It looks like the bulk of early Christians were illiterate, since there is not even one autograph describing even one encounter with a man named Jesus, much less his remarkable powers.
Paul's gospel must be accepted
- Thread starter newnature
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What would you say based on total population what was the percentage of atheist and the percentage of Christians ? The people who wrote the gospels were Christians or atheists .
We went through this before . The name Jesus is written as Yashua , so have you looked under Yashua, I am positive in the Talmud is mentioned . And tell me, how come the Romans were fighting so hard the early Christians
and eventually accepted Christianity as an official religion . An other thing , Who initiated the teaching and why the published in the gospels ? The Essen was a branch of Judaism but it vanished Christianity is also a branch of Judaism how come it flourished >
@Arauca --
Irrelevant is what I would say it is, especially given that the early christians were often considered atheists(and were often persecuted as such) by most of the other religions of the time, specifically because they denied the existence of the gods that those religions worshipped(which would have made them far more atheistic than most of their contemporaries). The fact remains that very few of them, if any, could read or write.
This shouldn't be surprising to modern christians because very few people could read or write at all in those days.
For the same reason that the christians went on a rampage fighting and repressing other religions after they gained the power to do so, because they're human. People always fight new things, it's the way we've always been, but that in no way reflects the validity of the thing in question.
As for why it was later adopted, likely for the same reason that political groups adopt anything, because it's expedient.
Why does this matter? Who started it in no way affects the truth value of the gospels(which the best evidence tells us is nearly nil).
Simple, not all religions appeal to people equally. Again, this doesn't serve to validate christianity because popularity is no way to measure the truth value of a proposition.
Irrelevant is what I would say it is, especially given that the early christians were often considered atheists(and were often persecuted as such) by most of the other religions of the time, specifically because they denied the existence of the gods that those religions worshipped(which would have made them far more atheistic than most of their contemporaries). The fact remains that very few of them, if any, could read or write.
This shouldn't be surprising to modern christians because very few people could read or write at all in those days.
For the same reason that the christians went on a rampage fighting and repressing other religions after they gained the power to do so, because they're human. People always fight new things, it's the way we've always been, but that in no way reflects the validity of the thing in question.
As for why it was later adopted, likely for the same reason that political groups adopt anything, because it's expedient.
Why does this matter? Who started it in no way affects the truth value of the gospels(which the best evidence tells us is nearly nil).
Simple, not all religions appeal to people equally. Again, this doesn't serve to validate christianity because popularity is no way to measure the truth value of a proposition.
I believe most people in the early time they worshiped some deity . The point was ." you tell me bout your god and I tell you about my god and so people made comparison and some have switched their believe . The I believe in the early time there were very few or nill atheist population , because an atheis at that time was just an ignorant he did not have any thing to base his argument. Now day the atheist uses science for his argument and position
@Arauca --
The evidence is easy to find. In fact it's a five second google search away.
The explanation is rather simple really. The early christians didn't recognize any of the gods that the rest of the Roman Empire did, therefore they were atheists. The Romans were using the term in much the way that many modern christians do, as an insult.
Do I need to spell it out? There is little to no actual history in the gospels. Hell, the books can't even agree with each other, and the apocryphal gospels paint an even more disparate picture. Saying that the gospels accurately portray history is just as insane as saying that the book of Genesis is an accurate portrayal of the origin of the universe.
The evidence is easy to find. In fact it's a five second google search away.
The explanation is rather simple really. The early christians didn't recognize any of the gods that the rest of the Roman Empire did, therefore they were atheists. The Romans were using the term in much the way that many modern christians do, as an insult.
Do I need to spell it out? There is little to no actual history in the gospels. Hell, the books can't even agree with each other, and the apocryphal gospels paint an even more disparate picture. Saying that the gospels accurately portray history is just as insane as saying that the book of Genesis is an accurate portrayal of the origin of the universe.
I have no idea. I'm not even sure when or where you mean. They were usually labeled 'heretics' at first and later the term 'witch' became more prominent. 'Pagan' was another label. Atheism as we use the term today may have never flourished in Western culture until the last few centuries, probably more as a phenomenon of the Enlightenment than anything else - even posing as Deism. Given the centuries of torturing and burning accused witches, atheists would not tend to volunteer their personal information to a census even if there was one. You would have to wonder how many people, over centuries, were kneeling in the pews of the Holy Roman Empire out of compulsion and fear rather than piety. Of course the more fundamental question is this: how long have civilized people lived under the yoke of religious indoctrination, superstition and irrational fear?
All that we can say for sure is that the folks who generated the earliest texts were fluent in Greek, but who emulated the mythical-legendary style of the Old Testament more than the rational style of Greek, Roman or Jewish authors of that era. It's not likely they were atheists, although it's entirely possible that the oral tradition surrounding Jesus may have started among Gnostics. That's more akin to atheism in that the Creator-God is evil, and Jesus is the force of good over evil, but it's also highly mystical, highly symbolic, which says something else about the evolution of religions that were fused together in the Empires of antiquity and the shift away from animism (the forces of nature are signs) toward the Greek use of metaphor. Some of the earliest texts from Egypt and Mesopotamia might be compared to the Gnostic writings, so maybe it was a fusion between them and the newer Greek metaphor.
Actually the name Jesus is first written in Greek (Iesu). The rest is speculation. Some of the more recognizable Jewish names are ones that begin with 'Bar' - notably Bar Abbas, although Bartholomew is possibly 'Bar Ptolemy' rather than the Aramaic 'Bar Tolmay'. (Ptolemy being the name of a dynasty, beginning with Alexander the Great's right-hand man and heir to his empire). If so, it shows the kind of fusion the might occur from a Greek soldier taking a Jewish bride. In any case, be careful what you read in the Talmud about Yashua since these are most likely coming from sources much later in history, obviously influenced by Christianity.
By all accounts Roman Christians were pacifists who went to their deaths stoically - compare this to Socrates (albeit cruelly) - without a fight. The Roman fear and loathing of Christians probably began as a dislike of Jewish people in Palestine for what Romans would call paganism. Later it may have been a reaction to the fear that the Christian movement was spreading rapidly, and that the reduction in homage to the Roman gods could account for the decline of the Roman Empire. Besides, pacifism was a serious threat to the security of a nation that was occupying and policing most of the known world.
Atrocities against the Christians created martyrs, and for every martyr thousands of people might join them, if only out of compassion and a desire to return to some of the more idyllic values of Roman life. At some point something had to give. It came in the form of amnesty by Constantine in his Edict of Milan. He moved the capitol to Constantinople, leaving lands to the Pope in which the Vatican was established. This set the stage for the schism.
Keep in mind that there are many different gospels. The four in the average Christian Bible are the ones picked by unknown editors. The authors of the Gospels are unknown - the names given as Matthew, Mark, Luke and John are inventions. The second century pope Irenaeus is the first known to declare that these were 'the pillars of the Church' but the earliest known text didn't appear until the fourth century. In truth, no one knows where they came from, or why, or how the Christian movement actually started in the first place. Nor does anyone know when the first stories of this kind ever originated. For all we know there may have been an earlier story of a different kind that was galvanized by the Roman destruction of the Temple of Jerusalem, and which morphed into the strange story of Jesus, to be taken up as a pacifist response to Roman atrocity. It's entirely possible that Gnosticism preceded standard Christianity, and the four gospels are nothing more than a way to stamp out Gnosticism. It's all speculation.
Essenes are significant because they were building bath houses, which may account for the origins of Christian baptism. They were also living in self-imposed exile, which would likely attract rebels against Rome looking for a hideout. This sounds like the way fantastic stories get invented, but no one knows. Early Christians either weren't concerned about documenting anything historically, or else the documents were lost, or some other reason. Maybe someone destroyed any such evidence. Maybe it was just a wild story that got out of hand.
As for why Christianity flourished in Europe and Byzantium, it may be due to nothing more than Constantine, the vacuum left by the fall of Rome, and the appeal of a religion that finally makes its own God the scapegoat. This is a question that we could go on speculating about; however, the plain simple answer for its success in Europe is that Christianity was the official religion of the Holy Roman Empire.
