersinternational.org/2011/04/04/lead-codices/
The bit asking for originals texts of Pliny or Iraenaeus tells you everything you need to know about the expertise and credibility of these folks... Also the usual whining about evil Xians suppressing the truth.
Their definition of what makes "real" history to them is no less entertaining:
The digital sources of information tend to rely on a specific type of ancient historical source and treat this genre as more or less primary when discussing ancient events. From a more historical critical approach, this is a tendentious practice and offers a major opportunity for the unwary reader to become misled: professional historians have in most cases very little knowledge on what sources ancient historians (we have to be careful even using this descriptive term and at HHI we are more comfortable referring to them as Chroniclers after a sort) used to prepare their works.
To put it another way, most of the ancient so-called histories are actually secondary sources describing events the author did not personally witness entirely, or in many cases, did not personally witness at all. The question of what genre these works belong to and the actual degree of historicity they contain, continue to be debated within the historical and archaeological disciplines. For our purposes, and it is the approach we at HHI will take, all ancient writing that we moderns place within the genre of history is suspect, along with the classification of these works as histories in the modern sense of the term.
In short, for most cases it is necessary to treat these ancient chronicles as secondary descriptions of events and therefore seek to cross-check these secondary sources against actual ancient primary source documents in the form of the vast number of non-literary papyri.
- The Gospels According to Hadrian, Part III: The Aelian Canon and the Main Hand of God by Lancelotto, 26 July 2010
http://historyhuntersinternational.org/about/
What's most surprising/alarming is that both authors seem to have a background in history/archaelogy.
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Post by unkleE on Nov 28, 2011 21:40:47 GMT
To be more definitive: we have not found a single usage of the term 'Christ' in any text, sacred or otherwise, which can be dated directly to any time before the 4th century I am still at a loss to understand what you mean, I'm sorry. 1. The Greek word translated in English as "Christ" is itself a translation of the Hebrew "Messiah", and there are many, many uses of that word, in both Jewish and Christian writings. For example, Josephus, writing in the late first century says: "so he assembled the sanhedrin of judges, and brought before them the brother of Jesus, who was called Christ, whose name was James, and some others". Likewise Paul's letters, most of whom historians accept were written by him in the middle of the first century, obviously mention Jesus and Messiah. 2. Your claim appears to be not only that the word "Christ" doesn't appear, but that "Not a single artefact of any medium – including textual – and dated reliably before the fourth century can be unambiguously identified as Christian." What then do you make of the Rylands papyrus P52, dated to the first half of the second century, and which contains a small section of text from John's Gospel which reads: the Jews, "For us it is not permitted to kill anyone," so that the word of Jesus might be fulfilled, which he sp- oke signifying what kind of death he was going to die. Entered therefore again into the Praeto- rium Pilate and summoned Jesus and said to him, "Thou art king of the Jews?" This indicates that John's gospel, one of the most developed pieces of christian theology at the time and surely a christian textual artefact, was around in the early second century. So what exactly do you mean? Do you not accept that these, and many, many other documents, are christian, or that they are first and second century, or what?
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Post by fortigurn on Nov 28, 2011 23:35:39 GMT
There is no appeals to HP Blavatsky, the context of what the author was saying is as follows: What follows is a large quotation from Blavatsky in an attempt to support the claims of the website. The quotation from Blavatsky is complete nonsense, not because she was religious, but because it's factually wrong. The problem here is not only appealing to someone completely unqualified in the relevant fields, but also to someone who is demonstrably wrong. Sure; read a standard professional Greek lexicon and see what it says about the words 'Christ' and 'Christian'. As I have said, I am not objecting to Blavatsky on the basis that she was religious.
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Post by sankari on Nov 28, 2011 23:47:56 GMT
"'Including textual'? Seriously? This is so stupid, even stupid people know it's stupid." It what way is it stupid? Where do you want to start? The bias is obvious, the methodology is facile, the premise is ridiculous, the conclusion illogical and insupportable. I would sooner believe in pixie dust and moon cheese. A case in point: OK, let's play that game. The trial of 'Socrates': where is the original court document? Aha, we don't have it! Therefore Socrates did not exist. See how easy it is? Yep, and they go straight into the 'So what?' basket. Sure: every piece of Christian literature written before the 4th Century - and there's a lot of it. Where do you think it all came from? Who wrote it? For what purpose? Even if it was true that the word 'Christ' and 'Christians' do not appear in any pre-4th Century manuscript, how does this prove Christianity did not exist? 'Christian' was a rarely used term anyway, and only appears two or three times in the entire NT. This is a classic case of arbitrarily defining parameters as narrowly as possible in order to exclude evidence that would otherwise disprove the claim being made. The conspiracy theory touted by 'History Hunters International' is not a new one. Every now and then it is revived by some crank who believes he knows better than the experts. A recent example is Peter R. F. Brown (www.mountainman.com.au) who audaciously submitted his work to the Journal of Hellenic Studies. The reply was as follows: I see no evidence that 'History Hunters International' have improved on Mr Brown's amateurish efforts. Incidentally, Brown is not a Dr in any sense of the word (you can check his CV here: www.mountainman.com.au/cv_in_it.htm ) but apparently thought it might help his chances if he told JHS that he was.
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Post by fortigurn on Nov 29, 2011 8:02:29 GMT
Here are some of the arguments made. 1. Pliny's correspondence apparently referring to Christians only survive in one very late medieval manuscript. Because this manuscript is very late, it is unreliable and does not show us what Pliny originally wrote. The original reading was actually 'Chrestians', which was changed to 'Christians' by later Christian copyists. No evidence is supplied to prove this claim. 2. Most of the New Testament was written by servants of the Flavian emperors. Vespasian and Titus in particular, employed a large number of men to write histories which would become used as the basis of the New Testament documents. The New Testament books could not have been written and distributed without imperial consent and assistance, since 'it was impossible for any philosopher, much less slave, in this period to write, publish and gain a readership outside the authority of the court'. No evidence is supplied to support this claim. 3. The canonical gospels are 'Roman-inspired black propaganda, belonging to the reign of the emperor Hadrian and published with the approval of the imperial court'. No evidence is supplied to support this claim. 4. The works of Robert Eisenman ('James the brother of Jesus' and 'The New Testament Code'), and Joseph Atwill ('Caesar's Messiah', referred to as a 'ground-breaking work'), are appealed to as 'modern, scholarly views'. In reality, Eisenman's works are considered highly eccentric by modern scholarship, and Atwill's work is dismissed completely. Even Robert Price (to whom this site appeals as an authority), ridiculed Atwill's work in his review of it. * 'Such a statement is only a damning self-condemnation, revealing the author’s own absolute inability to appreciate what he is reading' * 'Of such airy bricks is Atwill’s cloudy castle built' * 'No, it is Atwill himself whose creation demonstrates the limitless possibilities of perverse and gratuitous interpretations of the text' * 'The reading given here is just ludicrous'
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Post by sankari on Nov 29, 2011 11:02:06 GMT
Oh good grief, it's the old 'Flavian mafia made it all up' conspiracy theory. Not even unique; not even interesting.
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Post by fortigurn on Nov 29, 2011 12:25:02 GMT
Oh good grief, it's the old 'Flavian mafia made it all up' conspiracy theory. Not even unique; not even interesting. Yes, just another spin on the completely insignificant work of Abelard Reuchlin.
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Post by documentus on Nov 29, 2011 18:18:51 GMT
@unclee
"I am still at a loss to understand what you mean, I'm sorry."
Just quoting from the site and was looking for responses, you seem to think I am the one making these claims. This is not the case. Based on purely the content of the site[History Hunters International] I am looking for responses on-line and came across this forum.
What can be said however is that I am in total agreement with the author in giving primacy to archaeological evidence and primary sources[as far as his possible] . I also agree in treating whatever archaeological remains [especially manuscripts] as just that - archaeological artifacts.[paraphrasing]. The hallmark of a scholar is to follow the evidence wherever it may lead to. Scholarship should not be about maintaining belief. An excellent example, is the whole Licona affair:
"A fiery debate has erupted over a leading Southern Baptist apologist's questioning of Matthew 27. The question: whether Matthew's reference to many saints rising from their graves after Jesus' resurrection might not be literal history.
The theological war of words, spurred by high-profile open letters and retorts on the Internet, has raised questions about the meaning of biblical inerrancy. It has also led to the departure of Michael Licona as apologetics coordinator for the North American Mission Board (NAMB).
At issue is a passage of Licona's 700-page The Resurrection of Jesus: A New Historiographical Approach, published in 2010 by InterVarsity Press.
"Based on my reading of the Greco-Roman, Jewish, and biblical literature, I proposed that the raised saints are best interpreted as Matthew's use of an apocalyptic symbol communicating that the Son of God had just died," said Licona, former research professor of New Testament at Southern Evangelical Seminary in Charlotte, North Carolina. Licona voluntarily resigned from the seminary on October 4 after the print version of this article went to press.
In a series of open letters posted online, Norman Geisler, distinguished professor of apologetics at Veritas Evangelical Seminary in Murrieta, California, objected to Licona's characterizing the passage as a "strange little text." Geisler accused Licona of denying the full inerrancy of Scripture. He also called for Licona to recant his interpretation, labeling it "unorthodox, non-evangelical, and a dangerous precedent for the rest of evangelicalism.""
This is clearly not scholarship!
@ others
I will be posting the responses here over at the comments section on History Hunters to see what the author and commentators say.
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Post by fortigurn on Nov 30, 2011 0:06:29 GMT
Just quoting from the site and was looking for responses, you seem to think I am the one making these claims. This is not the case. No, we understand you're simply referring to the site; you're obviously not the author. What the author of the site claims to do, and what he actually does, are two different things. He claims to give primacy to archaeological evidence, but doesn't know how to interpret it properly. He claims to give primacy to primary sources as far as possible, but actually ignores the ones which disagree with his personal beliefs. He is not showing any of the hallmarks of a scholar. We can predict what they will say. You'll be told we're blinded by prejudice and brainwashed by a Christian paradigm, that we are heavily invested in Christianity, that we're not looking at the evidence objectively, and that groundbreaking ideas are always met with resistance from established scholarship (Galileo may be invoked). Every crank says the same thing.
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