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Lesigner Girl Profile
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Re: Did Jesus live?


The Didache:

earlychristianwritings.com is quite generous in their range of dates: 50-120 C.E. However, Sal over at allexperts.com says it was "perhaps written in about 100-120 A.D." I think it's interesting that it's the Christian who gives it the later date.

I'm having a little trouble finding a Christian source giving a date for the Gospel of Thomas, but the Rational Response Squad dates it between 50-140 C.E., so it could have been earlier, or it could have been more than a century after the purported death of Jesus. What I find even more interesting is that they also go on to say:
quote:

Experts, through radiometric dating, have dated the Gospel of Thomas found at Nag Hammadi to being written between 50-140CE. This is startling, considering the Gospel of Mark, at its earliest, was written between 65-80CE. At the earliest, that is at least 15 years after the Gospel of Thomas was written. One then should be able to conclude then, that writer of The Gospel of Mark simply took the sayings from The Gospel of Thomas and inserted them into stories. He plagiarized the Gospel of Thomas, to use today’s legalistic terms.


So, if the Gospel of Thomas was written in 50 C.E. as you say, then that would say to me that the four gospels copied from it. Oops. I guess I haven't paid enough attention to the Gospel of Thomas and will have to re-read it when I get a chance, because I really thought the stories attributed to Paul were the earliest ones written. But hey, this is the best evidence I see here of some guy named Jesus saying things (which undoubtedly would have inspired others to create a myth partially based on these saying), so I might have to give you that one.

Since we don't have any fragments that we could actually date back to 50 C.E., what methods were used to date the Didache and the Gospel of Thomas?

quote:

Next is a mere fragment that some date to as early as 50 AD called the The Oxyrhynchus Papyri, Vol. 10. POxy 1224 which has the line:


Cool, an actual fragment that might be from an original. What methods were used to date this fragment?

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8/11/2008, 9:45 pm Link to this post Send e-mail to   Send PM to Blog
 
Pastor Rick Profile
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Re: Did Jesus live?


quote:

Lesigner Girl wrote:

quote:

Next is a mere fragment that some date to as early as 50 AD called the The Oxyrhynchus Papyri, Vol. 10. POxy 1224 which has the line:


Cool, an actual fragment that might be from an original. What methods were used to date this fragment?



Hi Lesa,

I am not ignoring the question on the other two, I just never felt the need to do dating research before so if both Secular and Christian sources agreed on the date range I have accepted that at face value.

The Oxyrhynchus Papyri 1224 was found during a excavation dig back in the 1800's and the dating comes from tax and sales receipts which were found at the same time. Back then they were not nearly as careful as we are today and the workers just piled shovel fulls of the papyri on top of each other till the archeologist noticed and stopped them! The fragment itself is so small that at this time all we can go on was what it was found with in that mixed up jumble... We couldn't even read it till 2005 when a technique called multi-spectral imaging was developed.

There is a fairly nice article about the finds as a whole found in the April 25, 2005 National Geographic News here but as you may expect, the emphasis is on the "big finds."

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8/11/2008, 11:01 pm Link to this post Send e-mail to   Send PM to Blog
 
Morwen Oronor Profile
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Re: Did Jesus live?


Pastor have you ever read anything about the gospel of Judas?
National Geographic

And here's the Wikipedia
 site that talks about it.

Of course the early Church discredited all the writings that the Gnostics used as their evidence and after they were 'banned' the Church conveniently destroyed as much as they could.

I must admit that to me there are too many people who follow the religion for the mythology to be completely discredited. I do think that he was one of a group of wandering preachers who perhaps had something the others didn't and that made his philosophy survive.

The other thing that most religious teaching about the times forgets to mention is that the majority of the people at that time weren't able to read and write. They had to employ 'scribes' to write for them and they relied on itinerant orators to tell them the news and their traditional stories, including their religion. So a powerful character could interpret a theory in whatever way he liked and his listeners would hang on every word.

For instance the Histories of Herodotus were not written down in 'book' form as we know it, He simple travelled around Greece telling what he saw in his travels verbally, and when they were written down, they were on loose pieces of vellum and parchment that were eventually gathered and combined into some sort of order.

This is the way it was for hundreds of year even after the Church gained final acceptance as the official religion of Rome under Theodosius at the end of the 4th century. Even then priests didn't have bibles to refer to, only the scribes who wrote copies of the original texts were really able to write and priests were taught to read whatever was given to them to read. And because ordinary people couldn't read, there was no need to burden themselves with acquiring expensive pieces of parchment that told them what the priest was able to tell them anyway.
A lot of atheists blame the Catholic Church for the fact that education didn't advance until the Middle Ages, again this is not true. The Romans were militaristic, not intellectuals, so they didn't really care if their children could barely make out enough letters to be able to read their enlistment and retirement vellums from the army. That was all they were expected to be able to read. Being a scholar was considered unmanly, so men simply didn't bother and only the very wealthy who entertained ideas of their sons becoming great generals, or even emperor, sent them to places of education until they were old enough to enlist in the army. It was tradition, not persecution that prevented people from learning.
The university (Museum) at Alexandria was seen as an indulgence to hedonism on the part of the Greeks so when it became a place for religious scholars of the early church to gather, the Romans were completely happy with that. As long as the other religions didn't threaten that of Rome, they tolerated them, When the religion of the Christians did threaten that of Rome, and the numbers of the followers exceeded the numbers of the pagan worshippers in the Empire, and they realised that it was expedient to adopt that religion rather than lose the position of emperor, they adopted it. Not so much through religious fervor but rather through financial and social expediency.
Sorry about the lecture, but I love discussing this stuff and it is such a pleasure to do it in an atmosphere of peaceful exchange rather than confrontational insult slinging.
8/11/2008, 11:36 pm Link to this post Send PM to Blog
 
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Re: Did Jesus live?


quote:

Morwen Oronor wrote:

Sorry about the lecture, but I love discussing this stuff and it is such a pleasure to do it in an atmosphere of peaceful exchange rather than confrontational insult slinging.



Nice isn't it.

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8/12/2008, 11:14 am Link to this post Send e-mail to   Send PM to
 
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Re: Did Jesus live?


Very nice. It's great to discuss something you enjoy without having to deal with confrontation.
8/12/2008, 11:26 am Link to this post Send PM to Blog
 
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Re: Did Jesus live?


Do you or do you know anyone or any website that questions the existence of the Apostles?

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8/12/2008, 12:03 pm Link to this post Send e-mail to   Send PM to
 
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Re: Did Jesus live?


Not really but here is one that answers the question of whether they existed:

History of the Apostles
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Re: Did Jesus live?


quote:

Free04 wrote:

Do you or do you know anyone or any website that questions the existence of the Apostles?



The existence of the Apostles has never been questioned to my knowledge. It would be rather strange in my mind to have the theory that mythical Apostles created a Mythical Jesus and then convinced real people that they existed so that Jesus could also exist...

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8/12/2008, 7:44 pm Link to this post Send e-mail to   Send PM to Blog
 
Morwen Oronor Profile
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Re: Did Jesus live?


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Please forgive me but I have to ask a question?

Mythical people creating a mythical God, convincing people that the people he created were real as proof that the God existed?

Sounds like the people who wrote the Old Testament telling about Adam and Eve and Moses and the Egyptians etc.

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Don't want to tread on the toes of your belief but it was done before??

But to be honest there is more than enough proof that the Apostles did actually exist.
8/12/2008, 10:14 pm Link to this post Send PM to Blog
 
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Re: Did Jesus live?


Maybe this is a better way to say it Mo,

Imagine Daffy Duck and showing up to convince you Bugs Bunny existed. It cannot happen because mythological beings do not exist and cannot take any action in the real world. Therefore, since the Apostles are sometimes accused of creating Jesus the Apostles had to exist.

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8/12/2008, 11:20 pm Link to this post Send e-mail to   Send PM to Blog
 


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