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Silver amulet is the oldest evidence of Christianity north of the Alps

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Re: Silver amulet is the oldest evidence of Christianity north of the Alps

#201

Post by xwkd »

cogman10 wrote: post #85
bjackman wrote: post #28

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!

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.

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.

Re: Silver amulet is the oldest evidence of Christianity north of the Alps

#202

Post by Hilift »

paganel wrote: post #118
gostsamo wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The schism was in 1053

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 e…

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

Re: Silver amulet is the oldest evidence of Christianity north of the Alps

#203

Post by cogman10 »

toolslive wrote: post #193
cogman10 wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 Bet…

Just to be clear: there is no evidence of anything in the Bible. It's a collection of stories, opinions, lessons and prophecies.

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.

Re: Silver amulet is the oldest evidence of Christianity north of the Alps

#204

Post by alsetmusic »

bjackman wrote: post #28

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!

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 Géza 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.

Re: Silver amulet is the oldest evidence of Christianity north of the Alps

#205

Post by toolslive »

cogman10 wrote: post #203
toolslive wrote: post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just to be clear: there is no evidence of anything in the Bible. It's a collection of stories, opinions, lessons and prophecies.

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.

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.

Re: Silver amulet is the oldest evidence of Christianity north of the Alps

#206

Post by marky1991 »

ARandomerDude wrote: post #163
marky1991 wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

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 y…

Interesting, the confession considers 'remember the sabbath' to be 'moral law', not ceremonial, also 19.3 . Thanks for the reminder!

Re: Silver amulet is the oldest evidence of Christianity north of the Alps

#207

Post by AlgorithmicTime »

tivert wrote: post #175
Hilift wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 w…

> 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 po…

[dead]

Re: Silver amulet is the oldest evidence of Christianity north of the Alps

#208

Post by AlgorithmicTime »

sorokod wrote: post #181
mensetmanusman wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This arises from a confusion of multiplication 1x1x1 with addition 1+1+1 in the abstraction of facets of truth.

A neat analogy but aren't those 1s actually distinct from each other in your religion?

[dead]

Re: Silver amulet is the oldest evidence of Christianity north of the Alps

#209

Post by sporc »

bjackman wrote: post #28

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!

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.

Re: Silver amulet is the oldest evidence of Christianity north of the Alps

#210

Post by cogman10 »

toolslive wrote: post #205
cogman10 wrote: post #203

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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.

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.

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