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Post by wraggy on Dec 30, 2011 2:12:30 GMT
Sankari, can you fix the link in the above post. You have included both a ) bracket and a comma on the link.
Cheers Wraggy
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Post by merkavah12 on Dec 30, 2011 6:04:36 GMT
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Post by sankari on Dec 30, 2011 6:19:44 GMT
Sankari, can you fix the link in the above post. You have included both a ) bracket and a comma on the link. Cheers Wraggy Thanks, done. Irritating forum software doesn't parse urls properly.
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Post by ignorantianescia on Dec 30, 2011 8:44:36 GMT
Maybe I'll ask some questions about methodology in my next post but I'm currently looking for some verses that link the nomina sacra of Christ to the Messiah pretty directly. Ask them to explain how a bunch of unknown Christians somehow managed to fabricate 300 years of history so convincingly that even pagans believed it. Ask them to explain how the alleged 4th Century Christian fraudsters succeeded in forging the huge body of textual evidence showing the existence of Christianity from the 1st Century AD to the 4th (i.e. all the material here: www.earlychristianwritings.com ) including Christian heretics (e.g. Tertullian) and ex-Christian heretics (e.g. Marcion) with full biographies, and works in their names. Ask them to explain why pre-4th Century pagans (e.g. Celsus & Porphyry) wrote polemics against Christianity if it did not actually exist at that time. Ask them to explain why nobody realised the Christians' version of the last 300 years was actually false, and those who did, either said nothing or had no way of falsifying the Christians' claims. Nice questions, I'm thinking of dropping in a reference to how the claims of several early Wiccans and other neo-pagans (still believed by some) that they are continuing a pagan or witchcraft tradition has been debunked by modern scholars. It seems also useful to point what their sceptical method would do to the evaluation of other writings that have a smaller body of transmitted texts. The earliest manuscript of Pliny is from the late fifth century and only consists of six leaves for example. Sankari, can you fix the link in the above post. You have included both a ) bracket and a comma on the link. Cheers Wraggy Thanks, done. Irritating forum software doesn't parse urls properly. You can also use url tags to make it parse properly: ([url]www.earlychristianwritings.com[/url]) gives ( www.earlychristianwritings.com).
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Post by technomage on Jan 1, 2012 18:13:25 GMT
Nice questions, I'm thinking of dropping in a reference to how the claims of Wiccans and other neo-pagans that they are continuing a pagan or witchcraft tradition has been debunked by modern scholars. *blush* Not all of us do that.
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Post by ignorantianescia on Jan 1, 2012 18:38:48 GMT
Nice questions, I'm thinking of dropping in a reference to how the claims of Wiccans and other neo-pagans that they are continuing a pagan or witchcraft tradition has been debunked by modern scholars. *blush* Not all of us do that. You're right, that statement is too general. I'll correct it.
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Post by technomage on Jan 1, 2012 18:44:13 GMT
*blush* Not all of us do that. You're right, that statement is too general. I'll correct it. Thanks. Even if you had put "Most," I couldn't argue the point (as much as I wish I could). Don't get me wrong, the Wiccan and Neopagan communities have a lot of wonderful people ... but quite a few of them have some really bad ideas.
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Post by dragos on Jan 16, 2012 15:28:33 GMT
Hello all, John, the HHI author, is not aware that early Christians were called both christianoi and chrêstianoi. In Greek chrêstos means "good, worthy, useful". Thus chrêstianôi is a folk etymology, catalyzed also by a feature of the Koine Greek: ê and i and ei were pronounced the same. As Tertullian put it: Christianus vero, quantum interpretatio est, de unctione deducitur. Sed et cum perperam Chrestianus pronuntiatur a vobis, nam nec nominis certa est notitia penes vos, de suavitate vel benignitate compositum est. The evil Christians also forged such testimonies to deceive the future scholars! What about evidence? We have some Christian inscriptions in Phrygia dated to 3rd and 4th centuries (see also Elsa Gibson's The "Christians for Christians" inscriptions of Phrygia, 1978). Here we find both forms. Some evidence for christianoi is online, in the PackHum epigraphic database: MAMA 10, 8: christianoi christianô MAMA 10, 146: [christi]anoi christianois However evidence adduced by John does not support his case. After Chrestianos appellabat the text of Tacitus continues with auctor nominis eius Christus. Read also this article by Erik Zara. (edit: I've just read a post by ignorantianescia making the same point, I apologize for replying before reading the entire discussion)
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Post by sankari on Jan 16, 2012 16:36:50 GMT
Good gracious. John's just not doing terribly well, is he? It must be awkward when all the evidence points in the opposite direction...
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Post by fortigurn on Jan 17, 2012 2:47:00 GMT
What about evidence? We have some Christian inscriptions in Phrygia dated to 3rd and 4th centuries (see also Elsa Gibson's The "Christians for Christians" inscriptions of Phrygia, 1978). Here we find both forms. Some evidence for christianoi is online, in the PackHum epigraphic database: MAMA 10, 8: christianoi christianô MAMA 10, 146: [christi]anoi christianois These are good positive evidence. I referred to them in my post on page 2, 'four of the funerary Phrygian 'Christians for Christians' inscriptions'. I also mentioned the Inscription of Kartir, and New Testament papyrus P38: Acts19:6του χ̅ρ̅υ̅❏ εις α]φ̣ε̣σ̣ι̣ν̣ α̣μ̣α̣ρ̣τιων κ̣[αι επιθεντος αυτοις το]υ̣ πα[υλου χειρας] ε̣πε[πεσεν π̅ν̅α̅ το αγιον επ αυ]του[ς ελαλουν γλωσ
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Post by sankari on Jun 9, 2012 12:36:23 GMT
The 'History Hunters' have now reached new heights of delusion:Interesting that I haven't seen the Jesus Mythers anywhere near this stuff. You'd think it'd be a match made in heaven. Or at least the sub-lunar realm.
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labarum
Master of the Arts
Posts: 122
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Post by labarum on Jun 9, 2012 18:08:59 GMT
I wonder if these bozos have ever heard of Dura Europas? It is a town in Syria which contains the remains of a domus ecclesia (house church) dating from about 235 AD. It includes artwork on the walls of various Biblical scenes including Jesus walking on water. There have also been found fragments of liturgical texts that seemed to similar to the Didache. Considering it was discovered about a century ago, one would think any real history hunters would have discovered that by now. Just saying ...
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Post by sankari on Jun 9, 2012 23:02:45 GMT
I wonder if these bozos have ever heard of Dura Europas? It is a town in Syria which contains the remains of a domus ecclesia (house church) dating from about 235 AD. It includes artwork on the walls of various Biblical scenes including Jesus walking on water. There have also been found fragments of liturgical texts that seemed to similar to the Didache. Considering it was discovered about a century ago, one would think any real history hunters would have discovered that by now. Just saying ... They would say that the scenes are not explicitly Christian. It's how they get out of everything.
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Post by stevenavery on Jan 21, 2013 3:46:11 GMT
Hi, Isn't this part of a genre of glorious conspiracy theories. Anatoly Timofeevich Fomenko (b. 1945) being one the real razz-a-tazzs. Jean Hardouin (1646–1729) at least hinted at a similar conspiracy theory for much of ancient history however that may not be on the same level, and the conspiracy people apparently stole his documentation anyway. Edwin Johnson (1842-1901) had apparently combined the Christian mythicist theories, with a fabricated Dark Ages, so the real competition is probably between Johnson and Fomenko. Does history hunter guy draw from Johnson ? (No, I have not looked at his site.) IIDB-FRDB has at least one poster with a similar theory and site, mountainman. I used this page to jog my memory a bit, and provide some leads. New Chronology (Fomenko) en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Chronology_%28Fomenko%29Yours in Jesus, Steven
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Post by ulyssesrex on Jan 27, 2013 17:16:21 GMT
Now we are going down the rabbit hole! For those who find Fomenko a little extreme, there's also the Phantom time hypothesis proposed by Heribert Illig en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phantom_time_hypothesis which contends that the period 614-911 AD didn't exist and that all of the events and characters that we know of from these years were invented by later scribes. It's similar to the hypothesis presented in this thread that Christian texts and references during the first three centuries AD were forged and Hardouin's claim about most ancient sources. And not all that far away from David Rohl's New Chronology either which manages to create a credible time frame for the books of Exodus and Judges, and the Trojan War by phasing out over 300 years of Egyptian chronology. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Chronology_%28Rohl%29I find there's something strangely compelling about these types of alternative chronology or historical conspiracy theory (take Gavin Menzies as another example- his account of China's discovery of the whole world in the early 15th Century was even presented at the 2008 Olympics). Umberto Eco has explored the fascinating appeal of these type of theory in Foucault's Pendulum and a more disturbing variant of them recently in The Prague Cemetery. And there are genuine historical debates about forged or disputed documents or maps- take Hermann Dessau's now widely accepted view of the Augustan History or the continuing debate about the authorship of Asser's Life of Alfred the Great. One of the problems with the current situation is a particular application of Kuhn's paradigm theory that leads to all sorts of different types of work being acclaimed as potentially creating a new paradigm without any attempt at sorting out genuinely groundbreaking research from the silly stuff.... On the other hand the pseudo-theories also have attraction as a form of historical romance and this isn't a new phenomena at all- the legendary King Arthur bears very little similarity to the possible 5th or 6th Century warlord he was based upon but we can hardly throw aside such an important part of Western literature and Medieval culture because it was based upon an invented tradition! And semi-mythical figures like Prester John were of supreme importance in the later Middle Ages. But in modern pseudo-scholarship, there's a continual overlap between history and supposition or invention- in a sense people who accept the dubious matter as fact or even credible scholarship are like Biblical literalists who blur the line between allegory, history and interpolation. But where does one draw the line? The clearest answer is to look to the scholars in Biblical Studies or particular areas of History but that democratic urge to challenge the experts (magnifed by the internet) and that Romantic desire to look beyond the prosaic to find the suppressed truth, usually hidden by all sorts of shadowy conspirators constantly arises anew. And that aforementioned modern belief in the paradigm shift, that it only takes one committed truth seeker to turn thousands of years of received wisdom upside down. Perhaps pseudo-scholarship is just a slightly wonky facet of a rich intellectual culture!
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