[HN Gopher] Silver amulet is the oldest evidence of Christianity...
___________________________________________________________________
Silver amulet is the oldest evidence of Christianity north of the
Alps
Author : secretmark
Score : 234 points
Date : 2024-12-18 08:31 UTC (14 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (archaeologymag.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (archaeologymag.com)
| FearNotDaniel wrote:
| Fascinating from both a technological and
| theological/ecclesiological perspective. I'll be sure to pass
| this on to some of my faith-filled friends who now live south of
| the Alps but have roots in the same region.
|
| > inhumation burials -- a practice uncommon in other Roman
| cemeteries in Frankfurt
|
| To save others looking it up: "inhumation burial" seems to be a
| technical term in the field for what we simply call "burial",
| i.e. digging a grave and then covering the person with dirt
| and/or rocks. I'm not an expert, but given that this became the
| primary method of disposal in Christian culture (and still is, in
| many traditions who believe that cremation prevents the body
| being resurrected), one could infer that this is an indicator of
| Here Be Christians.
|
| If you know even a smidgeon of theology, it's not technically
| possible to define (mainstream) Christian faith without any
| reference to Jewish beliefs. Jesus was, of course, himself raised
| a Jew, as were both Saints Peter & Paul, although the latter was
| also a Roman citizen who wrote in Greek, and they famously
| quarrelled quite a bit about how much of Judaism should be
| incorporated into the new religion, well documented in the New
| Testament itself and plenty of extra-biblical evidence.
|
| It does seem a reasonable claim that nothing in this text
| contains elements of Judaism _that were not already or
| subsequently incorporated_ into what became Christianity (though
| I 'm pretty sure at this point it didn't yet have a name other
| than "The Way". I could be wrong there.)
|
| However, just for fun:
|
| - "Holy Holy Holy" is most definitely a reference to the (Hebrew)
| book of Isaiah, which was also quoted in the (Christian) book of
| Revelation aka Apocalypse (Greek, New Testament)
|
| - Of course they don't use the _name_ Yahweh when talking about
| the God /Lord of the World, of whom Jesus is claimed to be the
| Son. Neither does the Septuagint (Greek translation of the Hebrew
| scriptures, produced for use by Greek-speaking Jews a few hundred
| years before Christ). But they are most definitely talking about
| the same God.
|
| - I'm not sure if this pre- or post- dates the Jewish tradition
| of replacing the Name with "Adonai" (Hebrew for "Lord") or its
| Greek/Latin equivalent, on the grounds that the Name itself is
| too holy to be spoken or to risk being destroyed if the
| manuscript gets damaged or, you know, buried in the ground to
| decay with a dead person. But that could also be a factor.
|
| Unfortunately they don't provide a transcription of the Latin
| text into modern characters so there's no opportunity right now
| to go nuts on that but it would be interesting to see what
| specific Latin words were used compared with translations of the
| Septuagint, and the original Greek and Hebrew texts themselves.
|
| Still, thanks for posting!
| mytailorisrich wrote:
| Some of the latin text is on the Wikipedia page [1]. Hopefully
| it will be updated to include more.
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frankfurt_silver_inscription
| vitus wrote:
| One of the references on the wikipedia page seems to have a
| full transcription (along with German translation):
|
| https://archaeologisches-museum-
| frankfurt.de/index.php/de/?v...
|
| I personally cannot make heads or tails of the script used in
| the various images, but it seems about right.
|
| (Note that V and U are generally used interchangeably in
| Latin, since they were the same character. Same with I / J.)
| bdcravens wrote:
| My wife is Messianic Jewish, where the primary intent is to
| restore Jewish traditions and beliefs while still believing in
| Jesus/Yeshua ("Jesus" being essentially a mispronunciation; the
| westernized version of the name would more accurately be
| "Joshua"). Personally my beliefs lie elsewhere, but it's still
| unfortunate that "denomination" is still such a tiny minority,
| given its desire to be a purer form of the religion.
| andrepd wrote:
| Every religion thinks they're the "purer" form of religion
| though, don't they? x)
| FearNotDaniel wrote:
| Except Universalist/Unitarians, perhaps, they like to mix
| it all up into one big melting pot.
| Cthulhu_ wrote:
| Not necessarily, they consider themselves right / proper or
| just prefer it over other flavours though (example being
| the many branches of Protestantism where each branch has a
| slightly different take on how things should be done, but
| it's not like they're at odds with each other per se)
| kevinmchugh wrote:
| Protestants all find their differences of opinion a big
| enough deal that they'll break up over it. They're not
| fighting wars I've doctrinal differences any more, but
| who in Christendom is these days?
|
| https://www.theguardian.com/stage/2005/sep/29/comedy.reli
| gio...
| FearNotDaniel wrote:
| Goodness, where to start... I don't have time to read
| your link so I'll only reply to what you wrote from my
| own direct personal experience:
|
| - many Protestant groups, while not fighting wars of
| physical violence, still harbour very unchristian hate in
| their hearts towards other Protestant sects and (usually)
| towards all Catholics, whom they consider to be idol
| worshippers led astray by Satan himself (sadly many
| Catholics also still feel the same about all Protestants
| and many other Catholics who don't play the right music,
| wear the right vestments or worship in the right language
| and or precise form of words.)
|
| - on the other hand, many, many Protestants and Catholics
| are also working to resolve or otherwise sideline those
| "debatable things" and "foolish controversies" that St
| Paul advised the churches not to quarrel about (he didn't
| say what, specifically, but then this is supposed to be a
| faith based on love and grace rather than legalism). I've
| been to large events where Catholics and Protestants are
| worshipping, witnessing and praying joyfully together and
| seeking to find the similarities and not the differences,
| without compromising on the fundamentals of what it means
| to follow Jesus. And these kinds of movements are growing
| around the world year upon year and also working together
| to fight social injustice, inequality and poverty
|
| -- hopefully soon, more of our Orthodox brothers and
| sisters will get on board with this, but there are
| glimmers of hope in that direction too, as long as nobody
| says the word "Filioque" ;-)
| FearNotDaniel wrote:
| Ah yes, I had a chance to read it while walking down the
| street. I know that joke, reminds me of the one my dad
| used to delight in telling, which ends with "I must be
| the luckiest Arab in Belfast".
|
| Funnily enough the exact one that you posted is these
| days repeated by many churches somewhere during the Alpha
| Course, which after pausing for laughs is identified as
| an example of exactly _not_ what you are being invited to
| believe.
| joshuamcginnis wrote:
| Every religion makes truth claims. Many of those truth
| claims contradict each other. It's incumbent upon us to do
| the research, put the claims to the test and come to the
| most reasonable conclusion as to what is true.
| joshdata wrote:
| The unfortunate part is where Christians try to pass
| themselves off as Jews by adding "Jewish" to the name of
| their denomination. I wish my great aunts and uncles could
| have added "Christian" to their denomination to escape being
| murdered in the Holocaust, that would have been nice.
| noworriesnate wrote:
| What denominations do that? I'm familiar with Hebrew Roots,
| but doesn't seem to be what you're describing.
| vitus wrote:
| Presumably that's a reference to the GP describing
| "Messianic Jewish". (or rather, Messianic Judaism)
|
| > It considers itself to be a form of Judaism but is
| generally considered to be a sect of Christianity,[2][3]
| including by all major groups within mainstream Judaism,
| since Jews consider belief in Jesus as the Messiah and
| divine in the form of God the Son (and the doctrine of
| the Trinity in general) to be among the most defining
| distinctions between Judaism and Christianity. It is also
| generally considered a Christian sect by scholars and
| other Christian groups.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Messianic_Judaism
| noworriesnate wrote:
| So are they claiming that Messianic Jews are not actually
| Jews? Because they implied that people were falsely
| taking the title Jew if I understood them correctly. That
| would be the first time I've ever heard that particular
| assertion.
| throaway2501 wrote:
| Israel doesn't allow Messianic Jews to be citizens for
| this reason.
| noworriesnate wrote:
| So I'm confused--are you saying that Israel thinks
| Messianic Jews are not Jews because they abandoned their
| faith or something like that, OR are you saying that
| Israel doesn't let Messianic Jews to be citizens because
| sometimes non-Jews convert to become Messianic Jews?
| lazide wrote:
| It sounds like a variation of a - not so much that they
| abandoned their faith, per-se, but that the faith they
| espouse as being Jewish is not acceptably 'in the same
| room' as other Jewish faith.
|
| It would be somewhat like saying you were a Messianic
| Christian because you believed that Mohammed was a later
| prophet. There is a word for that kind of religion, and
| it isn't Christianity.
| joshdata wrote:
| Yes and that was what I was saying (sorry it wasn't
| clear).
|
| What it means to be a Jew is complicated. Jews form an
| ethnicity of interconnected people with a range of
| beliefs and practices (it is, definitionally, not whether
| one is religiously adherent to Judaism). To me, one could
| in principle be religiously Christian and also ethnically
| Jewish (that's an unusual view among Jews), but to do
| that requires having an _actual_ connection to the Jewish
| ethnicity (e.g. if one was raised ethnically Jewish and
| maintains a Jewish identity). My impression is that
| "Messianic Jews" are religiously and ethnically Christian
| who are importing Jewish practices into their otherwise
| non-Jewish identity. If OP's wife was born Jewish or
| converted prior becoming a "Messianic Jew," I would stand
| corrected.
|
| If I, a very white person, start singing songs from Back
| churches, that doesn't make me Black. I wouldn't face the
| real-world struggles against racism of Black people, for
| example, and I think that's a useful hint when thinking
| about who is and isn't a member of a minority group like
| Jews. Likewise, acting out Jewish practices doesn't
| necessarily make one a Jew, and as one example it doesn't
| subject one to the sorts of anti-Semitism faced by Jews.
| I'm not saying facing anti-Semitism a necessary or
| sufficient condition for being a Jew, but if not that,
| then there must be something else that connects one to
| the Jewish ethnicity --- the interconnected people who
| believe they are Jews --- other than just by saying so.
| markovs_gun wrote:
| There are essentially two completely different movements
| claiming the name of "Messianic Judaism." The first are
| people who are Jewish- culturally, ethnically, and even
| religiously, who have converted to Christianity and
| believe that all other Jews should do the same. There is
| a small pocket of Messianic Jews of this definition in my
| hometown, so this is the version I was most familiar
| with.
|
| It wasn't until later that I learned that there is a
| second, much more popular movement under the name of
| Messianic Judaism which are people who are not ethnically
| or culturally Jewish who have determined that
| Christianity should return to its Jewish roots. These
| people have no historical connections to Judaism and
| usually grew up within a Christian cultural context.
| There is a lot of overlap with the "Hebrew Roots"
| movement that you mentioned, and in my opinion there
| isn't a real distinction between the two.
|
| Myself I feel kind of biased but I view the first kind as
| more "legitimate" since Judaism, isn't merely a religion,
| it's a living, breathing culture and it is super weird
| for someone to just roll up and claim it without having
| any connection to anyone who was doing it before. It's
| like if I decided I was going to be Indian and started
| wearing stereotypical Indian traditional dress and eating
| only curry because I think that's what Indians eat,
| without having any actual Indians in my movement.
| joshdata wrote:
| I agree that ethnic Jews with Christian religious beliefs
| is a legitimate concept. But I would rather call them
| Messianic Jews (or just Christian Jews) rather than
| adherents of "Messianic Judaism." To say that "Judaism"
| can include Jesus erases the Jewish religion by leaving
| it without a name, conveniently benefiting the dominant
| Christian religion. (And Messianic Jews who are not Jews
| should be called something else entirely.)
| galangalalgol wrote:
| Isn't it Yesu, the diminutive, so Josh? "Josh is the name
| above all names", sounds kind of odd though.
| Cthulhu_ wrote:
| Only because of your own cultural background / upbringing
| where Josh was a pretty normal and non-reverent name, like
| how people like me one day realise there's a whole culture
| of people out there where Jesus is still a common and
| popular first name, instead of something reserved for a
| religious figure.
| galangalalgol wrote:
| I live in one of those cultures and have several
| coworkers named Jesus. But some names have different
| associations. It is like "Todd, The Necromancer!" Vs
| "Evelyn the sorceress". Jesus is a serious and competent
| embedded c++ programmer. Josh is a goofy guy in
| accounting.
| lucozade wrote:
| > "Jesus" being essentially a mispronunciation
|
| Warning! Unnecessary nit-picking incoming...
|
| Jesus isn't a mispronunciation of Yeshua, it's a
| transliteration. Initially the Hebrew/Aramaic yshv` was
| transliterated to the Greek Iesous which is essentially a
| phonetic transliteration with the ending changed to the Greek
| masculine singular.
|
| That was then transliterated to the Latin Iesus with
| basically the same deal ie phonetic with an ending change.
|
| And _that_ morphed into Jesus, probably about the 16th
| century, when the swash 'I' became a 'j' sound.
|
| > more accurately be "Joshua"
|
| It wouldn't really be more accurate; it would just be a
| transliteration through a different route. The most that can
| be said is that there are fewer hops.
|
| It would still likely have most of the sounds wrong, esp if
| Jesus' name was originally pronounced in Galilean Aramaic. As
| I understand it that wouldn't have pronounced the final 'a'
| like an 'a' but more like a glottal stop. But that's right on
| the edge of my knowledge so I could have made the last bit
| up.
| abrenuntio wrote:
| Don't confuse culture and gradual inculturation with purity
| of religion and validity of liturgy.
|
| In the age of the Messiah the faithful are truly drawn "from
| every nation, from all tribes and peoples and languages". If
| your wife would go to any (decent) Catholic or Orthodox
| church, and learns to "read" the building and the liturgy of
| Holy Mass, maybe she could recognize the contours of the
| "pure" or "more Jewish" religion she is yearning for. She
| could go to modern or more traditional
| Latin/Greek/Ukrainian/Syriac/Ethiopian/... rites and in the
| plurality of all those different cultures and temperaments
| recognize over and over again the exact same elements and
| basic plan, organically evolved yet meticulously preserved in
| a chain of unbroken sacramental obedience.
|
| Entering the church building she'd gradually walk from the
| holy water near the entrance, through the "outer courtyard"
| for the lay people, to the sanctuary with the sacrificial
| altar, golden vessels and incense, elevated and separated by
| altar rail or curtain. Behind is the tabernacle, the Holy of
| Holies containing the Real Presence, indicated by a lit
| candle. And if she was to e.g. carefully analyse the words of
| the Eucharistic prayers in all these different rites and
| languages, she would find over and over again the same
| underlying structure, complete with the Haggadah.
|
| But language and cultural differences aside, there _must_ be
| fundamental differences as well. It is Christ Himself who
| took the prescribed liturgy of the ancient Passover meal and
| gave it its full and final meaning by substituting Himself,
| in the presence of the apostles, for the merely symbolic
| lamb. It is through Christ that the Trinity is fully
| revealed.
|
| How then could e.g. the exact same holidays have been
| retained? For instance, why would you celebrate Shavuot, if
| with Pentecost the Holy Spirit _directly_ descended on the
| Church? Another example: the Lord 's Day is not "Sabbath on
| the wrong day". Sabbath laws do not apply to those under the
| New Covenant. Beyond the most excellent idea of dedicating an
| entire day to the Lord with plenty of obligatory prayer,
| rest, food and family/community time, the Christian Sunday is
| simply not the Sabbath. On Sunday we celebrate the
| Resurrection, which occurred on the first day of a new week
| (the supernatural "eighth day", beyond the natural fullness
| of the old week).
|
| The priest in this age is also no longer a Levite. To
| properly offer this sacrifice, he is now sacramentally
| ordained by proper religious authorities "in the Order of
| Melchizedek", reminiscent of the royal priesthood of David
| and the priesthood of Adam and the firstborns. And where the
| old liturgy was a _sign_ of divine grace, the liturgy of our
| age is an effective _cause_ of divine grace. If the priest
| obeys the liturgy that has been prescribed for his own rite
| and his own day, no amount of personal corruption can take
| away the sanctity of his work. This also means that there is
| no fundamental need for wars in the Holy Land or for
| "conquering" the Temple Mount by force. The Temple is already
| being built. Every time the faithful, after having been
| sacramentally cleansed of mortal sin through baptism or
| confession, participate in the Lord's sacrifice by eating the
| body and drinking the blood of the Lamb, they themselves will
| inevitably become more and more the dwelling place of the
| Lord within the material creation.
| throaway2501 wrote:
| Messianic Judaism is usually seen as a corruptive and
| corruptED force. Israel bans Messianic Jews from being
| citizens.
| joshuamcginnis wrote:
| I have a lot of respect for Messianic Jews; they're struggle
| is real. I wish more Jews knew just how Jewish the story of
| Jesus actually is. As far as Christians are concerned, Jesus
| is the fulfillment of the messianic prophecies in the old
| testament. Jesus said, "Do not think that I came to destroy
| the Law or the Prophets. I did not come to destroy but to
| fulfill." (Matthew 5:18)
|
| That said, there is arguably no simpler or purer form of
| Christianity than simply having faith in and a personal
| relationship with Jesus Christ.
| vouaobrasil wrote:
| > and they famously quarrelled quite a bit about how much of
| Judaism should be incorporated into the new religion, well
| documented in the New Testament itself and plenty of extra-
| biblical evidence.
|
| Just wondering what is the "plenty of extra-biblical evidence"?
| FearNotDaniel wrote:
| Good point, I didn't fact check that part, I probably mixed
| up hazy memories of some other incidents I read about in the
| Didache and other early church writings. Wikipedia says
| there's no evidence outside of Luke's and Paul's own words
| (Acts and Galatians respectively) and since Luke was hanging
| out with Paul for a lot of that time (see all the times Acts
| switches between "he" and "we") we could be skating on thin
| ice as far as actual textual evidence goes. Good spot, thanks
| for calling me out.
| hoseja wrote:
| Inhumation isn't exclusively christian where did you even come
| up with that.
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C3%9An%C4%9Btice_culture#Buri...
| FearNotDaniel wrote:
| Didn't come up with it, didn't claim it. Where did you come
| up with the idea that I said it was exclusive to
| Christianity?
| ahaferburg wrote:
| You wrote "one could infer that this is an indicator of
| Here Be Christians".
| noworriesnate wrote:
| The local pre-Christian burial custom was burning, but
| other cultures in far-off places still buried their dead.
| So while Christianity isn't exclusive in its use of
| burial, it was supplanting religious customs that did not
| include burial throughout northern Europe.
| yndoendo wrote:
| Disposing of the dead via burning or burial was an
| evolution means to protect your community from epidemics.
| Ancient generations didn't know about the of details of
| viruses and bacterium. All they learned through out the
| years was, _if you remove the dead there is a better chance
| of the community staying healthy_.
|
| Religion latched onto which ever means of disposing of
| their dead the locals already performed. No different than
| how religion took over local customs and traditions to help
| bring in more people into their fold.
|
| Communities that didn't properly dispose of their dead
| would of experience a net-positive when pushed to follow a
| religious which their funeral tradition helps prevent
| epidemics. Those people would most likely of uplifted the
| religion when they though divine intervention reduced their
| epidemics. In reality, it was as laws of physics reducing
| the propagation of contagions.
|
| Fun fact, disposal via vulture consumption is another good
| means to contain contagions. Their digestive system is like
| battery acid and kills mostly everything. Natures
| evolutionary animal that assists with preventing epidemics.
| A natural wake.
| markovs_gun wrote:
| > I'm not sure if this pre- or post- dates the Jewish tradition
| of replacing the Name with "Adonai" (Hebrew for "Lord") or its
| Greek/Latin equivalent,
|
| That taboo already existed even before the New Testament was
| written. The Septuagint, an early Greek translation of the Old
| Testament, was written around 260 BC and uses this convention,
| translating the Lord's name as "kyrios"- "Lord." The authors of
| the New Testament itself extensively quote this translation,
| and firmly established this convention within Christianity as
| well, especially because most Christian converts wouldn't know
| Hebrew or be expected to learn Hebrew to hear (remember that
| literacy rates were very low in this era compared to now)
| Jewish scriptures in their own languages.
|
| Speaking of literacy, I notice that the Latin of this
| inscription is very messy. I don't know much Latin myself, but
| the handwriting is terrible, to the point where I wonder if the
| maker of this scroll was only semi-literate.
| FearNotDaniel wrote:
| > only semi-literate
|
| Seems very possible when you consider that this is before the
| Roman Aristocracy decided to muscle in on the action and take
| over the church. Many of the original disciples and apostles
| were semi-literate working class types from the north country
| (see "nothing good could ever come from Nazareth") and Paul,
| the one who wrote the most (but even then likely dictated a
| lot of it) was a late addition to the team. Sure he recruited
| a bunch of possibly "middle class" tradesmen and business
| owners to set up churches in their homes (Priscilla and
| Aquila, famously) but it was still mostly an underground
| movement among the slave and worker classes before
| Constantine decided he could put it to his own use.
| af78 wrote:
| > I notice that the Latin of this inscription is very messy
|
| To a modern eye (like mine), other examples of Roman cursive
| look hard to read as well:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roman_cursive
| markovs_gun wrote:
| The examples on that page are way cleaner and easier to
| read than the scroll inscription. The letters in the scroll
| are not written consistently, and even the size of the
| letters changes dramatically as the inscription goes on.
| HarHarVeryFunny wrote:
| > "Holy Holy Holy" is most definitely a reference to the
| (Hebrew) book of Isaiah, which was also quoted in the
| (Christian) book of Revelation aka Apocalypse (Greek, New
| Testament)
|
| Could you expand on that? Is there any specific reference to
| the book of Isaiah, and is "holy" (AGIOS in the Latin of the
| scroll) a good translation of the Hebrew word?
| markovs_gun wrote:
| Agios- direct transliteration from the Greek "'agios" which
| is the exact term used in Isaiah 6:3 in the popular Greek
| translation of the Old Testament, the Septuagint. If not a
| "good" translation, it's certainly an old one, being the word
| Christians and Jews in that part of the world would have been
| familiar with in the Book of Isaiah for hundreds of years
| before this amulet was made.
| HarHarVeryFunny wrote:
| > the Jewish tradition of replacing the Name with "Adonai"
| (Hebrew for "Lord") or its Greek/Latin equivalent
|
| Perhaps, but in this Latin inscription we have Jesus being
| referred to as "IHS XP" - a Greek(!) abbreviation of Jesus
| Christ, so not avoiding his name altogether.
| Oarch wrote:
| I'll never be able to read about us digitally unrolling fragile
| scrolls without it seemingly like otherworldly sci-fi technology.
|
| The translated blessing text itself seems almost modern. Funny to
| see how little we've changed in some ways.
| FearNotDaniel wrote:
| Speaking as a participant in a number of somewhat "modern"
| Christian traditions, I think one factor is that we have
| changed quite a lot and then some strands of the faith have
| decided to go back into the past and seek what we lost from the
| early days. One example being certain rock'n'roll churches
| where people stick their hands up in the air while singing and
| praying: I heard one pastor defend this as being "this is not a
| _new_ form of prayer, this is what Jewish people were doing
| hundreds /thousands of years ago and now we're bringing it
| back". (See the rather-ancient Book of Exodus, for example. No
| electric guitars or drum kits there[0], but Moses is definitely
| described as holding his hands up in prayer, sometimes with the
| help of Joshua when his arms got tired).
|
| [0] though I'm afraid to admit there is at least one actual
| tambourine...
| wil421 wrote:
| What about the rattle snake churches?
| FearNotDaniel wrote:
| What about them?
|
| Are you asking about the scriptural basis from ancient
| times that they use to justify their modern practices?
| (i.e. the immediate topic at hand) Or are you looking for
| theological and/or scientific opinions on whether the
| claims they make are true, for at least some meaning of the
| word "true"?
| markovs_gun wrote:
| They also claim to be reviving an ancient practice,
| although the evidence for that actually being true is very
| lacking
| FearNotDaniel wrote:
| There is nothing in the Bible that describes the practice
| they promote. Sure, there is a claim that people who are
| filled with the Holy Spirit will not die if bitten by
| snakes, but no description of it being used as a ritual
| practice and you could claim it contradicts "do not put
| the Lord God to the test".
|
| I have no idea if there is extra-biblical evidence for
| people doing that in early churches, and whether those
| churches were considered orthodox or heretical at the
| time, or perhaps the 1st century equivalent of "we don't
| know yet, we're just trying stuff out to see what works".
| aziaziazi wrote:
| Im going to cite (slightly shorten) Wikipedia. I have no
| competency to understand the sources and fact check but I
| though it's quite interesting.
|
| > In the 2nd century the Ophites reportedly handled
| snakes during their services, and also worshipped the
| serpent.
|
| > The Ophites [...] were a Christian Gnostic sect.
|
| > Gnosticism [...] is a collection of religious ideas and
| systems that coalesced in the late 1st century AD among
| Jewish and early Christian sects. These diverse groups
| emphasized personal spiritual knowledge (gnosis) above
| the proto-orthodox teachings, traditions, and authority
| of religious institutions.
|
| Seems very reasonable sects to me but it's understandable
| "authorities of religious institutions" didn't like it.
|
| Indeed extra biblical gospel from Luke and Mark:
|
| > Behold, I give unto you power to tread on serpents and
| scorpions, and over all the power of the enemy: and
| nothing shall by any means hurt you.
|
| > And these signs shall follow them that believe: In my
| name shall they cast out devils; they shall speak with
| new tongues. They shall take up serpents; and if they
| drink any deadly thing, it shall not hurt them; they
| shall lay hands on the sick, and they shall recover.
|
| IMHO Gospels are comparable with the Bible as a source of
| history.
| NemoNobody wrote:
| Gnosticism is a bit of a catchall - the Ophites were a
| sect or branch and not by any means the standard - it's
| difficult to say there is an established "Standard
| Gnostic Theology" as there really isn't, there are some
| common deviations from modern Christianity that rendered
| them more similar thru a modern lens than they may be,
| tho they are some common Gnostic themes, like self
| awareness but snake charming isn't one.
|
| That said, snakes have been widely deified thru out
| history by various cultures and beliefs.
|
| Prior to Christianity the god Tiamet would have been
| widely known and had been so for hundreds of years. It is
| common practice for a religion to take the previous god
| and render them the "bad guy" in their new religion -
| that could also have been done to the Ophites as the
| Gnostics were essentially erased by the Church and what
| little remains the establishment said about them has been
| rendered sus by what we have found recently of OG Gnostic
| texts.
|
| You have to realize, by 400 - saying someone handles
| snakes during their church service was a kin to saying
| they are a satanic cult.
|
| That said - Gnostics would handle snakes if they wanted
| or needed to and they would be fine bc that is the faith
| they preached, a faith of action. Step onto the water -
| you will not sink of you do and have faith already, no
| more is needed in the moment, no assistance from Priest
| or higher power.
|
| Christianity adopted the faith of Paul - the apostle not
| chosen by Christ, and became people that wait in their
| beliefs, faithfully waiting for God.
|
| Huge difference.
| mistrial9 wrote:
| yes agree and .. there are branches of Christianity
| across the world that did not lose the connection to
| warfare. There are plenty of people who fight fiercely
| (in real life) that espouse Christ deeply.. a current
| Japan martial arts cage fighting champion from Brazil
| dedicated his whole victory speech to Christ recently,
| for example.
| Cthulhu_ wrote:
| Thing is, Christianity is (should be? idk) based on the
| teachings of Jesus which separated from Judaism; on prayer
| and worship, the New Testament has teachings like:
|
| > Matthew 6:5-14 > 5 "And when you pray, do not be like the
| hypocrites, for they love to pray standing in the synagogues
| and on the street corners to be seen by others. Truly I tell
| you, they have received their reward in full. 6 But when you
| pray, go into your room, close the door and pray to your
| Father, who is unseen. Then your Father, who sees what is
| done in secret, will reward you. 7 And when you pray, do not
| keep on babbling like pagans, for they think they will be
| heard because of their many words. 8 Do not be like them, for
| your Father knows what you need before you ask him.
|
| That is, he teaches a humble, private, and not-showy way of
| praying, as opposed to the Jews of their time. But this is
| causing tension and schisms in Christian churches everywhere.
| I grew up in a fairly conservative one - grey suits, quiet /
| low energy services, nothing too outlandish. But family of
| mine ended up in more Evangelical churches, with live music
| and the like. Then there's Catholics where opulence and
| grandeur is apparent in their cathedrals, and while I can
| appreciate them for their architecture and atmosphere and the
| like, I don't think that's in line with Jesus' teachings of
| humility and helping the poor etc, especially not given how
| much money goes and went around in the church.
| christopher8827 wrote:
| > I don't think that's in line with Jesus' teachings of
| humility and helping the poor etc, especially not given how
| much money goes and went around in the church.
|
| Hmm, but in the Exodus, the ark of the covenant was glided
| in gold with cherubs on the four corners. Same with the
| Jewish Temple, it was probably decked out in marble. Unlike
| Protestants, Catholicism have arts, choral music and
| statues and architecture not because they are "worshipping
| it" but because these things are supposed to direct the
| mind upwards towards God.
|
| I think the Catholic Mass _is_ the ancient form of worship
| by the early Church. There 's multiple references to the
| Real Presence in the Eucharist in New Testament (ie. the
| road to Eramus and the breaking of bread, and in John
| 6:53*) and the Sanctus is still in the Eucharistic Prayer,
| and besides, its an obvious break with the Jews who did
| burnt offerings in the Temple.
|
| John 6:53-58, "Very truly I tell you, unless you eat the
| flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no
| life in you. Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood has
| eternal life, and I will raise them up at the last day. For
| my flesh is real food and my blood is real drink. Whoever
| eats my flesh and drinks my blood remains in me, and I in
| them. Just as the living Father sent me and I live because
| of the Father, so the one who feeds on me will live because
| of me. This is the bread that came down from heaven. Your
| ancestors ate manna and died, but whoever feeds on this
| bread will live forever."
| nemomarx wrote:
| Well yeah, opulent temples are in line with Jewish
| traditions but the other poster is suggesting that's not
| in line with the teaching of the new testament
| specifically?
| NemoNobody wrote:
| Exodus was as far from Christ as we are.
|
| The Old Testament can't be used to counter Jesus - Jesus
| is the counter to the Old Testament. He is the reason
| it's "Old" - humility, loving all without conditions,
| forgivenes, turning the other cheek - The Greatest
| Commandment, none of them are ignored or "misinterpreted"
| in any justified way, even if that way is quoting
| scripture from Exodus.
| marky1991 wrote:
| That's a very unusual context for me, in my tradition
| (reformed Presbyterian) we definitely don't view things
| that we way in general, the God of the old testament is
| the God of the new and Jesus didn't wholesale make the
| old testament invalid, only the parts of the law that he
| had already satisfied. (Eg no need for more animal
| sacrifices, we've already sacrificed enough via Jesus)
| (Notably, the moral law and parts of the ceremonial law
| are still valid)
|
| It is interesting to think about why it's ok to differ
| from the old temple. Granted of course some of it is
| cultural differences, we're not the same people and it's
| 1000s of years later, and perhaps it was different
| because we're not the theocratic state of ancient Israel.
|
| But something for me to think about why this component is
| no longer needed (my church is very classic boring
| protestant architecture)
| ARandomerDude wrote:
| Agreed except for this comment.
|
| > parts of the ceremonial law are still valid
|
| Westminster Confession 19.3:
|
| "All which ceremonial laws are now abrogated, under the
| new testament."
|
| The reason the ceremonial law is abrogated is because it
| pointed forward to Christ who was to come. But since
| Christ has come, retaining the ceremonial law is
| tantamount to denying Christ (see full text of WCF 19.3
| and book of Hebrews).
|
| If you were thinking of the link between baptism and
| circumcision, remember that God gave the covenant promise
| and sign to Abraham 430 years before Moses (Gen 17, Gal
| 3:17), so circumcision predates the law.
| marky1991 wrote:
| Interesting, the confession considers 'remember the
| sabbath' to be 'moral law', not ceremonial, also 19.3 .
| Thanks for the reminder!
| ARandomerDude wrote:
| Exactly right. One way to know the Sabbath is moral
| rather than ceremonial is the Sabbath was established in
| Genesis 2:1-3. That means the Sabbath pre-dates the Law,
| and even pre-dates sin. So Adam and Eve would have kept
| the Sabbath before the Fall, and so would have all their
| posterity if they had never fallen.
|
| As confirmation of that idea, Exodus 20:11 states that
| the reason God gives the fourth commandment is because
| the Sabbath is a creation ordinance, and by implication
| is therefore moral.
|
| I hope that helps! God bless.
| jajko wrote:
| As somebody outside of religions (thank you both parents,
| probably the greatest gift one can give to one's kids -
| freedom of faith and self determination, something almost
| impossible as adult if indoctrinated young), these kind
| of discussions are funny to me.
|
| Why? They are present in every corner of the world, every
| religion. And all you need is to take few steps back and
| stop taking everything literally, trying to find some
| universal life guidance in bronze age texts. Not that its
| not there completely, some things are universal, but so
| are half the self-help books for example or literally any
| other serious text. Frank Herbert's Dune series is way
| more appealing and worthy to me for example and truths in
| it way more universal, yet I am not basing my whole life
| and morals on it, nor do I feel the need to push it on
| rest of the world.
|
| Those were stories, no moral value greater than old greek
| (or persian, hindu etc.) tales which always had some
| strong message beyond story on the surface. Stories made
| up by men, hundreds of years after christ, which were
| retold probably 20x before somebody wrote them down (and
| then 20x translated between various slangs, languages and
| targeted meanings). Current bible has little to do with
| original story, its simply not technically possible for
| complex stories to be preserved 100% for hundreds of
| years by just retelling them.
|
| You realize that say sunni vs shia muslims are, when
| reduced to few words, a conflict between which member of
| the family was the truest believer and whose words are
| more important, while having 0 reference to actually
| decide so? Yet conflicts between those are numerous and
| victims of those in hundreds of millions.
|
| Every time I see people desperately looking for specific
| truths, there is some deeper underlying problem and
| inability/unwillingness to decide something rather
| trivial for oneself. Like which sort of music should be
| happening where - what the heck does this have to do with
| actual faith in your god(s)? Do you also consult
| religious text when picking up Sunday sweater color?
| Deities are not that petty, not even in those bronze age
| tales, its just showing human flaws and fears.
| mistrial9 wrote:
| that's all brave and probably well intentioned, but there
| is another side to it. The Bible was specifically "a
| single agreed upon text" so that groups of people in real
| life could stop fighting about theology points, big and
| small. It still exists today. "The Bible is the Truth"
| end of statement. It is not because you personally cannot
| find new meaning in non-Bible things.. it is specifically
| to get groups of people "on the same page" .. that phrase
| is used today. The written nature of it also tends toward
| stability.
|
| Perhaps in an unsatisfying way to an adolescent, the
| answer is there already, and you personally find your
| place in the order that is established _by your
| ancestors_ and lead you life. Mostly the whole exercise
| is opposite of adolescent exploration. IMHO this is
| neither bad nor good. It is boring and meant to be
| boring, to prevent deadly conflict, wasted efforts, petty
| differences etc.
|
| Based on this boring interpretation, Christians went on
| to build massive, mighty buildings, large civilized
| empires and vast written knowledge available to literate
| citizens. Those things did not have to happen at all. The
| triumph is that they did happen. In modern times we
| mostly dont even regard these things, since they are
| "obvious."
|
| Please note that I am not saying this is the only one
| True Path at all, just describing things.
| batch12 wrote:
| While your reference talks about prayer which is distinct
| from worship, I think that the instructions around prayer
| and worship are related. However, I dont think the message
| is to be reserved, but instead be honest. I understand this
| verse to mean don't be fake, God knows your heart. Be real.
| Here are a few examples that reinforce why I think this.
|
| When talking to the Samaritan woman at the well Jesus talks
| about worship being true and of the spirit.
|
| John 4:23-24 NIV
|
| [23] Yet a time is coming and has now come when the true
| worshipers will worship the Father in the Spirit and in
| truth, for they are the kind of worshipers the Father
| seeks. [24] God is spirit, and his worshipers must worship
| in the Spirit and in truth.
|
| A reminder to forgive and seek forgiveness from those you
| have wronged (as reinforced in Matthew 6:14-15, Leviticus
| 19:18, Proverbs 17:9 ) before asking for forgiveness and
| before worshipping God:
|
| Matthew 5:23-24 NIV
|
| [23] "Therefore, if you are offering your gift at the altar
| and there remember that your brother or sister has
| something against you, [24] leave your gift there in front
| of the altar. First go and be reconciled to them; then come
| and offer your gift.
|
| Showing that fake worship means little:
|
| Matthew 15 8:9 (NIV) quoting Isaiah 29:13
|
| [8] " 'These people honor me with their lips, but their
| hearts are far from me. [9] They worship me in vain; their
| teachings are merely human rules.' "
| emmelaich wrote:
| FWIW, this has changed a lot. Catholic churches built in
| the last 50 years are far more austere than those built
| earlier.
| mistrial9 wrote:
| I believe it, modern society has killed the artisans
| crafts. No one can make the old style ornament now.
| riskable wrote:
| Nonsense! It just isn't economical.
|
| There's _loads_ of artisans that can expertly sculpt
| /carve marble, wood, etc. It's just if you want to hire
| someone (or a team of people) to create such things it
| could cost more than the building itself.
|
| Much cheaper to adorn your church with mass-manufactured
| statues made from molds and they give you that same air
| of creepiness for a tenth or 100th the price :thumbsup:.
| abrenuntio wrote:
| It's a catastrophe, not just esthetically but spiritually
| as well. It has nothing to do with austerity or wealth.
| Some of the churches no longer seek to express holiness
| ("having been set aside for God") and support the
| numinous and eternal nature of the divine liturgy that
| takes place in them.
|
| One of the most breathtaking pictures I've ever seen in
| this regard is of Mass in a German church completely
| destroyed during WW2.
|
| https://www.churchpop.com/content/images/size/w1200/wordp
| res...
|
| "Stat crux dum volvitur orbis"...
| madars wrote:
| Exactly. Sacred architecture flows necessarily from
| essence (what church is) through substance (can't be
| accident or easy-to-vary) into form (matter receiving
| truth). Regrettably, accidents get commonly confused for
| substance like mistaking material poverty for spiritual
| authenticity, or adorning for corruption. Poor churches
| in middle ages still had a golden chalice (for literal
| God), cruciform layout (or other hard-to-vary forms in
| orthodox churches), eastern orientation, and an elevated
| altar. Why would a church built in A.D. 2024 have less?
| abrenuntio wrote:
| "This perfume was worth an entire year's wages. Why wasn't
| it sold and the money given to the poor?"
|
| Sacred art exists to honor the Lord. We ourselves may
| remain poor and humble in the middle of all this beauty :-)
| throw0101b wrote:
| > _Then there 's Catholics where opulence and grandeur is
| apparent_ [...]
|
| It is not "opulence and grandeur" that are on display, but
| beauty, or Beauty:
|
| * https://ndpr.nd.edu/reviews/aquinas-on-beauty/
|
| * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transcendentals
|
| See also "Beauty, Truth, and Goodness":
|
| * https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e7RSQpDnYUY
| graemep wrote:
| > Then there's Catholics where opulence and grandeur is
| apparent in their cathedrals, and while I can appreciate
| them for their architecture and atmosphere and the like, I
| don't think that's in line with Jesus' teachings of
| humility and helping the poor etc,
|
| I think it depends on the motivation. If it is to elevate
| people's minds it is fine, if it is to show wealth and
| power it is not.
|
| > especially not given how much money goes and went around
| in the church.
|
| The church does actually use a lot of its income for the
| poor. It mostly does this in third world countries so its
| not evident in rich countries. Its not that long ago (20 or
| 30 years) that the church was the largest operator of AIDS
| clinics in the world - mostly in Africa where the need was
| great but the money was lacking. The same is true of other
| large Christian churches. They also tend to follow the
| rules of doing good quietly so they do not do PR to let
| everyone know what they are doing like secular
| philanthropists.
|
| Its something you can verify. Some bits of the Catholic
| church (I recall finding a Vatican statement of income and
| expenditure a while back) make accounts public, and I think
| many other churches must do too.
| bjourne wrote:
| That's because Yahweh was a sky god and lived high up in the
| clouds. So raising your hands, standing on mountain tops,
| etc, reduces your distance to him. Raising your hands while
| praying doesn't make as much sense anymore since Heaven is a
| metaphysical concept and not a place in the skies.
| bdcravens wrote:
| Isn't any translation a product of the language norms of the
| translator, as opposed to a pure translation?
|
| I know when I read Spanish, I have to mentally convert the
| order of words to what makes sense in English (for example,
| "Thanksgiving" in Spanish would be "Day of Action of Thanks" if
| translated directly).
| markovs_gun wrote:
| Yes, with the caveat that with religious texts there are
| certain conventions that get conserved even across languages.
| For example, The Book of John starts off "In the beginning,
| there was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word
| was God." However, the term being translated here as "Word"
| (logos- logos) could easily be translated a number of
| different ways, and the technically literal meaning of "word"
| was already falling out of favor by the time John was
| written. The word could be "Logic" or "reason" or "The
| underlying principle that governs the order of the universe"
| but early Latin translators chose to translate this term as
| "Verbe" and so future translations followed suit.
|
| This is just one example. There are other instances where a
| word is a loanword from Greek or Latin because it is an early
| technical term. For example "sanctification" is taken
| directly from a Latin technical term that is translated that
| way because of how early Latin translators chose to translate
| the Greek.
| FearNotDaniel wrote:
| Great example. See also "thou shalt not kill" which would
| contradict tons of the surrounding text, if that is
| actually what the original Hebrew said.
| timthorn wrote:
| There's 3 part Radio 4 series from a while ago on the King
| James Version, with one of the 45 minute episodes focussed
| on the translation of the work:
| https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00x3x68
| BoxOfRain wrote:
| I wonder if this is what radicals like Gerrard Winstanley
| had in mind when developing the English Reformation as
| chance for social reform as well? This quote for example
| suggests he was I think:
|
| >In the beginning of Time, the great Creator Reason, made
| the Earth to be a Common Treasury, to preserve Beasts,
| Birds, Fishes, and Man, the lord that was to govern this
| Creation; for Man had Domination given to him, over the
| Beasts, Birds, and Fishes; but not one word was spoken in
| the beginning, That one branch of mankind should rule over
| another.
| rrr_oh_man wrote:
| Maybe our timescale of what is 'modern' is not so modern at
| all.
| woadwarrior01 wrote:
| There's very similar, but perhaps much more challenging project
| for digitally unrolling the Herculaneum papyri[1], which is set
| up as an open machine learning competition[2].
|
| [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herculaneum_papyri
|
| [2]: https://scrollprize.org/
| ben1040 wrote:
| >I'll never be able to read about us digitally unrolling
| fragile scrolls without it seemingly like otherworldly sci-fi
| technology.
|
| I similarly had my mind blown reading an article last week,
| about how sports & game card collectors are now having their
| packs CT scanned so they can identify what cards are inside
| (and the value of the pack) while keeping them sealed.
|
| https://www.nytimes.com/athletic/5987857/2024/12/12/trading-...
| pergadad wrote:
| Looks like the project partners made a video about it, with some
| good visuals. But i can't find the actual paper.
|
| Press release with link to the video is here:
| https://frankfurt.de/de-de/aktuelle-meldung/meldungen/frankf...
| FearNotDaniel wrote:
| Thanks for helping to flesh out the technical side of the
| discussion while I'm over here getting hung up on the theology
| :-) this is what makes HN still (occasionally) great.
| MaxGripe wrote:
| No such thing as ,,amulet" in Christianity
| bjackman wrote:
| I find it pretty cool how the spread of Christianity can be
| tracked so finely that a 50 update in earliest arrival time is
| exciting!
|
| I started listening to a podcast called "the history of the early
| church" to learn a bit more about that but unfortunately I think
| the target audience was Christians interested in theology rather
| than nerds interested in history. Recommendations for books etc
| are welcome!
| MontagFTB wrote:
| I'd recommend "2,000 Years of Christ's Power" by Nick Needham.
| I am not sure where it falls on your theology/history spectrum
| but it has some of both. I enjoyed the audiobook of Volume 1
| immensely.
|
| For me it did a great job describing the context in which the
| church began, the major figures throughout the early church,
| and the spread, schisms, and events that helped shape the
| church in its formative years.
| kcsaba2 wrote:
| The Triumph of Christianity: How the Jesus Movement Became the
| World's Largest Religion - Rodney Stark
| graemep wrote:
| I also like Stark's God's Battalions, which is a nice
| debunking of the conventional view of the crusades.
| wolfhelius wrote:
| I had a long drive where I listened to The Great Courses, which
| had a set on early Christianity. I think the professor was from
| Notre Dame. The early church was wrestling with polytheism (is
| the OT god seemed really different from the NT god) and it
| eventually had to get resolved by the Council at Nicaea at
| Constantine's behest.
| papandada wrote:
| I've never heard anyone say the early church wrestled with
| polytheism. Maybe that's my bias nestled in Christian circles
| of not using that word, in favour of something more like "the
| nature of the triune Godhead", etc.
| kibwen wrote:
| Even today plenty of Christian sects refuse to recognize
| the council of Nicaea's interpretation of the trinity,
| including the Mormons and the Jehovah's witnesses:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nontrinitarianism (Whether or
| not any of these flirt with polytheism is up for debate.)
|
| Meanwhile, the Catholic church's own profusion of saints
| whom you are supposed to beseech for specific blessings is
| dangerously close to a polytheistic practice in its own
| right.
| 3pt14159 wrote:
| > is dangerously close to a polytheistic practice in its
| own right.
|
| I don't really think so. We're supposed to pray _with_
| Mary to God and everyone recognizes that all of creation
| came through Christ, not Mary or any other saint.
| JackFr wrote:
| As Mary asked Jesus to perform the miracle at the wedding
| at Cana, for the said of her friend, we too are called to
| pray to ask Mary to intercede for us for our intentions.
| kibwen wrote:
| Yes, with "saint" I wasn't even trying to invoke a
| discussion involving Mary at all, because in practice
| she's so far above the saints that to equate them feels
| like heresy (and might literally be heresy in some
| contexts; _hyperdulia_ vs. _dulia_ and all). In practice
| the absolute adulation of Mary is such that she nearly
| feels like the fourth member of the trinity.
| mensetmanusman wrote:
| Who judges what appears to happen in practice?
| kibwen wrote:
| We can have separate interpretations of how things play
| out in practice, anything I list is free to be dismissed
| as anecdotal. But when I think of famous Christian art, I
| think of art that depicts Mary (and baby Jesus, yes, but
| the artists deliberately chose not to depict a scene of
| Jesus without Mary); there's so many of these that it
| became its own genre (which is literally named after
| Mary, not Jesus):
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Madonna_(art) . And when I
| think of famous Christian cathedrals, I think of the
| Notre Dame, among the other zillion "Our Lady Of"s that
| are named after Mary. And when I think of people pointing
| out modern miracles I think of weeping statues of Mary or
| people finding Mary in a grilled cheese sandwich; this
| once again has its own entire genre:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marian_apparition . And in
| Catholic parts of the US at least, IME you're more likely
| to see a Bathtub Mary outside of a house than a cross:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bathtub_Madonna . And when
| I think of the most important prayers, I think of exactly
| two: the Our Father and the Hail Mary.
| kibwen wrote:
| Indeed, I'm not trying to argue that the tradition of
| Catholic saints doesn't obey an absolute hierarchy. I'm
| referring to practices that are specific to the domains
| of various patron saints, such as placing medals of Saint
| Christopher in your car for protection (him being the
| patron saint of transporters and travelers, as well as
| athletics, bachelors, surfing, storms, epilepsy,
| gardeners, and toothache). One of the reasons that
| Protestants objected to saintly veneration was precisely
| because they felt it took focus away from Jesus.
| gpderetta wrote:
| Even if the Catholic church might technically be not
| polytheistic, it is hard to argue that the cult of saints
| didn't replace the ancient Roman lares in the day to day
| cult. Yes, saints are supposed to intercede to provide
| favors and protection, but the practical effects [1] are
| the same. Religious syncretism is very well attested.
|
| [1] however you want to interpret this.
| vintagedave wrote:
| I was taught as a child, and this was Protestant with a
| clear anti-Catholic bias, that:
|
| * Catholics prayed _to_ Mary (eg asking to intercede on
| your behalf);
|
| * This was speaking to the dead, and expecting a
| response, and thus a sin in some way I am not sure of.
|
| I'm guessing you're Catholic from your response; would
| you mind explaining to this somewhat lost person how
| Catholics view these two topics please? (I've never heard
| a good explanation, and even praying "with" Mary is new
| to me.) I admire Catholicism and wish I felt more trust
| in it, which is something that comes from childhood
| indoctrination, I know. Things stick into adulthood even
| when you're consciously aware of their root. So I'm keen
| to hear countering views :)
| sickofparadox wrote:
| >This was speaking to the dead, and expecting a response,
| and thus a sin in some way I am not sure of.
|
| Catholics believe that people in heaven are not dead, and
| can hear your prayers for intercession (this is the case
| with most protestants too). Jesus said, after all, that
| he is the God of the living not the God of the dead[1],
| and that those in heaven will be reborn in a new and
| everlasting life. Catholics further believe that the
| saints in heaven can pray on your behalf and are, in
| fact, excited to do so, and possibly better at it than
| anyone on earth.
|
| [1]
| https://www.biblegateway.com/verse/en/Matthew%2022%3A32
| svieira wrote:
| 1. Prayer means several things - "I then prayed my friend
| that he would accompany me on my trip to Italy" does not
| mean that you worshiped your friend. Mary (and all the
| saints) are prayed to in that intercessory way, not in
| the worshipful way that we pray to God. The man at the
| Beautiful Gate asked Peter for charity and Peter gave him
| the ability to walk, not by his own power by by the power
| of Jesus (Acts 3:2-6). And again intercessory prayer as
| an important part of the life of the Church is well-
| attested - e. g., St. Paul in 1 Timothy 2:5 says "I urge
| that supplications, prayers, intercessions, and
| thanksgivings be made for all men". Finally, why the
| focus on Mary above all other saints? "Who am I, that the
| mother of my Lord should come to me" says Elizabeth
| "filled with the Holy Spirit" and before that "Hail,
| _full of grace_ , the Lord is with you" says Gabriel
| bringing God's message to Mary. And what does Mary say in
| response? "My soul magnifies the Lord, and my spirit
| rejoices in God my savior" and "I am the handmaid of the
| Lord, let it be done to me as you have said". When trying
| to draw closer to Christ, who would you want with you on
| your journey more than she who was called to be His
| mother? And who among all mankind would be more eager to
| have you come to the throne than she for whom "the
| Almighty has done [great things for]"?
|
| 2. "In fact, [God has not forbidden contact with the
| dead], because he at times has given it -- for example,
| when he had Moses and Elijah appear with Christ to the
| disciples on the Mount of Transfiguration (Matt. 17:3).
| What God has forbidden is the necromantic practice of
| conjuring up spirits. " Via
| https://www.catholic.com/tract/praying-to-the-saints
| blueshoe14 wrote:
| Did you mean 1 Timothy 2.1?
| svieira wrote:
| Yes, I did, apologies!
| JackFr wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Filioque - to this day the
| Roman Catholic Church and the Eastern Orthodox Church
| disagree on whether the Holy Spirit proceeds from the
| Father, or from the Father and the Son.
| giraffe_lady wrote:
| Yeah but most lay people from either branch couldn't tell
| you the practical consequences of this. It's widely known
| & considered important because it's a remaining
| theological justification for the schism, not the other
| way around.
| throw0101c wrote:
| An interesting take on the dilemma between the two
| 'sides':
|
| > _You see the problem. If you include the filioque, you
| fight the Arians in the West while inadvertently
| supporting the Sabellians in the East. But if you exclude
| it, you fight the Sabellians while inadvertently
| supporting the Arians. At its heart, the filioque is
| really a linguistic debate, not a theological one._
|
| * https://old.reddit.com/r/Catholicism/comments/68hb00/el
| i5_th...
|
| (I don't know about the intricacies/subtleties enough to
| know how 'technically accurate' the above assessment is.)
| giraffe_lady wrote:
| I don't know either. To me (an orthodox christian) the
| filioque seems like a post hoc justification for a schism
| that was already well underway if not inevitable. By 1054
| what became the two churches had already clearly
| differentiated religious traditions, local saints, and
| liturgical practices with very little interchange between
| them, not to mention language, governance, and secular
| culture.
|
| I have heard some fairly convincing (to a lay person)
| discussion between orthodox and catholic scholars that
| the filioque is potentially resolvable as a linguistic
| problem yes. But it's not worth really pursuing without a
| solution for the bigger issue of papal primacy. I don't
| know anyone who claims to have a viable path to
| reconciliation there. Plus, you know, the thousand years
| of mutual distrust and enmity.
| giraffe_lady wrote:
| In a taxonomy of religious belief the communion of saints
| is much closer to ancestor veneration than it is
| polytheism. If you're going to see anything in
| christianity as potentially polytheistic it's the triune
| god come on.
| petsfed wrote:
| I think, in a technical sense, you're right. But the
| difference between ancestor veneration (especially semi-
| legendary ancestor veneration) and veneration of a
| pantheon of lower-tier dieties is practically
| nonexistent. Its a distinction without difference.
|
| Nobody hesitates to call Shintoism polytheistic, and its
| core practices, to an outsider, seem strikingly similar
| to how a Christian, especially a Roman Catholic,
| interacts with the saints.
| giraffe_lady wrote:
| I don't disagree really. I do think there are in-this-
| context significant differences between how individual
| saints are interacted with. A personal or family patron
| saint tends much more towards looking like ancestor
| veneration, compared to eg mary who in practice takes a
| role that would in other religions be filled by a deity
| of femininity/motherhood/nurturing/etc.
|
| But overall in any case I think it's sometimes valuable
| to think of christianity this way and sometimes not. It
| _is_ a syncretic religion so of course it has regional
| variations and contradictory remnants of absorbed
| practices. IIRC some of the specific saint traditions,
| like icons in the home, predate christianity in the
| mediterranean.
|
| But on the other hand there are practices and
| relationships common in true polytheistic religions that
| you don't see in christianity at all. If taking the
| saints as minor deities, you don't find sects exalting
| one of them exclusively, nor do you see individual
| christians "defect" from one saint to another for
| personal advantage. There's no theology of competition or
| opposition between the saints to base such practices on
| at all. So there are limits to the usefulness of this
| perspective too.
|
| The shintoism example is interesting, I'll need to look
| more into it. I had considered it polytheistic but now
| that I think about it I haven't read shinto writings on
| the subject so I don't know _if most shinto practitioners
| experience it that way_. Outside perspectives aren 't
| completely invalid of course but they aren't as
| interesting to me as how believers experience their own
| religions.
| throw0101b wrote:
| > _Even today plenty of Christian sects refuse to
| recognize the council of Nicaea 's interpretation of the
| trinity, including the Mormons and the Jehovah's
| witnesses_
|
| In some ways the (English) word "God" has become
| 'overloaded' over time:
|
| * https://edwardfeser.blogspot.com/2015/12/christians-
| muslims-...
|
| And that's not even getting into "god":
|
| * https://edwardfeser.blogspot.com/2011/04/further-
| thought-on-...
| xdennis wrote:
| As an Atheist (formally Orthodox), I think I can
| adjudicate this.
|
| The problem with the First Council of Nicaea was that it
| was decided wrong. The whole "there are three gods, but
| only one god" is inherently confusing. There's a reason
| why Arianism keeps recurring over and over again. All the
| new nations who have been introduced to this aspect of
| Christianity find it bizarre.
|
| If the decision would have been more along the lines of
| Islam (i.e. Jesus is super holy, but not God) then it
| would have been easier to maintain unity. In fact,
| Islam's adoption of a form of Arianism is one of the
| reasons it replaced Christianity so quickly in North
| Africa and the Middle East. (Well, that and the sword.)
| andrensairr wrote:
| > The whole "there are three gods, but only one god" is
| inherently confusing.
|
| I imagine it would be. But that's not what the council of
| Nicaea decided, nor what Christians believe. It's further
| developed in the Athanasian creed that the Trinity is
| understood as one God (homoousios - same substance), but
| three persons. Whether or not the philosophy of
| consubstantiation is that useful to modern believers is
| another issue; attempts to reformulate the doctrine (like
| "there are three gods, but only one god") usually end in
| heterodoxy, or at least misunderstanding.
| throw0101b wrote:
| > _I 've never heard anyone say the early church wrestled
| with polytheism._
|
| See:
|
| > _Marcion preached that the benevolent God of the Gospel
| who sent Jesus Christ into the world as the savior was the
| true Supreme Being, different and opposed to the malevolent
| Demiurge or creator god, identified with the Hebrew God of
| the Old Testament.[2][3][5]_
|
| * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marcionism
| pram wrote:
| I find myself agreeing with a lot of these "gnostic"
| interpretations tbh. When you read stuff like Numbers 14,
| God just comes off as a total asshole lol
|
| Although the whole theology they cooked up around the
| "true god" reads like bad fan fiction usually.
| throwup238 wrote:
| _> "the nature of the triune Godhead"_
|
| Yeah that sounds like some weak Warhammer 40k fanfic.
| axus wrote:
| I've always seen Warhammer fiction as part parody of
| religions.. and heavy metal art.
| mistrial9 wrote:
| this seems like a sideways retelling of the "Gospels of
| Thomas" stories.. this is a nuanced topic and shrouded by
| history.. Suffice it to say that intellectuals and pious
| people knew very well the cults of Apollo, astrology of High
| Priests, nature worship, Egyptian deism, goddess worship, and
| pantheonism while the Christian scriptures were solidifying
| as a social blueprint.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| Note that to non-Christian monotheists, the Christian
| resolution of that problem is often seen as polytheism with
| circumlocution.
| mensetmanusman wrote:
| This arises from a confusion of multiplication 1x1x1 with
| addition 1+1+1 in the abstraction of facets of truth.
| sorokod wrote:
| A neat analogy but aren't those 1s actually distinct from
| each other in your religion?
| mensetmanusman wrote:
| Is there more than one way to reference the same truth?
| sorokod wrote:
| Maybe, does the Trimurti represent that same truth?
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trimurti
| alskdj21 wrote:
| You might enjoy Let's Talk Religion[0] and
| ReligionForBreakfast[1]. Both have variety of topics not solely
| focused on Christianity.
|
| [0] https://www.youtube.com/@LetsTalkReligion
|
| [1] https://www.youtube.com/@ReligionForBreakfast
| Hilift wrote:
| I think the more interesting developments occurred after the
| fall of the western Roman empire. The eastern empire
| (Constantinople) had frequent arguments and disputes with the
| west over nearly everything, including Christianity. The
| eastern Orthodox church refers to itself as the "Catholic
| Church" in internal documents. After the west fell in 476, they
| continued to present themselves as "the" Catholic church, which
| was changed forever in 1200 when the largest Christian city in
| the world (Constantinople) was destroyed. The destruction took
| two years, and most of the writings, art and treasure of the
| richest city in the world was either destroyed, stolen, or
| lost.
| ithkuil wrote:
| In fact the very word catholic derives from the Greek words
| kata and holos
| xdennis wrote:
| Additionally, it's part of the credo:
|
| > [We believe] in one, holy, catholic, and apostolic
| Church."
|
| In Latin:
|
| > Et unam sanctam catholicam et apostolicam Ecclesiam.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Four_Marks_of_the_Church
|
| Catholic just means universal.
| kamikazeturtles wrote:
| Did the fact that Christians from Western Europe looted
| Constantinople in 1200 play a role in the Eastern Roman
| Empire's decision to stop identifying themselves as part of
| the Catholic Church, or were there already deep theological
| and political divides?
| throaway2501 wrote:
| Catholic means universal, so both present themselves as the
| original and true church, with the head either in Rome or
| Constantinople/Pentarchy. The actual break of communion
| comes from 1054 but really began much earlier.
| harimau777 wrote:
| Even in protestant churches like the Presbyterians and
| the Methodists you will hear references to the "Catholic
| Church" where it refers to the universal church that is
| inclusive all all believers regardless of denomination.
| For example in shows up in the Nicene Creed and the
| Apostles Creed.
| gostsamo wrote:
| The schism was in 1053
| paganel wrote:
| 1054, in fact, but the 1204 ransacking of Constantinople
| certainly didn't help with how the "Franks" (because
| that's how the Catholics were mostly called) were seen by
| the Christian-Orthodox (if it matters I'm a Christian-
| Orthodox myself).
|
| I was reading a travelogue written by a Russian monk (?
| not sure, either a monk or a wealthy boyar predisposed to
| the Holy stuff) who was visiting Constantinople sometimes
| in the early 1300s, so a century after the whole tragedy,
| and he was still describing how destroyed the city looked
| because of the Franks and what big of a tragedy that was.
| Hilift wrote:
| If you read Wikipedia, there was the Massacre of the
| "Latins" in Constantinople in 1182. That almost certainly
| made it easy to make it a revenge play for the Venetians
| and associates.
|
| What I find most interesting is the Romans were
| unbeatable in battle, even the Byzantines. However,
| maintaining a large military presence was expensive and
| politically difficult to manage. So they used annual
| mercenaries from the north for the usual frontier
| squabbles, and the main army did the heavy lifting. It
| fell apart when there was a major conflict, and didn't
| help that the army held the city hostage demanding more
| money. So everyone was corrupt it would seem. Also there
| were the persistence of rumors of knights that may have
| kept most of the treasure for themselves and headed off
| to Cyprus. The Knights Templar were insanely wealthy
| given the times and cost of resources to mount
| expeditions.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Massacre_of_the_Latins
|
| https://thetemplarknight.com/2021/12/13/cyprus-knights-
| templ...
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Massacre_of_the_Latins
| sb057 wrote:
| It's actually not quite so clear cut. 1053/1054 was when
| mutual excommunications between Rome and Constantinople
| happened, but (as the schism itself is evidence of)
| Constantinople did not speak for the entire church, and
| other eastern sees continued communion with Rome for
| quite some time afterward.
|
| https://kalebatlantaprime.medium.com/the-great-schism-
| was-in...
| srcreigh wrote:
| The pope who sent the schism message delegation died before
| it reached Constantinople. And the patriarch of
| Constantinople at the time, also died before his reply made
| it back to Rome.
| labster wrote:
| What a terrible century for texting.
| xdennis wrote:
| > a role in the Eastern Roman Empire's decision to stop
| identifying themselves as part of the Catholic Church
|
| From their point of view, the West abandoned the true (i.e.
| orthodox) faith.
|
| Also, it's hard to argue that the Eastern Christians
| changed more than Western ones. For example, since the 12th
| century the pope has forbidden priest marriage. There is
| some debate in the Catholic Church about allowing this
| again. If that is implemented, it would simply be a
| reversion to what the Orthodox Church has always done.
| dismalaf wrote:
| Both churches have always identified themselves as
| "Catholic", or universal in the Greek language
| (katholikos). Orthodox Churches still use the creed in
| every service, where they say "We believe in one holy
| catholic and apostolic church".
|
| Also, it's not like the Roman Catholics claim to be
| heterodox or something, they also claim that their faith is
| "orthodox".
| tivert wrote:
| > The eastern Orthodox church refers to itself as the
| "Catholic Church" in internal documents. After the west fell
| in 476, they continued to present themselves as "the"
| Catholic church...
|
| Is that really so odd? Doesn't "catholic" mean something like
| "universal," and I think it would be _very odd_ for one
| faction of a split organization to cede that kind of title to
| its rival faction.
|
| I might be misunderstanding your point, but I kinda feel it
| should be followed up with a kind of "Did you know, Western
| European, that these two different things are actually
| similar in this way you didn't know about?"
| pwgentleman wrote:
| > "catholic" mean something like "universal,"
|
| Christians make a distinction between churches and the
| church. The former is the physical building or even
| denominations like Lutherans or Roman Catholics. The latter
| is the group of people that are part of Christianity,
| across time and denominations. The Universal Church refers
| to the latter.
|
| Galatians 1:2 "...the churches of Galatia..." vs Colossians
| 1:24 "...for the sake of his body, that is, the church..."
| graemep wrote:
| I would interpret that as all of redeemed humanity, not
| just all Christians.
| rgrieselhuber wrote:
| It's frequently explained to mean "universal" but my
| growing understanding of it is that it means that the
| wholeness of the faith exists at the local level, meaning
| that it does not have a dependency on some remote
| administrator in order to provide the Sacraments, etc.
|
| This became an important point for the survival of
| Orthodoxy during the Arian crisis.
| foobarian wrote:
| Speaking of history podcasts, I've gone through Mike Duncan's
| Rome and Revolutions, the Fall of Civilizations, Dan Carlin's
| Hardcore Histories... any suggestions for more like this? I
| noticed there is a Byzantium history series that seemed
| interesting.
| HowardStark wrote:
| Thought pointedly not a podcast, the YouTube channel Historia
| Civilis was my go to thing to fall asleep to for a while. The
| simple animation style and depth I found very soothing.
| anonymousDan wrote:
| The rest is history is pretty good.
| rpicard wrote:
| History on Fire is another great one. He's especially
| interested in military / martial arts but it has a bit of
| everything.
| loudmax wrote:
| The History of English podcast is worth a listen. It's about
| the development of the English language, so it covers a lot
| of history and prehistory, and also linguistics. The
| presenter Kevin Stroud has a deep passion for the subject
| matter. Unfortunately, he also has a tendency to repeat
| himself and over-explain simple examples so the effect can be
| somewhat soporific.
| JackFr wrote:
| Twelve Byzantine Rulers https://12byzantinerulers.com/
| ecshafer wrote:
| Assuming you want more Long form, narrative style historical
| podcasts. History of the Germans, The French History Podcast,
| and The History of England are all very good in depth
| podcasts. I also enjoy the History of The Crusades, which is
| good, narrative and similar to Revolutions following various
| crusades.
| BillSaysThis wrote:
| https://www.thebritishhistorypodcast.com/
|
| The British History Podcast starts in deep pre-Roman times
| and, after ~460 episodes, is up to 1091.
| gedy wrote:
| Thanks for the recommendation, however, I really disliked
| the presenters tone and language. I love the topic, but he
| came across as too bubbly and informal - "but anyways,
| whatever!", etc.
| strogonoff wrote:
| If you want a non-religious take on the history of Abrahamic
| religions, a recent episode 393 of the podcast by Sam Harriss,
| where he interviews historian Simon Sebag Montefiore, should be
| an interesting listen.
| hobs wrote:
| My favorite find in the last few months is the youtube channel
| "esoterica" - here's his video on the origins of yaweh as a
| storm god https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mdKst8zeh-U
|
| He recommends books and primary sources for every episode and
| they vary from interesting more pubscience type stuff to
| incredibly expensive and deep academic sources out of print.
|
| The gentleman who runs it is very obviously jewish in practice
| but only uses that to inform his historical context instead of
| override it, its very refreshing as someone who is an atheist.
| loudmax wrote:
| The Centre Place youtube channel has some pretty good lectures,
| including some very good lectures on Judaism and early
| Christianity: https://www.youtube.com/@centre-place/playlists
|
| The videos are presented by a pastor of the Community of Christ
| church in Toronto, but they're from a historical rather than
| religious perspective.
| janjongboom wrote:
| Seconding this - absolutely terrific content.
| cogman10 wrote:
| Data over dogma is a pretty good podcast about Christianity and
| Judaism. It's mostly about taking Bible stories and putting
| them into their historic context with the best evidence we
| have.
|
| It's not about converting, just covering the history.
| xwkd wrote:
| Produced by a Mormon whose dissertation was supervised by an
| atheist Professor of the Hebrew Bible and Ancient Religion.
| This may be a data point in favor of the trustworthiness of
| the podcast, or it may be an argument against, depending on
| your own personal point of view.
| stvltvs wrote:
| As long as the approach is rigorous scholarship in good
| faith (is it?), it shouldn't matter too much.
| dddddaviddddd wrote:
| The "Religions of the Ancient Mediterranean" podcast is
| excellent. It's mostly cut-up university lectures by the
| author, who teaches at York University in Toronto.
| https://www.philipharland.com/Blog/religions-of-the-ancient-...
| oldmanhorton wrote:
| Someone already said The Rest is History, but one of the
| presenters of that podcast Tom Holland (not the actor) has also
| written extensively about the history of the catholic church in
| Millennium and Dominion. Highly recommended.
| bigstrat2003 wrote:
| Second the recommendation on Millennium, just note that for
| some stupid reason the US publisher decided to retitle the
| book "The Forge of Christendom". So if you're in the US you
| won't find it under its real title.
| graemep wrote:
| Not read Millennium, but Dominion is brilliant. its not just
| the history of the church, it explains how the West came to
| be what it is and the influence of Christianity.
|
| It is also a useful corrective to the Western tendency to see
| its values and attitudes as universal, even where they are a
| product of a particular history and culture.
| wslh wrote:
| I think one of the oldest historical mentions of Jesus is by
| Josephus [1][2]. There is, however, scholarly discussion about
| whether parts of his references to Jesus were altered by later
| Christian scribes [3].
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Josephus
|
| [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Josephus_on_Jesus
|
| [3]
| https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&as_sdt=0%2C5&q=jose...
| markeroon wrote:
| This blew my mind when I first learned of it
| mensetmanusman wrote:
| The Didache predates Josephus.
| wslh wrote:
| I understand that the Didache doesn't mention Jesus itself.
| abrenuntio wrote:
| Read it here:
|
| https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/0714.htm
|
| (E.g. when discussing the Eucharist.)
| ImJamal wrote:
| The traditional view held by Christians is that the Gospel of
| Matthew was written within 10 years of Jesus' death. Modern
| scholars (often atheists) do not believe it though.
| throw0101c wrote:
| > _Recommendations for books etc are welcome!_
|
| See perhaps the references / (printed) sources at:
|
| * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historicity_of_Jesus
| Almondsetat wrote:
| I mean, wouldn't you find it strange if historians from the
| year 4000 believed the sexual revolution of 1968 happened in
| 2018? Quite a discrepancy "only" 50 years
| alsetmusic wrote:
| I've been reading a lot about the early church for about a year
| and really enjoying it. I'm an atheist but I'm also a history
| nerd so it's been truly fascinating. Here are some that I've
| enjoyed:
|
| - The Origin of Satan by Elaine Pagels; I read this one so
| casually that I don't have a good summary due to poor memory.
|
| - The Passover Plot by Hugh J Schonfield; author contends that
| Jesus believed that he was the prophesied Messiah and
| engineered his arrest and crucifixion out of sheer genius and
| clever actions. Fantastic read.
|
| - Jesus the Jew by Geza Vermes; author sees Jesus as a sincere
| apocalyptic preacher who believed he was the Messiah.
|
| - From Jesus to Christ by Paula Fredriksen; author looks at how
| Jesus went from the Jewish Messiah to the head of a major
| religion.
|
| - Becoming God by Bart Ehrman (you can find him doing
| interesting interviews or debates on YouTube); same as the one
| directly above.
|
| - The Jesus Puzzle by Earl Doherty; author contends that Jesus
| was not a historical figure, but rather another heavenly figure
| understood to have been crucified in the firmament between
| heaven and earth. I'm really impressed by the argument so far.
| I'm not quite finished with this one.
| sporc wrote:
| A lecture series by The Teaching Company called "The New
| Testament" taught by Bart Ehrman is an enjoyable academic
| introduction to the history of Early Christianity.
|
| I also recommend another lecture series called "From Jesus to
| Christianity" by The Modern Scholar taught by Thomas F. Madden.
| thih9 wrote:
| > Typically, amulets from this era contained a blend of
| Christian, Jewish, and pagan elements.
|
| Interesting; does anyone have a link showing a typical amulet
| from that era, for comparison?
| snapcaster wrote:
| I found that interesting too, and curious about what it implies
| for how people thought about religion at the time
| PittleyDunkin wrote:
| > I found that interesting too, and curious about what it
| implies for how people thought about religion at the time
|
| Religion is an invention of the rennaisance. People at the
| time would have just perceived what we see as "religion" as
| worldview, much like people today typically believe in a
| fusion of economic theories.
| snapcaster wrote:
| That's fascinating but makes sense. any places to go learn
| more about this you recommend? googling things like
| invention of religion don't really lead anything on this
| specific topic
| PittleyDunkin wrote:
| I'd probably start here: https://oxfordre.com/politics/di
| splay/10.1093/acrefore/97801...
|
| Or at the wikipedia page that links to that article:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Secularism
| paganel wrote:
| Don't have any reasonable good links available but over here,
| further East (present-day Romania and then the Roman province
| of Dacia) there was a strong presence of Oriental/Siro-
| Palmyrian deities like Mithras, Dea Syria or Belus. There's
| this (non-academic) page [1] in Romanian which you can use
| Google translate on in order to get a better hang of it.
|
| [1] https://historia.ro/sectiune/general/culte-si-credinte-in-
| da...
| MrBuddyCasino wrote:
| > _dates back to approximately 230-270 CE_
|
| The nerve to use "Common Era" when specifically talking about the
| spread of christianity.
| abrenuntio wrote:
| "He who testifies to these things says, ``Yes, I am coming
| soon.'' Amen. Come, Lord Jesus."
| zen928 wrote:
| I can't even begin to tell you how hard I unexpectedly laughed
| at your comment denoting a perceived lack of respect using an
| extremely commonly accepted scientific dating measurement.
| Nothing negative noted about any other piece, just a single
| cherry picked highlight to allow you to demonstrate socially
| acceptable puritan outrage when given the chance, even on
| something as insignificant as following common scientific
| processes. Very culturally relevant. Thanks for the
| entertainment!
| MrBuddyCasino wrote:
| I had to faintly smile at ,,scientific dating measurement".
| God bless you.
| toolslive wrote:
| there might be even older evidence lurking if the following is
| true: "Jesus was Julius Divius"
|
| https://www.carotta.de/eindex.html
| briffid wrote:
| There is scientific consensus that Jesus was a historical
| figure, so the book referred here is probably fiction.
| cogman10 wrote:
| One of the more interesting pieces of evidence in the Bible.
|
| The Roman census that required every family go back to their
| hometown did not happen (why would it?). Romans kept very
| good records of censuses and such an event would be well
| covered.
|
| So why does the Bible have this story? The best guess is that
| Jesus was well known to have come from Nazareth. Yet the
| older messianic texts say the Messiah would be from
| Bethlehem. The gospel author undoubtedly was trying to square
| that circle to make sure the prophecy was fulfilled.
| Something they'd not need to do if Jesus wasn't real. The
| author had to explain to people who had grandparents who knew
| him as being from Nazareth why that still jives with older
| prophecies.
| ordinaryradical wrote:
| Before you tie yourself in this knot it might be useful
| just to look and see if there was a Roman census in that
| time period:
|
| "When I administered my thirteenth consulate (2 B.C.E.),
| the senate and Equestrian order and Roman people all called
| me father of the country, and voted that the same be
| inscribed in the vestibule of my temple"[0]
|
| [0] http://classics.mit.edu/Augustus/deeds.html
| cogman10 wrote:
| Oh, I'm sorry I must not have been super clear.
|
| That Rome did censuses and kept detailed records of the
| censuses is not in dispute. The thing that never happened
| is people making long trips to the ancestral lands.
|
| The entire point of a census is to get an accurate
| population count for reasons of taxation and public
| spending. People uprooting to go to grandpa's home to be
| counted messes with that count. It's counter productive.
| Rome would never have required this and in fact would
| have tried to restrict travel during the census because
| they wanted an accurate population count.
|
| The much more likely explanation is the author of Luke
| needed Jesus to be born in Bethlehem, which was
| problematic because Jesus was well known to be from
| Nazareth.
|
| Here's a good article detailing those problems:
|
| https://bam.sites.uiowa.edu/faq/can-you-explain-problem-
| cens...
|
| I should note, this is not a controversial take.
| lucozade wrote:
| That doesn't describe a census or anything like it. There
| is absolutely no evidence there was a census covering the
| Roman empire let alone the whole world (as actually
| stated in gLuke).
|
| However, there _was_ a census of Judea ordered by
| Quirinius when Herod Archelaus was kicked out in 6AD. And
| that makes sense because, prior to that time, Judea was a
| client state so Rome would not have directly taxed it.
| Once it became a province, it would be subject to direct
| taxation and, hence, would have needed a census to
| determine the taxable population.
|
| So, by far the most likely scenario is that the author of
| gLuke was referring to this census but got his facts a
| bit wrong. He made way bigger whoppers than that one.
| toolslive wrote:
| Just to be clear: there is no evidence of anything in the
| Bible. It's a collection of stories, opinions, lessons and
| prophecies.
| cogman10 wrote:
| That's too strong of language.
|
| There's little evidence for a lot of the big claims (such
| as a global flood). However, there's quite a bit of
| evidence for people, places, and some of the events.
|
| The bible is a collection of writings by multiple authors
| over almost a millennium. How accurate it is depends
| entirely on who is writing about what.
| toolslive wrote:
| That's not "evidence". The bible mentions Babylon and
| Babylon existed, but the bible mentioning Babylon is no
| evidence of Babylon's existence. In this sentence, I'm
| mentioning the Sun, and it exists, but I provide no
| evidence whatsoever.
| cogman10 wrote:
| I may have misinterpreted what you are saying. When I
| read this
|
| > there is no evidence of anything in the Bible
|
| I interpreted it as you saying "Nothing in the bible has
| corroborating evidence". Not "the bible is not evidence
| for anything".
|
| The bible mentions the sun and we have corroborating
| evidence that the sun does indeed exist. The bible's
| mention of the sun alone isn't evidence for it's
| existence.
|
| That said, the bible does provide some soft evidence.
| Like I mentioned, the fact that Jesus probably existed
| isn't in that the bible says he existed, but rather the
| fact that the bible makes errors in his history likely to
| cover up well known facts about him at the time.
|
| An example of 2 figures that likely didn't exist in the
| bible are Moses and Abraham.
| lucozade wrote:
| > There is scientific consensus that Jesus was a historical
| figure
|
| It's fair to say that there is general consensus amongst
| Biblical scholars that there was a historical Jesus of
| Nazareth. Calling it a scientific consensus is a bit of a
| stretch though. As far as I'm aware there's zero scientific
| evidence for His existence. Just that the surviving textual
| evidence makes little sense if He didn't.
| mannyv wrote:
| There's a ton of textual evidence for the existence of
| Santa Claus.
| abrenuntio wrote:
| Correct, he lived in Turkey around the late third-early
| fourth century.
| _DeadFred_ wrote:
| Pretty sure he lived in Anatolia or the Roman empire.
| There was no 'Turkey' to live in around the late third
| century.
| margalabargala wrote:
| He can't have lived in the Roman Empire, because those
| are words written in English, a language that didn't
| exist back then.
|
| What's that? You meant, he lived within the bounds of the
| region that we call one thing, but would have been
| something else contemporaneously, but both refer to the
| same geographical location? Great, we agree he lived in
| Turkey.
| stryan wrote:
| I've always heard it as there's enough textual/historical
| evidence for Jesus (Josephus, etc) that if we didn't count
| that as proof of his historical existence that would raise
| the bar high enough to remove hundreds of other historical
| figures.
| emmelaich wrote:
| Related, for those interested in the history of religions and
| Christianity: https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/book-review-the-
| rise-of-chr...
| mistrial9 wrote:
| > a lot of male cult members join because the cult has hot
| girls. This seems to have been a big factor in the spread of
| early Christianity as well.
|
| well, that explains it then </s>
| Mistletoe wrote:
| As someone that went to church for that reason as a child I
| can tell you some things never change.
| Decabytes wrote:
| It's super cool to see the digital unraveling of scrolls become
| more accessible. It's also amazing that we can still read the
| text of something that is nearly 2000 years old.
|
| One thing I don't understand is the picture of the scroll though.
| I don't see how they were able to figure out the letters? They
| don't look like an alphabet to me
| eschulz wrote:
| But what language is used for the inscription on the rolled
| silver amulet?
| elevaet wrote:
| The article said Latin, but I don't know what script that is.
| It looks like it was written right-to-left so maybe it's Latin
| written in Hebrew script? I'm not even sure if that was a
| thing.
| markovs_gun wrote:
| No, it's written left to right, it's just extremely messy
| cursive. There are also abbreviations and special shorthand
| symbols.
| ilamont wrote:
| The article mentions "18-line Latin text" but I was unable to
| recognize any word on the scroll (took Latin in high school) even
| something obvious like _deus_.
|
| Was this some sort of Latin shorthand?
| alexjm wrote:
| Some of the letter shapes look like Latin/Roman cursive, but
| even then I'm not sure I recognize any words either.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roman_cursive
| adamredwoods wrote:
| >> Although I realized fairly early on that the New Testament
| Letter to the Philippians is quoted at the end, I still spent a
| long time puzzling over the text, which is written in quite a
| crude form of Latin. I consulted specialist literature and
| databases and, finally, made some suggestions for how it might
| be interpreted.
|
| >> The inscription begins with the Trisagion, the threefold cry
| of "Holy" [based on Isaiah 6:3], which remains part of the
| liturgy of the Eucharist to this day. In this case, however,
| it's written in Greek ["agios, agios, agios"] but in Latin
| script.
|
| https://www.uni-bonn.de/en/news/university-of-bonn-researche...
| cvoss wrote:
| I can spot some of the shorthand. I see "Xp" a few times, which
| is actually imported from the Greek christos, abbreviated to
| chi-rho.
| marc_abonce wrote:
| Also, each KhR (Chi Rho) is preceded by another Christogram
| that sort of looks like IHS but I'm not sure.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christogram
|
| Edit: Actually, here's the full transcription in Latin and
| German: https://archaeologisches-museum-
| frankfurt.de/index.php/de/?v...
| LightBug1 wrote:
| Interesting, but just an antiquated historical tidbit?
|
| What relevance in an age when the moral high ground is now a
| weakness or, at best, simply an ineffective strategy?
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