You got most of it right, but not entirely. Jesus never founded the religion. Jesus was an Orthodox Jew, who preached Jewish apocalyptic teaching (coming kingdom of God, etc.). Being Jewish, he wouldn’t have though to start a new religion. Jesus was just a poor schnook who got caught up in the politics of the Roman period in Jerusalem
You were correct about Paul, but did say most (if not all) of the Christian writings (Gospels, other books in the New Testament) were written long after Jesus’ death. The Gospels were a codified collection of stories (Matthew was supposedly written around 30-40 years after Jesus death with the other Gospels coming later. Paul’s proclamations (Acts, etc.) were stuff that Paul made up, and other Christian writers since him seemed to follow in his tradition, except that they were “inspired” by writers who had gone before. The New Testament Canon was first codified at the First Council of Nicea, to the determent of the the other competing brands of Christianity at the time.
I could go on, but check out some of the stuff by Bart Ehrman, who seems to have the guts to discuss Christianity from a historical perspective rather than a religious one. If you read Christian literature and history as a skeptic instead of a true believer, you will get the picture.
Welcome to the Straight Dope Message Boards, Stevereno, we’re glad you found us. For future ref: when one starts a thread, it’s helpful to other readers to provide a link to the column in question. Saves search time, and helps keep us all on the same page (to avoid repetition of what’s in the column). No biggie, you’ll know for next time.
Saying that Paul “made stuff up” isn’t really a meaningful argument. Can you prove that Paul only made it up and didn’t really get it from God as he claimed? Or are you presupposing the skeptical position? If the latter, you are really begging the question as to the value of Paul’s writings.
Absolutely false. The Nicean Council had *nothing, nothing, nothing *to do with the canon of Scripture. The topic there was only related to the nature of Christ, whether he was deity or a created being. This idea seems to have been spread by the novel, The Da Vinci Code, which claimed to be presenting the historical aspects accurately, but fell far short of the claim.
Ehrman sets a standard for biblical literature, that, if followed generally, would prevent us from saying anything meaningful at all about ancient history. And by “ancient,” I mean before the invention of the photocopier in 1947. Despite the fact that he should know better because of his extensive knowledge of textual criticism, he continues to maintain that we have no idea what the NT Scriptures originally said because we only have copies and not the originals. He ignores the fact that there is a rich tradition of manuscripts - almost 6000 of them, from different parts of the ancient world and different textual families, that all testify to a highly accurate Greek text. Yes, there are differences in the manuscripts, but the overwhelming majority of them are minor errors in spelling, word order, and things like that. Only a small handful of the variants affect the meaning of the text, and none of those impact any major teaching of Christianity. In addition to all of the Greek MSS, we also have hundreds of versions in other languages of the times, and on top of that, nearly the entire NT was cited in the writings of the early church Fathers. Ehrman acknowledges all of this, but sets the bar of evidence so high that no ancient document could ever meet his standard. Essentially, he is arguing that if we don’t have photocopies of the autographs, we have no idea what the originals said. Never mind that the text is remarkably consistent, even in copies that were made hundreds of miles apart; Ehrman presumes that major changes must have been made in the few decades before the earliest manuscripts that we have - even though there is no evidence for any such changes having been made. If this standard was applied to non-biblical documents, we would have to take the position that we can know nothing at all about ancient history, since the NT has a manuscript tradition far richer than any other work of antiquity.
I’m not sure how “gutsy” Ehrman is - I’m inclined to wonder why he doesn’t direct his considerable scholarly abilities at the Koran, for example - but he sure is making a lot of money attacking Christianity and the Bible.
Yes, I suppose that if you come at it with the presupposition that Christianity is NOT true, your conclusions will follow in the same vein. How is that better than reading with a bias in favor of belief? If you make up your mind as to the conclusion before you start reading, why bother at all?
So, then, if you are right about this, the scriptural canon was not established until after the Council of Nicea, which is even worse for its authority.
You maybe right about the scriptural canon not (yet) being definitively established in Nicea, but I am pretty confident that, this being the first open meeting of Christian leaders from around the Roman Empire that there had ever been (since the days when it was a tiny Jewish sect, anyway), and the first that had some hope of its decisions being enforceable, they discussed a lot more than whether Jesus was a deity or created.
What you say about Ehrman’s criteria is interesting, though. I haven’t read him, but if he really is being that strict, he is indeed being absurd, and I do not think I will bother.
Ehrman isn’t anywhere near as strict as NeonMadman is claiming. Ehrman’s position is basically that we have to accept that we do not have a perfect set of scriptures - comparisons of early texts show that differences arose as the texts were copied and circulated. Later on, a definitive text was decided upon but we have good evidence that this version is probably not the closest to the original texts.
It’s not a very controversial position. To take it out of a religious context, it’s akin to claiming that the Illiad we have now is not identical to the Illiad that was being recited three thousand years ago. The only people who are going to strongly argue against this are those who claim the Bible is inerrant.
One issue I’d raise is the common claim (which Cecil repeats) that a factor in Christianity’s rise was that paganism was fading (“the old Greek and Roman pagan religions were by then completely out of gas”). It’s the idea that Christianity was stepping in to fill a spiritual void in people’s lives.
I’ve read this probably isn’t true. There’s good evidence from documents and architectural remains that paganism was getting along just fine from the first to the fourth centuries AD and was still an active faith in the time of Constantine and Theodosius. Temples were being built and pagan ceremonies were being held. It’s more likely that the rise of Christianity was part of a broad movement of religious revival rather than an exception to a general religious decline.
There was certainly a lot of interest, in the Roman Empire, in all sorts of “new and alternative” religions, often of foreign (i.e., not Greek or Roman) origin, in the first few centuries A.D. Christianity was one amongst many of these (which were all promiscuously interacting and borrowing ideas one from the other), and took about three centuries to clearly emerge as the most dominant. In the light of all this competition, I think t is certainly fair to say that “the old Greek and Roman pagan religions were by then completely out of gas” (or, at least, very largely out of gas), although Christianity was far from being the only alternative (and, of course, the other religions were “pagan” by Christian standards). The traditional Roman religion, with a bit of Emperor worship mixed in, was kept up by the Roman state as a sort of symbol, such that showing some allegiance, at least in lip service, to the traditional gods (with the Emperor amongst the pantheon) was a way of showing that you were loyal to the Empire, but almost all of the religious passion (and there was lots about) was reserved to the alternatives, Christianity, Mithraism, Isis worship, various versions of Sun worship, Gnosticism in various forms, Hermeticism, Manicheanism, and og knows what else, and what hybrids.
But as I said, the evidence seems to be that this wasn’t the case. The old pagan religion was not fading away. New temples were being built and existing temples were expanding - more people were attending the ceremonies then had in the past (and it was percentage increase not just a sign of increasing population). So it appears that the Roman people were generally becoming more religious. Most of them stayed with their traditional religion and some of them branched out to new religions but it was all part of a general religious revival.
Cecil does a Greek/Roman answer, but you get another angle by considering more recent countries like Indonesia (Islam) and Korea (Christian).
Traditional animism is an unfriendly religion for an unfriendly world (and religous objects are often the nuclear waste of their world). People often adopt Christianity or Islam when given the opportunity: they like those religions better as a defence against the animist world they inhabit.
I’d definitely suggest that you read him. I assume NeonMadmen is referring to Misquoting Jesus. The analysis of how texts have been transmitted with both their regional consistencies and global inconsistencies is a lovely working example of sound historiography. Obviously such an examination will bother literalists, but why should you - or him - care if that’s so?
You really, really, really need to look in the mirror before you make such hilariously revealing statements like this.
There are only two possible attitudes with which to approach a topic of unknown validity: skepticism and credulity. The laws of logic demand that the only proper option of the two is skepticism. All that is required is that the skepticism is open to evidence pointing toward the validity of the conclusion.
The reason for this is that one can prove a positive, but cannot prove a negative. Approaching a subject with skepticism allows room for the subject to be proven; approaching it with credulity requires that it be disproven, which is usually more difficult and often outright impossible.
Powers &8^]
Have you done a general survey of religious texts? Read the Quran, the Dhammapada, the Vedas, the Tao Te Ching? And did you begin reading them as a believer in the faith of each text?
And if you haven’t can you explain why not in a manner that doesn’t include bias or pre-formed conclusions?
I don’t have a dog in the fight with regard to the religious discussion here, but I did want to point out that this is not true. It is quite possible to prove a negative. That’s how we know there’s no ether, how we know evolution is not Lamarckian, how we know the universe is not in a steady state, and a host of other things.
You’re basically talking about instances where an alternative can be proven or findamentally substantiated - not all concepts are like that. There is no specific concept that can be proven which would negate the possibility of life on other planets, for instance. Which is why the only appropriate position is to require evidence that such life exists before accepting such a proposition.
To me, this sounds like you’re either already doubtful, or already believing. It’s possible to go in with no opinion either way. Of course this usually only happens when someone brings you into a topic you previously haven’t thought or cared about.
The current canon of scripture was more or less in common use and widely quoted by church fathers as early as the second century. It was only not the “official” canon until later because by and large, there was not a lot of controversy about which scriptures were authentic.
There were some exceptions of course - hence the eventual need for a declared canon. But even today, different Christian traditions use slightly modified canons.
It kinda is one sided in the scholarly community - that’s why you presumably linked to apologetic websites. I scanned the CARM one and noticed this:
Matt Slick, whom you are actually relying on (sad as it is), is purportedly relying on Papias - a person that not even the earliest Christians trusted (ex. Eusebius-sp?)
Why believe Papias here, but not when he talks about Judas?
This IMO is one of Cecil’s best columns. When I first read it years ago, I was especially struck by this passage, which IMO is the best explanation for Christianity’s historic popularity: