Mendalla
Persecution of early Christians?
Posted on: 02/24/2013 17:53
Interesting book review from Salon. Basically an author suggests that the persecution of Christians by the Roman Empire was exaggerated or non-existent save in a few brief periods (eg. Diocletion's persecution). May give it a read. In my reading of Roman history the persecution certainly was no more severe than the persecution of some other traditions and philosophies they didn't lile (eg. The Druids, Domitian's attack on the Stoics).
http://www.salon.com/2013/02/24/the_myth_of_persecution_early_christians...
Would the idea that early Christians weren't subject to the kind of widespread persecution commonly portrayed change your understanding of the faith or of its history?
Mendalla
Comments
Arminius
Posted on: 03/10/2013 14:45
Hi n4p:
Wilson asserts that the Acts were written much later than Paul's Epistles, and that the two scriptures in Acts attributed to Paul were not written by Paul but by others who attempted to synthesize Jesus' Gospel of the Kingdom with Paul's Gospel of Salvation. In his papers "If We Only Had Paul, What Would We Know Of Jesus?" and "Taking Paul at his Word" Wilson says that only seven of Paul's Epistles, the two Corinthians, Romans, Galatians, Phlippians, 1 Thessalonians, and Philemon, are undisputedly Pauline.
On http://www.barriewilson.com under "Publications" Barrie Wilson offers the abovementioned two papers, plus more of his writings, including an interesting little novel about the early days of Christianity, for free.
not4prophet
Posted on: 03/10/2013 15:02
i wonder why a later group, gentile in nature, would want to return to the gospel of the Kingdom when it had already successfully been overridden by the gospel of salvation?
Arminius
Posted on: 03/10/2013 20:00
i wonder why a later group, gentile in nature, would want to return to the gospel of the Kingdom when it had already successfully been overridden by the gospel of salvation?
Well, n4p, for the sake of galvanizing these two groups into one united front.
I don't think it was a matter of Paul overriding the gospel of the Kingdom. It was only that, in Paul's days, the two movements were so far apart that they almost could regarded as separate religions.
But Paul was not the only early Christian missionary active in the Roman Empire. There were also the original Apostles, as well as their followers and others, embracing Jesus' gospel of the Kingdom. I can well imagine that the two factions strove to reconcile their differences and unite into one more powerful religion: Two related religious movements synthesizing into one religion.
not4prophet
Posted on: 03/10/2013 20:05
IMO it is more a case of like one of the articles says, it was a case of c*ke against p*psi and the Jesus followers were drawn into Pauline thinking, through no choice of their own. Actually it may have been more a case of united in writing only but not in deed and the more powerful gentile religion overtook the less liked Jewish Jjesus followers while maintaining Jesus as a figurehead. As I said before Paul accom[lished in the end the same thing he started out to do a Saul.
Arminius
Posted on: 03/10/2013 20:08
IMO it is more a case of like one of the articles says, it was a case of c*ke against p*psi and the Jesus followers were drawn into Pauline thinking, through no choice of their own. Actually it may have been more a case of united in writing only but not in deed and the more powerful gentile religion overtook the less liked Jewish Jjesus followers while maintaining Jesus as a figurehead. As I said before Paul accom[lished in the end the same thing he started out to do a Saul.
Yes, it seems that way, doesn't it?
WaterBuoy
Posted on: 03/11/2013 08:55
But are such difficult things as a fluid mind-soul connection absorbed well by the institutionalized?
The Pall 've Rome hated such intelligence that could get around emotional powers with aparables and myths of how things really arn't good as they are ... thus the Shadow of did'mus caused latent thought ...
But us pagans are not supposed to go there, but that's how we were initiated intuit ... unknowingly! Can you believe that real people don't believe in the collective unconscious ... just because some authority said so without really knocking ... that which the authority was unconscious of? It is a roundabout theory that stirs the pool like cosmological DOS!
Brings me back to how we accept Zephaniah 3:17 as God saves or should we take it as we should retain god as love, justice, mercy and huumility and give up on really injurious spirits to the real world? Are these things flambéd or just well roasted to allow for their passover ... passing thorugh a difficult dimansion ... the real world. Oh, perhaps the imaginary is just a dream ... then what attracted the Hebrew patriarch to the land of dreams and Shadows ... mythical Egypt ... Jo' ... a common enough nomina (attachment) like John ... the pagans getting screwed in the industrial and intellectual game without "contemplation". I've been told that word is no-where near thought ... thought is just outside of emotional consideration! Speak of outliers, Black Swans and Shadows of great concern ... almost infinite ... is the dark side of all-that-is theisattire? God's duality wouldn't be a literary device ... wo-dite as broad lye projected in flat dark poeL? The inque in well ...
Can you imagine an old salt toxifying a fresh pool with the conceptions of desire of contemplation under the stars to figure on what the other is all about ... then the other being a'svastii as mortal can imagine ... maybe Moor ... imagine how many ways to project the partions of svastii? Do you know the meaning of svastii? So I thought ... about abstracts ... what isn't there ... the mortal soul is sharp but short ...