Over Five Hundred People Witnessed The Resurrection Of Jesus Christ

[ChristineM]

So did they spread the word beyond the Roman Empire as well?

I don't know, i wasn't there.

 

[Jimmy]

I don't know, i wasn't there.

Really? I could’ve sworn I saw you.

 

[ChristineM]

So you don’t know of any heretical work from that time that survived?

There were othere religions outside the roman empire but within the empire, no. There was a copy made of the part of the writings of Celsus meant as a refutation of his work given by Origen. It's now makes part of Origen's The Writings, available on Guttenberg (free)

 

[oldbadger]

I get that you may think they may have and somehow got lost. Funny the gospels weren’t lost.

Hi Jimmy. Many gospels were lost, they were binned, burned and got rid of by the early church.

 

[Jimmy]

There were othere religions outside the roman empire but within the empire, no. There was a copy made of the part of the writings of Celsus meant as a refutation of his work given by Origen. It's now makes part of Origen's The Writings, available on Guttenberg (free)

I think there was a writing around 170 AD saying the immaculate conception never happened.

 

[ChristineM]

I think there was a writing around 170 AD saying the immaculate conception never happened.

Would this have mattered? It was not defined as dogma until 19th century

 

[Altfish]

Do you know how many people claimed to be at The Sex Pistols gig at The Lesser Free Trade Hall in Manchester? They couldn't all have been there, the venue wasn't big enough and this was in 1977, not year 0

 

[Jimmy]

Would this have mattered? It was not defined as dogma until 19th century

Idk but this thread is about if any heretical work survived that time.

 

[ChristineM]

Idk but this thread is about if any heretical work survived that time.

If it wasn't dogma then surely it wasn't heretical.

 

[Mock Turtle]

Do you know how many people claimed to be at The Sex Pistols gig at The Lesser Free Trade Hall in Manchester? They couldn't all have been there, the venue wasn't big enough and this was in 1977, not year 0

I was there (Free Trade Hall) in 1966 to hear Dylan being called 'Judas!' - and if any friends at the time are still alive they will no doubt vouch for this.

 

[ChristineM]

I was there (Free Trade Hall) in 1966 to hear Dylan being called 'Judas!' - and if any friends at the time are still alive they will no doubt vouch for this.

So was my dad.

 

[Jimmy]

I was there (Free Trade Hall) in 1966 to hear Dylan being called 'Judas!' - and if any friends at the time are still alive they will no doubt vouch for this.

The 60’s was a great decade.

 

[Jimmy]

If it wasn't dogma then surely it wasn't heretical.

Who knows

 

[Jimmy]

Hi Jimmy. Many gospels were lost, they were binned, burned and got rid of by the early church.

Dang

 

[Altfish]

I was there (Free Trade Hall) in 1966 to hear Dylan being called 'Judas!' - and if any friends at the time are still alive they will no doubt vouch for this.

I saw my first ever concert there, but it wasn't until 1970 (The Byrds)

 

[IndigoChild5559]

Why wasn’t there texts written by the witnesses at the tomb who didn’t see him rise and why weren’t their writings debunking this “fallacy” handed down over time like the gospels were?

Have you considered because it never happened?

Have you considered that if someone actually, verifiably, had risen from the dead, that news of it would have spread far and wide in the empire?

What I think most PROBABLE is that there were cases of grief hallucinations -- these are actually far more common than people realize. When my brother died last spring, I kept seeing him in the crowd at the wake.

Anyhow, stories of these grief hallucinations got passed from person to person, and with each telling, got embellished more and more, until finally you end up with the version that he was seen by hundreds.

 

[IndigoChild5559]

Dang

The most famous is what textual critics call the Q gospel. The Q comes from the German word Quelle, meaning "source." This is because the Q gospel was a source that the standard for gospels copied from.

 

[Jimmy]

Have you considered because it never happened?

Have you considered that if someone actually, verifiably, had risen from the dead, that news of it would have spread far and wide in the empire?

What I think most PROBABLE is that there were cases of grief hallucinations -- these are actually far more common than people realize. When my brother died last spring, I kept seeing him in the crowd at the wake.

Anyhow, stories of these grief hallucinations got passed from person to person, and with each telling, got embellished more and more, until finally you end up with the version that he was seen by hundreds.

I don’t even think that time actually existed, but it’s fun looking for a loop holes.

 

[stvdv]

Why wasn’t there texts written by the witnesses at the tomb who didn’t see him rise and why weren’t their writings debunking this “fallacy” handed down over time like the gospels were?

There is censorship nowadays
As well as in the time of Jesus

There are liars nowadays
As well as in Jesus' days

Don't underestimate the power and control of the Roman Catholic Church. They have not always been honest. They are humans, and some messed up big time, as have been proven throughout history

 

[joelr]

No heretical texts exist from that time?

It's known the church took over pagan churches to make Christian churches. The 2nd century was at least 50% Gnostic, there were over 40 Gospels and 20 Acts.
But once the church was fully established, yes it was heretical to have anything but the canon. This is why the Dead Sea scrolls were hidden, you would be killed for it.

There was one Gospel being written, a "sayings" of Jesus being copied from another philosopher and in the middle of the text it was suddenly hidden.
Besides what we recovered there is a black hole of information for the early period. We don't get to hear much from opposing writers.
The 4 Gospels survived because Bishop Irenaeus, late 2nd century was calling for a power structure where only specific people could read and teach/interpret the scripture, with Bishops, priests and so on. He hated the Gnostics and was first to mention a four Gospel tradition.

Later in Rome they also adopted this and in 385 it became law. Other versions were punishable. If you read the letters of Irenaeus he clearly wanted power. That is why those Gospels survived. Everything else eventually became heretical.

Before him was the Marcion canon and he swore by a longer version of Luke. So it's completely subjective.

The 2nd century looked more like this:

"These various interpretations were called heresies by the leaders of the proto-orthodox church, but many were very popular and had large followings. Part of the unifying trend in proto-orthodoxy was an increasingly harsh anti-Judaism and rejection of Judaizers. Some of the major movements were:

• Gnosticism – second to fourth centuries – reliance on revealed knowledge from an unknowable God, a distinct divinity from the Demiurge who created and oversees the material world. The Gnostics claimed to have received secret teachings (gnosis) from Jesus via other apostles which were not publicly known, or in the case of Valentinius from Paul the Apostle. Gnosticism is predicated on the existence of such hidden knowledge, but brief references to private teachings of Jesus have also survived in the canonic scripture (Mark 4:11) as did warning by the Christ that there would be false prophets or false teachers. Irenaeus' opponents also claimed that the wellsprings of divine inspiration were not dried up, which is the doctrine of continuing revelation.[citation needed]
• Marcionism – second century – the God of Jesus was a different God from the God of the Old Testament.
• Montanism – second century – a pentecostal movement initiated by Montanus and his female disciples, featuring prophetic continuing revelations from the Holy Spirit.
• Adoptionism – second century – Jesus was not born the Son of God, but was adopted at his baptism, resurrection or ascension.
• Docetism – second to third century – Jesus was pure spirit and his physical form an illusion.
• Sabellianism – third century – the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are three modes of the one God and not the three separate persons of the Trinity.
• Arianism – third to fourth century – Jesus, while not merely mortal, was not eternally divine and was of some lesser status than God the Father.[note 1]

In the middle of the second century, the Christian communities of Rome, for example, were divided between followers of Marcion, Montanism, and the gnostic teachings of Valentinus."

Frankly Justin Martyr's apologetic text is something you are talking about. He claims Jesus is just like all the Greek demigods, and lists many ways. He just then says the devil went back in time to influence these writers to create similar stories to fool Christians. At the time it was like "oh, ok, yeah, Satan was trying to fool us, way to go Justin!" But it's really an admission by someone who grew up Greek that it's a representation of typical Hellenistic culture.