Rayaan, this is pg 2 of Bart Ehrman's Lost Christianities - and a couple of lines from pg 3.
C. 360 AD, xtians got the shit scared out of them by the Emperor Julian (the Apostate) who rejected xtianity in favor of paganism. Luckily for the jesus freaks...if not for the rest of the world...Julian didn't last long but it was enough to make the xtians realize how easily they could lose their grasp on power. After Julian xtians became persecutors and not just of pagans. They went after other xtian groups who they considered heretical with great vigor. They did not kill them all and they did not convert them all. Many were pushed towards marginal areas and one of the most marginal areas in the 4th century was Arabia which was outside of the realm of both the Romans and the Persians. And there they stayed...unmolested in the 5th century. Unmolested because the Western Roman Empire was up to its armpits in Goths and Huns and Vandals and Picts and whatever and the Eastern Roman Empire was going at it hammer and tong with the Persians.
Spencer's argument is that any of these bizarre (to OUR minds) xtian sects might have burst forth from Arabia into the vacuum created by the Byzantine-Persian slaughters with a doctrine of some form of jesusism. His evidence includes coins of successful leaders with crosses on them.
Perhaps "The Praised One" is simply a better choice for the region than "The Anointed One." I don't know.
But, and here is where you and I will always differ, the notion that "god" spoke to some guy in a cave holds no fascination for me without evidence that such a "god" exists....and you don't have that.
BTW, if you would like Lost Christianities, PM an email address and I'll send you the .pdf version. It is one of Ehrman's best works.
Quote:The wide diversity of early Christianity may be seen above all in the theological beliefs embraced by people who understood themselves to be followers of Jesus. In the second and third centuries there were, of course, Christians who believed in one God. But there were others who insisted that there were two. Some said there were thirty. Others claimed there were 365.
In the second and third centuries there were Christians who believed that God had created the world. But others believed that this world had been created by a subordinate, ignorant divinity. (Why else would the world be filled with such misery and hardship?) Yet other Christians thought it was worse than that, that this world was a cosmic mistake created by a malevolent divinity as a place of imprisonment, to trap humans and subject them to pain and suffering.
In the second and third centuries there were Christians who believed that the Jewish Scripture (the Christian “Old Testament”) was inspired by the one true God. Others believed it was inspired by the God of the Jews, who was not the one true God. Others believed it was inspired by an evil deity. Others believed it was not inspired.
In the second and third centuries there were Christians who believed that Jesus was both divine and human, God and man. There were other Christians who argued that he was completely divine and not human at all. (For them, divinity and humanity were incommensurate entities: God can no more be a man than a man can be a rock.) There were others who insisted that Jesus was a full flesh-and-blood human, adopted by God to be his son but not himself divine. There were yet other Christians who claimed that Jesus Christ was two things: a full flesh-and-blood human, Jesus, and a fully divine being, Christ, who had temporarily inhabited Jesus’ body during his ministry and left him prior to his death, inspiring his teachings and miracles but avoiding the suffering in its aftermath.
In the second and third centuries there were Christians who believed that Jesus’ death brought about the salvation of the world. There were other Christians who thought that Jesus’ death had nothing to do with the salvation of the world. There were yet other Christians who said that Jesus never died. How could some of these views even be considered Christian? Or to put the question differently, how could people who considered themselves Christian hold such views? Why did they not consult their Scriptures to see that there were not 365 gods, or that the true God had created the world, or that Jesus had died? Why didn’t they just read the New Testament?
C. 360 AD, xtians got the shit scared out of them by the Emperor Julian (the Apostate) who rejected xtianity in favor of paganism. Luckily for the jesus freaks...if not for the rest of the world...Julian didn't last long but it was enough to make the xtians realize how easily they could lose their grasp on power. After Julian xtians became persecutors and not just of pagans. They went after other xtian groups who they considered heretical with great vigor. They did not kill them all and they did not convert them all. Many were pushed towards marginal areas and one of the most marginal areas in the 4th century was Arabia which was outside of the realm of both the Romans and the Persians. And there they stayed...unmolested in the 5th century. Unmolested because the Western Roman Empire was up to its armpits in Goths and Huns and Vandals and Picts and whatever and the Eastern Roman Empire was going at it hammer and tong with the Persians.
Spencer's argument is that any of these bizarre (to OUR minds) xtian sects might have burst forth from Arabia into the vacuum created by the Byzantine-Persian slaughters with a doctrine of some form of jesusism. His evidence includes coins of successful leaders with crosses on them.
Perhaps "The Praised One" is simply a better choice for the region than "The Anointed One." I don't know.
But, and here is where you and I will always differ, the notion that "god" spoke to some guy in a cave holds no fascination for me without evidence that such a "god" exists....and you don't have that.
BTW, if you would like Lost Christianities, PM an email address and I'll send you the .pdf version. It is one of Ehrman's best works.
