Sunday, February 18, 2024
My answer to those who say Christianity in America is in decline. Civilixation is indecline, books are in decline learning is in decline. Thinking is in decline. Democracy is in decline, dencency is in decline, everything that has made modern life worth living is in declie, so why npt christianity? That is npthing more than the great falling away preduced at theend times.
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Thinking, democracy, decency, civility, cooperation, the US constitution, freedom, equal rights, inclusiveness, truth itself. All are under attack by Trump and his minions. And guess what those people call themselves: Christians and patriots.
Why is it always about politicians (and this is either side. I am a Christian Anarchist)? They don't have nearly the power that we think they have.
You don't think Trump has power? He owns the entire Republican party, and the majority of evangelical Christians. They believe his lies and do whatever he wants. No matter how depraved or immoral.
I agree with you about Trump, Skep. we have to keep him out ot power. It's foolish to think rich don't have power or they don't own the government,
Thank you. The article is about whether Christianity is in decline. Of course, you were talking about numbers, and then (I presume) linking the decline in numbers with all the societal degradation that we are seeing. I'm not making any point about the number of Christians. I'm talking about how Christians are no longer living up to their own Christian ideals. Under the influence of Trump, they have abandoned morality and human decency in favor of selfishness, racism, right-wing extremism, and fascist ideals. They want to impose a theocracy in place of our constitutional government - not not because it would advance traditional Christian ideals, but because it would put them in power, and allow them to do whatever they please without any worries about the constitution getting in the way. And doing what they please may not be so pleasant for the rest of us.
Richard Carrier, thanks for your analysis. When you write (in comment above), "The Gospels are the only definite source for a historical Jesus we have (everything else either derives from them or is too ambiguous to determine the question)", have you considered and excluded the possibility that Jesus ben Sapphat active in the 60s ce of Josephus became understood to be Jesus Christ? If that were so, then there would be contemporary source material on the historical Jesus not derivative from the Gospels.
Obviously if the chronological framing of the Gospels/Acts for Jesus is unquestioned, then the Gospels/Acts' Jesus could not have derived from Jesus ben Sapphat. But if the chronological framing of the Gospels/Acts is not assumed as a prior starting-point or premise for the question of the earthly existence of the Jesus believed to be Christ; and if per argument the letters of Paul are dated ca. 70-100 ce (with the exception of reading Aretas of 2 Cor 11 as Aretas IV, does anything internal to those letters indicate pre-70 composition or pre-70 activity of Paul believed to have written some of them, at the time of those letters? [and as for Aretas, why not an Aretas V 69-70?]); Revelation is 90s reflecting source visions from ca. 70; and gospels/Acts 2nd ce ... could it be source material for the historical Jesus unaffected by Christian portrayal has been in open view all this time, but unrecognized based upon uncritical assumption of late and actually questionable chronological-structuring portrayals of Gospels/Acts?
I suppose a first question would be: is there evidence that meets historians' criteria that Christian belief in Jesus existed predating 70? Can that be established as a fact by historians' standards?
Then a second question might be: is it plausible, or can it be excluded, that under the right circumstances a figure could immediately, following a death or disappearance of that figure, come to be regarded as divine in heaven and a source of channeled visions of seers (as opposed to assumptions that that process takes some time to develop)?
Suggested answers to these two questions, respectively: no, and plausible. But what would you assess, if you care to say or comment?
George Solomon, The Jesus of History and the Jesus of History Identified (1880). It is available online at Archive.org. To save time the extensive table of contents pp. IX-XV outlines the argument. Solomon argued there was no evidence in Josephus or otherwise for a Jesus at the time of Pilate, nor for the existence of a Christian sect prior to 70 in addition to the sect of interest to Josephus described as the Fourth Philosophy of Judah of Galilee; that the Gospels' Jesus reflects a combination of two historical Jesus figures from the 60s CE in Josephus, Jesus b. Ananias, and Jesus b. Sapphat, which Solomon argues were literarily combined into the one Jesus of the Gospels. Solomon argued that Christian texts including the letters of Paul were 2nd CE and that Jesus was mistakenly identified as the unnamed Samaritan false prophet executed by Pilate of Josephus, getting the chronology wrong by mistake or ignorance. In more recent times, Theodore Wedeen, "Two Jesuses, Jesus of Jerusalem and Jesus of Nazareth: Provocative Parallels and Imaginative Imitation", Forum N.S. 6.2 (Fall 2003), pp. 137-341, and Frans Vermeiren, A Chronological Revision of the Origins of Christianity (2017, available on amazon). I differ from Solomon in interpretation of Josephus's Jesus b. Ananias, which I think was already a legendized early form of Jesus of the Gospels also arguably derivative from Jesus b. Sapphat, to be developed in a forthcoming publication. I also differ in dating Paul's authentic letters 70-100 CE, not Solomon's 2nd ce. (I thank Giuseppe Ferri for calling the Solomon 1880 reference to attention.)
(2) On your certainty that the authentic Paulines, I Clement and Hebrews must be pre-70 because they do not refer to the Jewish War, that is debatable. The counterexample is Josephus's Contra Apion of 90s CE. Apart from a single passing, accidental, mention of the destruction of the temple by Titus at Bk 2.7--if that were not there, as it could easily not have been, it is an accident that it is there--then by your logic Contra Apion must be pre-70, even though it is not. Contra Apion refers in the present tense to the temple and its worship and the offering of sacrifices as ongoing at Bk. 2.1, 8-9, 24. This counterexample seems to remove your basis for certainty for pre-70 datings of the writings you name. On the other hand, arguing in favor of post-70 are I Thes 2:14-16; Heb 12:24-28; 13:12-14, and the supercessionism of Romans and Galatians in which Jewish law is declared obsolete and the temple cult over and not to be restored.
(3) Based on Papias of early 2nd ce being only 2-3 generations removed from the apostles' generation, the apostles were 1st CE not 1st BCE. Since Paul was contemporary to the generation of the apostles, therefore Paul also was 1st CE and not 1st BCE. Since Papias was collecting oral history or hearsay of what the apostles said and sayings and deeds of Jesus as told by the apostles ("disciples"), and shows no knowledge of apostles having said there was no Jesus, and since the ancient opponents to Christianity leveled many criticisms but never claimed Jesus's non-existence as one of them, that seems prima facie to argue there was a Jesus known to the apostles 2-3 generations before Papias, at the time Josephus has a Jesus active in Galilee with parallels to the stories of Jesus of the Gospels.
(4) The case for a short-lived, otherwise uncorroborated Aretas V of 69-70 CE--this is original from me--is not yet published. I start from the well-known problems with making sense of Aretas IV controlling Damascus in the 30s CE in light of 2 Cor 11:32. Then I argue to establish plausibility for an Aretas V at 69-70 following a death of Malichus II in the last year attested for him,
, sometime in his Year 31 argued to be the year 69-70 (Nisan to Nisan). It happens that 69-70 was a time when Nabatean forces were actively allied with and provided military units under the command of Vespasian and Titus. In that context Roman control of Damascus could well have been implemented by Nabatean auxiliaries under Roman command such that Paul's claim to have escaped a commander under king Aretas controlling the walls of Damascus could be other language for Roman control of Damascus in 69-70, in a way that was not the case with Aretas IV. This in turn opens up a new reading of Galatians' chronology which will await forthcoming publication for the full argument. Briefly, the conversion of Paul of Gal 1:15-17 becomes dated ca. 67-68, the meeting with the pillars of Gal 2:1-9 becomes a pre-siege diplomatic meeting of Paul meeting with the government of Jerusalem under Simon bar Giora and Simon's assistant commanders, two Idumean brothers named James and John (War 4.235; 5.249; 5.290; 6.380). The writing of 2 Corinthians 11 becomes dated early 80s. I will argue that the visits to Jerusalem of Gal 1 and Gal 2 may be two versions of the same visit even though presented by Paul as two, and that Gal 2:1 should be read with the visit at the beginning ("during") rather than at the conclusion of the fourteen year time-span of that verse.
(5) Lactantius, early 4th ce, quoted Sossonius Hierocles as saying Jesus commanded nine hundred robbers (Divine Institutes 5.3). That is transparently an ancient historian claiming that Jesus of the Christians was “Jesus, the brigand chief on the borderland of Ptolemais … with his force, which numbered eight hundred … band of brigands” (Vita 104-111).
According to Greg Doudna, the real inspiration for the Jesus movement was Jesus ben Sapphat, who was active in the 60s. I would be interested to know the reasoning behind Greg's proposal. Firstly, why was he looking for the "real" Jesus and where did he expect to find him? The search for the "real" Jesus is usually based on the assumption that the Gospels have at least some historical basis - that a man called Jesus actually lived at the time when the Gospels say he did. If that assumption is abandoned, it is difficult to see what could guide the search for the real Jesus. How would you know when the real Jesus lived? Potentially, there could be an answer to that question if we knew for certain that Paul was active after AD 70. But we don't know that, and Greg's attempts to demonstrate this must be regarded as speculative at best. We might still have something to go on if we could find a Jesus who corresponds closely to what Paul says about Jesus. Does that apply to Jesus ben Sapphat? Let's start by asking whether this Jesus died by crucifixion (and not just whether this *might* have happened). As far as I can tell, there is no clear indication that he did.
It appears that there is nothing to guide Greg's search for the "real" Jesus. So here is the problem. It is easy to claim that you have found the "answer" to a problem when your search for the answer was completely unconstrained. In those circumstances you can seize on pretty much anything and then engage in speculation to "demonstrate" that your answer is correct
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