Quote:You're rather more likely to "get through to me" if you present something coherent.
Oh dear, Tim, you do seem to be the type who thinks "coherent" means treating this gospel shit as "real." You remind me of the type who asserts that "all real scholars think jesus existed" and then denounce any one who doesn't as "not a real scholar." It's a very convenient position for you to take.
Sorry, pal. I'm not playing your game. Until some actual evidence can be presented that any of this shit is factual and not a later story concocted by a bunch of xtians to establish the primacy of their particular bullshit sect I shall regard it as the latter.
We have archaeological evidence that the term Chrestians was in use in Rome by 37 AD.
Quote:The Chrestiani inscription naming Jucundus, Antonia Minor and her husband Drusus establishes Chrestianity in Rome during the Augustan period.
The inscription is here if you'd like to see it.
https://html1-f.scribdassets.com/4sxyy5z...3fe2db.png
So, Chrestians in Rome (Antonia Minor died in 37 so that is the terminus ante quem for her to do much of anything. Further, Suetonius wrote of Chrestus being kicked out of Rome in the reign of Claudius and the sole extant manuscript of Tacitus' Annales has the word "chrestianos" being tampered with to make it "christianos." Even Lactantius seems to have had a problem as late as the 4th century with the issue:
Quote:"It is only through ignorance that men call themselves Christians instead of Chrestians," says Lactantius (lib. iv., cap. vii.).
So, you see, if you pull your head out of those silly books there is actual evidence of Chrestians but at a time which does nothing to salvage your fairy tales. We can even note a lack of evidence, as in, there are no first century xtian catacombs in Rome but we do see them in the 2d century, and no Roman writer seems to know anything about "jesus" until Celsus towards the end of the 2d century. Oh, and for the record, before you start shrieking about "argument from silence" understand that an absence of evidence IS evidence. It may not be conclusive proof of absence but whatever is conclusive. We have no evidence at all for a Martian invasion of the Mississippi Valley in 1724 but that does not mean we should give it any consideration at all as a reasonable possibility.
The church had every reason to create its own history to go along with its own god. In this it is no different from any other religion concocted by human imagination. I still want facts....not pious blather. So far, you are short on facts and long on blather.
