There's Not An Iota Of Evidence The Apostles Existed

[Augustus]

If you read the wiki article you know it's a controversial question. Some take my side, others take yours.

If it is a controversial question why are you so confident he was 'definitely not a believer' though? What is the evidence or scholarship you are basing this on?

On basically every historical issue you can say "scholars disagree", but that doesn't make all of their arguments equally common or equally plausible based on the evidence. Those arguments go back to the fiercely anti-Christian Edward Gibbon in the 18th C who is the source of nonsense like the Christians destroying the Great Library of Alexandria and causing the downfall of the Roman Empire. This school of anti-religious Enlightenment era history has generally been shown to be wrong on all kinds of things by modern historians.

Given your concern for evidence, surely you must have a rational argument as to why he carried out a very elaborate conspiracy to 'adopt' a religion with so many disadvantages and risks and so few apparent benefits, spent so much financial and political capital on it, as to why his children turned out to be Christians, why his nephew, the last Pagan Emperor Julian 'the Apostate' was raised Christian believed Connie was Christian, etc.? In your opinion, what makes it even probable he wasn't Christian, let alone definite?

 

[9-10ths_Penguin]

I am not sure anyone 'modified' the New Testament to any substantial level.
Sure, you get these rogues who created their own Gospels, and had their
'saints' and their own literature. There's a curse at the end of Revelations
which will deal with people.

I'm thinking of things like the long ending of Mark and the Comma Johanneum. They're useful for identifying issues that cropped up in the period between when these works were originally written and when this material was added.

For instance, the Comma Johanneum seems to have been added to support Trinitarian views. Whether this was because Trinitarianism developed after the original material was written, or because the Trinitarians wanted more of a defense against non-Trinitarian ideas that had emerged is a separate question, but the addition gives us some clues about what was going on in the early Christian church. At the very least, it suggests that the Trinity wasn't universally accepted by early Christians.

 

[SeekingAllTruth]

If it is a controversial question why are you so confident he was 'definitely not a believer' though? What is the evidence or scholarship you are basing this on?

On basically every historical issue you can say "scholars disagree", but that doesn't make all of their arguments equally common or equally plausible based on the evidence. Those arguments go back to the fiercely anti-Christian Edward Gibbon in the 18th C who is the source of nonsense like the Christians destroying the Great Library of Alexandria and causing the downfall of the Roman Empire. This school of anti-religious Enlightenment era history has generally been shown to be wrong on all kinds of things by modern historians.

Given your concern for evidence, surely you must have a rational argument as to why he carried out a very elaborate conspiracy to 'adopt' a religion with so many disadvantages and risks and so few apparent benefits, spent so much financial and political capital on it, as to why his children turned out to be Christians, why his nephew, the last Pagan Emperor Julian 'the Apostate' was raised Christian believed Connie was Christian, etc.? In your opinion, what makes it even probable he wasn't Christian, let alone definite?

I read in some historical treatise that Constantine secretly stayed pagan and only converted on his deathbed. Sounds feasible so I accept that.

 

[1213]

Because Constantine realized that in order to have a peaceful empire he needed a state religion and Christianity taught love your enemies. It was a purely political decision. That's historical fact.

Please tell what makes that a “historical fact”?

Why did he make the Christian Bible that show Romans in bad light as the evil ones? If he could make a religion out of thin air, wouldn’t it be more reasonable to show his nation as good? And if “love your enemy” is his teaching, why didn’t he live as he “preached” and why give the credit to someone else of “his teachings”? If Constantine is the one who developed the teachings, he could have made himself the hero.

I think your theory is not credible/reasonable. If the goal would have been to have peaceful empire, he could has just said "believe what ever you want as long as you don’t harm others". No need to imagine fancy story for that purpose, especially when they had the power to keep peace forcefully.

 

[Augustus]

I read in some historical treatise that Constantine secretly stayed pagan and only converted on his deathbed. Sounds feasible so I accept that.

Deathbed baptisms were not uncommon at this time as they 'washed away all sins" so it was expedient to wait as long as possible. It is incorrect to assume this makes it probable means he wasn't Christian until this point.

Why would he bother to "convert" on his deathbed if he didn't have any Christian beliefs though?

What benefits did he get from pretending to be Christian that made it worth the risks?

Why would he raise his children Christian if it was simply a scam?

It's certainly possible, although debatable, that he retained some pagan beliefs alongside some Christian ones, and it's pretty obvious later hagiographies made him out to be a "better" and more pious Christian than he actually was.

Arguments he was just cynically duping folk though rely on projected mind reading, misunderstanding of early Christianity and/or the mistaken assumption that the triumph of Christianity was both obvious and inevitable at that time.

 

[SeekingAllTruth]

Deathbed baptisms were not uncommon at this time as they 'washed away all sins" so it was expedient to wait as long as possible. It is incorrect to assume this makes it probable means he wasn't Christian until this point.

Why would he bother to "convert" on his deathbed if he didn't have any Christian beliefs though?

What benefits did he get from pretending to be Christian that made it worth the risks?

Why would he raise his children Christian if it was simply a scam?

It's certainly possible, although debatable, that he retained some pagan beliefs alongside some Christian ones, and it's pretty obvious later hagiographies made him out to be a "better" and more pious Christian than he actually was.

Arguments he was just cynically duping folk though rely on projected mind reading, misunderstanding of early Christianity and/or the mistaken assumption that the triumph of Christianity was both obvious and inevitable at that time.

You make a good case, Augustus. You should have been a trial lawyer.

 

[SeekingAllTruth]

Please tell what makes that a “historical fact”?

Why did he make the Christian Bible that show Romans in bad light as the evil ones? If he could make a religion out of thin air, wouldn’t it be more reasonable to show his nation as good? And if “love your enemy” is his teaching, why didn’t he live as he “preached” and why give the credit to someone else of “his teachings”? If Constantine is the one who developed the teachings, he could have made himself the hero.

I think your theory is not credible/reasonable. If the goal would have been to have peaceful empire, he could has just said "believe what ever you want as long as you don’t harm others". No need to imagine fancy story for that purpose, especially when they had the power to keep peace forcefully.

perhaps.

 

[oldbadger]

I knew you didn't have any.

I now know you have absolutely no knowledge of HJ.
...rant on.......

 

[PruePhillip]

I'm thinking of things like the long ending of Mark and the Comma Johanneum. They're useful for identifying issues that cropped up in the period between when these works were originally written and when this material was added.

For instance, the Comma Johanneum seems to have been added to support Trinitarian views. Whether this was because Trinitarianism developed after the original material was written, or because the Trinitarians wanted more of a defense against non-Trinitarian ideas that had emerged is a separate question, but the addition gives us some clues about what was going on in the early Christian church. At the very least, it suggests that the Trinity wasn't universally accepted by early Christians.

Just looked this comma thing up. Thanks for that. This 'comma' appeared one and a half millennium
after the bible was composed. And most translations don't accept it.
It's like someone decided that the commandment 'to love another' should have 'to love one another
and the environment' in 2021. And then have someone say 'you can't trust the bible.'
Any doctrine beyond the New Testament, written in the First Century - is suspect.

 

[PruePhillip]

Very largely that's exactly how it works.

No evidence, no reason to believe.

So we don't find the 'grandeur of Solomon' therefore it didn't exist?
Until recently people were saying there was no evidence for King David
therefor he didn't exist. The trouble with anything relating to Israel is the
sheer number of times it has been invaded, looted and destroyed. About
twenty times. There's no shred of evidence the Jewish second temple
existed but we know why, and we know it existed.

 

[Alex22]

If it is a controversial question why are you so confident he was 'definitely not a believer' though? What is the evidence or scholarship you are basing this on?

On basically every historical issue you can say "scholars disagree", but that doesn't make all of their arguments equally common or equally plausible based on the evidence. Those arguments go back to the fiercely anti-Christian Edward Gibbon in the 18th C who is the source of nonsense like the Christians destroying the Great Library of Alexandria and causing the downfall of the Roman Empire. This school of anti-religious Enlightenment era history has generally been shown to be wrong on all kinds of things by modern historians.

Given your concern for evidence, surely you must have a rational argument as to why he carried out a very elaborate conspiracy to 'adopt' a religion with so many disadvantages and risks and so few apparent benefits, spent so much financial and political capital on it, as to why his children turned out to be Christians, why his nephew, the last Pagan Emperor Julian 'the Apostate' was raised Christian believed Connie was Christian, etc.? In your opinion, what makes it even probable he wasn't Christian, let alone definite?

Oh please, Christians burnt a load of pagan texts when they sacked the Temple of Serapis, it had 10 percent of the Library's scrolls there. Pretty much the only ones they kept were the works of Aristotle and Plato. Muslims had more pagan texts then medieval Europe.

 

[Alex22]

Acknowledged fiction is not oral tradition.

Also evidence is not the same as proof.

No one advocates uncritically assuming it is true.

iirc you are a Greek Pagan, in which case I'd think you'd have a higher opinion on oral tradition given its role in our understanding of ancient Greek culture.

Fiction can sometimes turn into religion, look at Scientology.

 

[blü 2]

So we don't find the 'grandeur of Solomon' therefore it didn't exist?

Therefore on the evidence presently available it seems that at best it was much overstated.

Of course, people who believe in magic aren't concerned with evidence at any point.

 

[Sandra Jayne]

I bristle when I hear Christians say, "All the apostles were willing to die for their faith in Jesus." It has become such a cliche like the other one, "There's more evidence for Jesus than there is for Julius Caesar" and my favorite--"Jesus Christ is the most well-attested figure in history." Do these people read anything beside the Bible?

I watched a debate between Sean MacDowell and Paulogia the other day. Paulogia is a former Christian who saw the light and left Christianity. He now runs a popular skeptic website on YouTube. Sean, son of infamous apologist, Josh MacDowell wrote a book on the fate of the apostles which is the go-to source in the Christian community to prove the apostles all were martyred. I was floored when MacDowell said and this is a quote at 17:31 of the video below:

MacDowell: "For my case it doesn't even matter that any of them died actually as martyrs. I had this conversation with William lane Craig and he said, 'You don't have to prove any of them died as martyrs'.

Huh?

The question is "Did the apostles die as martyrs" and MacDowell and Craig are saying they don't have to prove the apostles died as martyrs--all they have to do is demonstrate that it's plausible that the apostles could have died as martyrs given the fact that they were apostles of Jesus and believed in him. Did we just warp to another universe where up is down and black is white?????????

Back to reality. Let's start with this:

There not an iota of evidence in the historical record for the apostles even existing.

Nine of them are not even mentioned by name in the Bible post-gospels. Not a single historian mentions them.

Justine Martyr doesn't even mention the nine (excluding Peter, John, and James). For all intents and purposes the apostles were never real--just figments of the gospel writers' imaginations.

And yet here's MacDowell writing a book making a case they died as martyrs for their faith but then saying, "I don't have to prove they died as martyrs for their faith."

Does 2 + 2 equal 22 in the world of Christianity?

You are wrong, plenty of evidence if you choose to look for it, even references to Jesus by other religious sects and 'politicians' of that time talking about the brother of James i'e Jesus.

People are too ready to make sweeping claims and statements when the have done no research on the topic themselves.

 

[Jayhawker Soule]

There not an iota of evidence in the historical record for the apostles even existing.

Or, perhaps, you have a shallow (if not ignorant) understanding of evidence, but at least it makes you feel vindicated.

 

[PruePhillip]

Therefore on the evidence presently available it seems that at best it was much overstated.

Of course, people who believe in magic aren't concerned with evidence at any point.

Not sure how it was 'overstated.'
The bible was quite condemning of Solomon - largely because he lived
like most other middle-power kings of the Middle East in the early Iron
Age.
The wives, horses, gold and international influence was quite normal for
the time.
It's slowly dawning on people that populations were much larger back
then. Look at the work being done with 'satellite archaeology' in Egypt.

 

[blü 2]

Not sure how it was 'overstated.'
The bible was quite condemning of Solomon - largely because he lived
like most other middle-power kings of the Middle East in the early Iron
Age.
The wives, horses, gold and international influence was quite normal for
the time.
It's slowly dawning on people that populations were much larger back
then. Look at the work being done with 'satellite archaeology' in Egypt.

Evidence is everything ─ oh goodness, I'm repeating myself!

 

[PruePhillip]

Evidence is everything ─ oh goodness, I'm repeating myself!

Yeah, this in interesting
Space Archaeologist Sarah Parcak Uses Satellites to Uncover Ancient Egyptian Ruins | Innovation | Smithsonian Magazine

 

[Augustus]

Oh please, Christians burnt a load of pagan texts when they sacked the Temple of Serapis, it had 10 percent of the Library's scrolls there. Pretty much the only ones they kept were the works of Aristotle and Plato.

Not a single ancient source mentions that there even was a library at the Serapeum, and there was certainly no "Great Library of Alexandria" by this point (it having been destroyed consciously, accidentally or via neglect by "pagans").

That Christians destroyed the GLoA is a myth invented by Edward Gibbon, popularised by Carl Sagan in Cosmos, and endlessly repeated by people who can't be bothered to do even the most basic research on the issue (yet are also usually highly vocal in criticising religious folk for uncritically believing stuff without any evidence).

Also the Temple was torn down by the army and a mob as it had been used as a base to torture and kill Christians. The "pagans" were no more innocent than the Christians in the violence.

Muslims had more pagan texts then medieval Europe.

Now you are even denigrating your own Hellenic ancestors

There are precisely zero Greek "pagan" texts that survive today purely because they were preserved by the Muslims.

They were also preserved by the Greeks and others.

Scholars in the Arab world (Muslim, Christian and Jewish) certainly added to and developed this ancient knowledge though.

Where do you think the Muslims got them in the first place? (from conquering and later trading with Christians) Who do you think translated the majority of them? (Hellenic Nestorian Christians)

(Also, given that monasteries were the main place such texts were stored, one of the biggest destroyers of such "pagan" texts in northern Europe were pagans like the Vikings)

Later the Latin Church became the biggest copier and spreader of texts from the Graeco-Arabic tradition.

Fiction can sometimes turn into religion, look at Scientology.

Which is why you evaluate each case on its merits.

 

[SeekingAllTruth]

Or, perhaps, you have a shallow (if not ignorant) understanding of evidence, but at least it makes you feel vindicated.

Produce some secular evidence or proof whatever nomenclature you prefer for the apostles, if you're able. Until you can my thesis stands.