A Plea for the Christians

[tomspug]

C) Why aren't you willing to consider the most obvious and logical answer: that Athenagoras knew that Jesus wasn't a real person and wrote accordingly?

That would be a logical conclusion if he actually said such a thing. You could take a polar assumption and assume that the intended audience already knew of Jesus Christ as the Son of God and that his description of Logos is intended to emphasize that Jesus was MORE than a man. There is just as much evidence for that argument as yours. If he excluded Abraham from his discertation, would you assume then that he knew that the Ten Commandments weren't real either?

All you have is bias.

 

[The Duke of Vandals]

Whew, OK, I just finished reading this work. Mister Emu is right - the letter isn't meant to explain doctrines of Christianity in detail.

This excuses what you should be calling wrong information? Certainly not. I find this particular argument highly disingenuous. Here's why.

Let's say that, today, a Buddhist started a thread that read, "Hi. I'm a Tibetan buddhist. I want to know why China is persecuting Christians. I know nothing about what Christianity is. Please explain."

Let's say I got there first and explained why the Chinese don't like Christians, but I also stated, "Jesus didn't exist as a person at all, but was a spiritual being"... You're telling me you'd be okay with that?

Do you really expect anyone here to believe the answer to that question is "yes"? Why then the double standard for Athenagoras?

 

[sojourner]

NO ONE writes about Jesus during his alleged lifetime. Not a single soul. People who should have been writing volumes about him are utterly silent.

That's because [virtually] no one was writing during his lifetime. Jesus was in the midst of an oral society, not a print society. The writings that we do have are significant, because they are there at all. The lack of significant numbers doesn't help your case. The inclusion of some number does help our case.

People were talking about Jesus, and those stories eventually got written down. I'd say that, in itself, is pretty good evidence for the existence of anyone (other than royalty) in those days.

 

[tomspug]

Not to mention the fact that books were written about Jesus who were alive when Jesus was alive. It's pretty hard to make stuff up about someone when thousands of people are around to contradict you.

 

[Oberon]

In the late second century (circa 175), Athenagoras of Athens pens the 32 paragraph (chapter) essay titled "A Plea for the Christians". His intended audience? The Alexandrian Church and the sitting Roman emperor. His intention? To explain what Christianity is to these people.
My question for the believer: Why doesn't Athenagoras mention Jesus is a person in his explanation of Christianity?
The closest he comes is paragraph/chapter 10 (emphasis mine):

we acknowledge one God, uncreated, eternal, invisible, impassible, incomprehensible, illimitable, who... the universe has been created through His Logos*... we acknowledge also a Son of God. Nor let any one think it ridiculous that God should have a Son. For though the poets, in their fictions, represent the gods as no better than men, our mode of thinking is not the same as theirs... the Son of God is the Logos of the Father, in idea and in operation; for after the pattern of Him and by Him were all things made, the Father and the Son being one... But if... it occurs to you to inquire what is meant by the Son, I will state briefly that He is the first product of the Father, not as having been brought into existence .... had the Logos in Himself, being from eternity instinct with Logos [logikos]; but inasmuch as He came forth to be the idea and energizing power of all material things...
​

Imagine the president had never heard of Christianity. Imagine a prominent Christian wrote him a detailed explanation that said, "We worship a god that has a spiritual son attached to it". Think that adequately describes Christianity?
Discuss.


*Greek translation for "Word of god".

First, let me say that I am not a christrian. Second, let me say that there are virtually no scholars of early christian history (be they atheists, agnostics, Jews, christians, etc) who deny that Jesus was a historical person.

Third, the primary historical sources for Jesus were written long before the text you discuss. What you are doing is the equivalent of quoting a Roman text which discusses Greek philosophy and fails to mention Socrates, while ignoring authors like Xenophon, Plato, and Aristophanes.
Fourth, you have his intended audience wrong. He is very clear who he his writing his work to: autokratorsin Marko Aurelio Antonino kai Loukio Aurelio Komodo Armeniakois Sarmatikois, to de megiston philosophios

In other words, his purpose is to explain Christianity in a light that would make it more palatable for the pagan emperors and philosophers, and so he emphasized particular aspects of Christianity, in particular defining christians against common charges of the times (atheism and the like).

 

[Mister Emu]

Josephus is forgery

Not all of it

I have repeatedly asked Christians to explain how Tacitus knew about Jesus. I've repeatedly asked for Tacitus' sources.

How would anyone alive know Tacitus's sources? You are asking the impossible...

Okay fine... except that Tacitus refers to Christianity as a "pernicious superstition". So, the end result is that, according to Christians, we're supposed to trust Tacitus because he's an excellent historian AND ignore the fact that he dismisses Christianity as sillyness.

That isn't a paradox by any definition of the word... he is a hostile witness... he believes it a pernicious superstition that Jesus rose from the dead, he despises Christianity, but still attests to the existance of Jesus.

He knew Jesus didn't exist because the myth making that invented Jesus wouldn't get into full swing for generations to come.

He wrote in 180 A.D. the last of the gospels is almost a century old, Paul's epistles have all already been written. Any "myth making" would have occured in the first half of the first century. Not "generations" after the end of the second.

Athenagoras explicitly explains that god has a son that doesn't exist as a person

No he doesn't. He says it isn't rediculous for God to have a Son, because in our beliefs it isn't the same as the pagans. Where the Gods went out and mated with women and had children. Jesus is the Son of God eternally. One with the Father, and the Holy Spirit, eternally three.

but as the words of the father. This textbook example of gnosticism is, according to you, an example of orthodoxy?

"Logos" is quite orthodox language to use (Hello, Gospel of John), and his description of God in three persons, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit is textbook trinitarianism, and thus orthodoxy...

 

[*Paul*]

You certainly should. He was explaining Christianity to the Roman emperor and never thought to mention that Jesus was a person. That tells you that something's not right with your religion.

Even if what you said was true, all it could possibly show was that his understanding of the Christian faith was poor. He wouldn't be the first.

What you are saying is the same as saying that there is something wrong with the American legal system if someone like Barak Obama didn't explain it properly. It would only be true if Barak Obama wrote it.

 

[The Duke of Vandals]

That's because [virtually] no one was writing during his lifetime. Jesus was in the midst of an oral society, not a print society.

So... it's your contention that the writing we have from that era from guys like Philo of Alexandria was from illiterate people? The Jews didn't have a written religion? Is that really your argument?

 

[The Duke of Vandals]

Not to mention the fact that books were written about Jesus who were alive when Jesus was alive.

Did you mean to say that books were written about Jesus during his alleged lifetime? If that's your claim then you're the only person on Earth making it. No apologist worth their salt or atheist on the planet puts the date of Mark (the first gospel) any earlier than 65 BCE around the time of the fall of the second temple.

 

[The Duke of Vandals]

First, let me say that I am not a christrian. Second, let me say that there are virtually no scholars of early christian history (be they atheists, agnostics, Jews, christians, etc) who deny that Jesus was a historical person.

You'd think that, wouldn't you? However, whenever someone like me presses someone like you for who exactly "scholars" are, there never seems to be any names. When there are, they're all people who are horrifically biased towards Christianity. Here's some food for thought.

[FONT=Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif]Professional historians are not necessarily engaged by any particular interest in the issue[/FONT][FONT=Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif] of Jesus – and are all too aware of its controversial nature. A scholar who announces that he thinks there was no historical Jesus is likely to face scorn, even ridicule, and will gain little for his candour.[/FONT]

[FONT=Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif]Thus most scholars, raised and educated in a Christian culture are content either to assume Jesus lived (and defer to the opinions of biblical specialists who are often men of faith) or, given the paucity of evidence for a great many historical personages, preface their uncertainty with a "probably". It is much safer for them to aver the "probability of a man behind the legend" even while arguing that layers of encrusted myth obscure knowing anything about him.[/FONT]
[FONT=Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif][/FONT]
[FONT=Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif]This "safe" and gutless option maintains simultaneously the "obscurity" of a carpenter in an ancient provincial backwater ("absence of evidence is not evidence of absence") and an academic detachment from "faith issues" which raised that supposed obscure guru to an iconic status.
​

[/FONT]​

Third, the primary historical sources for Jesus were written long before the text you discuss.

There are no historical sources for Jesus. There are claims that he existed that date back to the first and early second century. The problem is that those claims are predated by Jesus cults that worshipped a handful of Jewish rabbis (including Yeshua ben Pandira who died in 88bce by being hung from a tree on the eve of passover for torquing off the Jewish authorities... sound familiar?).

What you are doing is...

What I'm doing is demonstrating that orthodoxy (what we think of today as Christianity) is just one religious model of Christianity that just happened to win out against it's more introspective peers. Athenagoras was clearly NOT into orthodoxy in spite of several forumites here trying to whack the square peg of his gnostic attitude into their round hole.

 

[The Duke of Vandals]

Not all of it

For the purpose of this debate, the part that you guys always refer to is a complete forgery. If it weren't, it would have been touted by early church fathers BEFORE the third century.

How would anyone alive know Tacitus's sources? You are asking the impossible...

Correction: I am asking you to be intellectually honest and not use unsupported claims to support other unsupported claims. Lack of evidence on your part indicates no unreasonableness on mine.

That isn't a paradox by any definition of the word...

Oh, are we in a court room? Fine. Establish how your witness was connected to the defendent or the jury is going to laugh him off the stand.

He wrote in 180 A.D. the last of the gospels is almost a century old, Paul's epistles have all already been written. Any "myth making" would have occured in the first half of the first century. Not "generations" after the end of the second.

Pop quiz: what's the earliest writing that mentions the gospels, specifically? Not stories or quotes from the gospels. The gospels, themselves.

No he doesn't. He says it isn't rediculous for God to have a Son, because in our beliefs it isn't the same as the pagans.

Right. Where gods had sons that walked around like people.

"Logos" is quite orthodox language to use

And looking at it that way without factoring in Athenagoras' clear gnostic description of Jesus and calling it "orthodox" is intellectually bankrupt.

 

[linwood]

Duke,

I am in agreement and fairly well read on most of the threads you`ve begun in these forums.
There are places in these threads where I could have easily jumped in to add support for your positions and perhaps given a bit more weight to your arguments as I believe I`m respected by at the very least "some" members of this forum.

However, I won`t touch your threads as your attitude is far too antagonistic for the casual common debate we`re used to around here.
Tone it down a bit and maybe you`ll learn something about why so many people carry these memes.
Even more importantly maybe someone will be willing to listen and alter their worldview even the slightest due to a civil approach.

I am arguably and even arrogantly the most militant atheist who has not yet been banned from this forum so for me to be telling you this is exceptional.

Please give it a thought.

 

[Mister Emu]

For the purpose of this debate, the part that you guys always refer to is a complete forgery.

And what part is that? The testimonium is not a complete fabrication... it is extremely likely that it has late Christian interpolation...

Correction: I am asking you to be intellectually honest and not use unsupported claims to support other unsupported claims. Lack of evidence on your part indicates no unreasonableness on mine.

You are the one making an unsupported claim... you have nothing to support your suppostition that Tacitus accepted the existence of Jesus only because Christians said it, except that you need it to be true for there to be no secular historical account of Jesus...

Oh, are we in a court room? Fine. Establish how your witness was connected to the defendent or the jury is going to laugh him off the stand.

I'm not sure what exactly you are getting at here? Tacitus was someone very hostile to Christianity, and he, like every ancient person hostile to Christianity I've heard of, never argued against the existence of Jesus...

Pop quiz: what's the earliest writing that mentions the gospels, specifically? Not stories or quotes from the gospels. The gospels, themselves.

Hmm... Papias speaks of Mark and Matthew around 110-130... The earliest fragment of John is from c.125... and that is in Egypt, given that Christianity started in Judea(I suppose, given everything else, you might argue that as well) it would have taken time to get there... It is possible to reasonably date(though in far early range) John inside the first century...

Right. Where gods had sons that walked around like people.

Do you always ignore others points of views completely merely because they don't agree with you?

And looking at it that way without factoring in Athenagoras' clear gnostic description of Jesus and calling it "orthodox" is intellectually bankrupt.

From my reading he exhibits clear orthodoxy in everything he says... at no points does he stray from the orthodox understanding of Christianity common now, as I understand. I guess you've never seen a debate among Christians about who God is? Trinitarians could fairly quote him verbatim... God the Son eternally co-existant with the Father and Holy Spirit, One in the other, all one and yet seperate.

 

[Lindsey-Loo]

This wasn't some letter that had nothing to do with Christianity that was sent to no one of consequence.

This was a 34 part essay specifically meant to explain what Christianity is to the emperor of the most powerful nation on the planet at the time.

Yes, I understand that, I'm simply pointing out that this man's explanation is still an uninspired writing. So it really has no authority whatsoever as far as explaining Christianity goes. I could write a lengthy essay explaining a religion to the president right now, but that doesn't necessarily make me any kind of authority on it.

So... you think it's acceptable to ignore the evidence where the author states very specifically where god's son isn't like other gods (like Hercules)? Why is that?

I'm just arguing that the phrases were likely interchangeable then, as they are now. Afterall, both God and Jesus have been known by different names over the centuries. Writing "the Son of God" in place of Jesus Christ would be comparable to writing "Lord" or "The Most High" in place of God the Father.

That's an outright fantasy.

NO ONE writes about Jesus during his alleged lifetime. Not a single soul. People who should have been writing volumes about him are utterly silent. Guys like Philo of Alexandria, for example, say nothing.

The only other writings we have are from Josephus and Tacitus. Both of whom come far after Jesus' alleged lifetime.

Josephus is forgery; an interpolation by the church to make it seem like there was a Jesus. We know this because no one mentions Josephus' works until the 3rd century. All those early church fathers arguing with all those pagans: they would have absolutely leapt at the chance to quote a Jew talking about Jesus, but they never do.

Tacitus is a strange paradox that Christians seem to blithely ignore. I have repeatedly asked Christians to explain how Tacitus knew about Jesus. I've repeatedly asked for Tacitus' sources. However, no Christian has ever been able to provide them. Instead, it's demanded that we look at what a respected historian Tacitus was. Okay fine... except that Tacitus refers to Christianity as a "pernicious superstition". So, the end result is that, according to Christians, we're supposed to trust Tacitus because he's an excellent historian AND ignore the fact that he dismisses Christianity as sillyness.

It's quite obvious that Tacitus is simply the first person in a very long line of individuals to see Christians running around and (as all Christians have done for the last 2000+ years) assume there was a Christ.

On the contrary, Pontius Pilate himself wrote at least two letters that I know of to Caesar during Christ's lifetime, speaking about Christ. Pilate was not a Christian, as far as I know. What reason would he have to fabricate a man called Jesus and lie to Caesar himself? I'm sure the texts of these letters are available online somewhere, I'll post them when I find them.

 

[Mister Emu]

On the contrary, Pontius Pilate himself wrote at least two letters that I know of to Caesar during Christ's lifetime, speaking about Christ. Pilate was not a Christian, as far as I know. What reason would he have to fabricate a man called Jesus and lie to Caesar himself? I'm sure the texts of these letters are available online somewhere, I'll post them when I find them.

The letter(s) of Pilate to Tiberius about Jesus are nigh on certainly fiction...

 

[Lindsey-Loo]

The letter(s) of Pilate to Tiberius about Jesus are nigh on certainly fiction...

But it's really of no consequence, is it? Whether there are secular works written about Jesus during his lifetime or not, I think I can safely say that Christians rely on their faith where Christ is concerned. If one believes the Bible is the inspired word of God, then they must believe Jesus Christ is the son of God who walked on Earth and died for our sins.

If one does not believe this, I don't see why they would wish to discuss it. Because most Christians base their faith on the word of God, not secular evidence.

 

[Mister Emu]

Certainly, I don't base my belief in Jesus on secular sources

Doesn't hurt, however, to have Tacitus corroborate His existence

 

[Kathryn]

You know what - I've made an executive decision about "the duke." "Don't Feed The Animals." His style is so inflammatory and sarcastic, that I'm not wasting any more time on him. Which is a shame, because I actually do enjoy debating and discussing scholarly topics.

I find his approach no more palatable than any other extreme fundamentalist's approach.

 

[The Duke of Vandals]

Please give it a thought.

Not even for a moment. Instead, I took a look at the top of the screen. I suggest you do likewise.

You'll see that it says religious debate.

Have you ever participated in a formal debate? It's not a popularity contest.

Now, I get that you guys have all known each other for a while and are all buddies. I'm happy for you. Truly. However, if you think that my style of debate is harsh, then I submit that you're horrifically thin skinned. Read carefully. I don't call people stupid. I don't call them names.*

I'm simply not willing to entertain ideas like "1+1=3".

Frankly, you should be deeply ashamed of yourself as a debator for letting personal feelings get in the way of a debate. I find that petty. So, if that's how you really are, then by all means, do NOT jump in on my side. Just quietly agree on the sidelines.




*Aside from RND who is a troll and on my ignore list.

 

[The Duke of Vandals]

Yes, I understand that,

Clearly, you don't. If you did, you wouldn't be making silly excuses like telling us it's "not inspiring" or "not inspired". Please don't ever let me catch you referencing explanations of Christianity from people like Lee Strobel. Honestly, if you're going to ignore evidence, than you've effectively conceded the debate. And you're very clearly ignoring the fact that explanation of Christianity that went to the Roman Emperor didn't include the modern brand of Christianity because that particular myth hadn't yet been cemented. It wouldn't happen until the council of Nicea.