When are these writings from?

Honestly not trying to be obtuse but which ones? I kind of generally referred to multiple different writings in my post.

There are a crap ton of references to Christ's deity in antenicene writings.

k2aggie07 said:

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There are a crap ton of references to Christ's deity in antenicene writings.

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And again, what's the oldest document?

Ignatius of Antioch in 107 AD?

That's my point. We have evidence of theologies that placed Jesus as less that God from the same era and a very, very long history of Jewish theology that does not divide God into different persons or essences.

...what?

Simply not true, on all accounts.

As I have already established, the earliest writings we have of any person even remotely claiming to be a Christian clearly state Christ is divine.

Furthermore, from the oldest of the old jewish writings to the 2nd temple writings just before Christ was born a plethora of divine subordinates are mentioned.

Dr. Watson said:

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The problem with Jungian archetypes is that you can make them say whatever you want them to say. They are so broad as to lack any objective meaning aside from what the writer ascribes to them.

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There are universals throughout though. And the bible, from Jordan Peterson's perspective has meant more to me in a practical way than it ever really has before.

I'm confused by this. We have clear confession of Christ's divinity both in the Gospels and Epistles and further clear confessions in first generation Christians, as well as every generation after.

The problem with the common claim is that they take existence of heresies as evidence of the absence of orthodoxy. On the other hand, there's no credit given for a broad orthodoxy from all over the known world.

There's a huge difference between debating whether Jesus Christ is homoousios or homoiousios with God and debating whether or not He was God.

Even in the simplest form we know that the Pauline epistles require significant "work" to explain just what St Paul means by "Lord" if not God. The fact that they were broadly accepted - some of the earliest and most broadly attested books in the NT - shows that there was broad consensus on their contents.

Texaggie7nine said:

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Dr. Watson said:

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The problem with Jungian archetypes is that you can make them say whatever you want them to say. They are so broad as to lack any objective meaning aside from what the writer ascribes to them.

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There are universals throughout though. And the bible, from Jordan Peterson's perspective has meant more to me in a practical way than it ever really has before.

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Sorry, but I find Peterson insufferable. His archetypes are pretty vapid once you break it down and his refusal to consider social constructs and their impact on individuals makes a lot of what he says rather limited.

k2aggie07 said:

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I'm confused by this. We have clear confession of Christ's divinity both in the Gospels and Epistles and further clear confessions in first generation Christians, as well as every generation after.

The problem with the common claim is that they take existence of heresies as evidence of the absence of orthodoxy. On the other hand, there's no credit given for a broad orthodoxy from all over the known world.

There's a huge difference between debating whether Jesus Christ is homoousios or homoiousios with God and debating whether or not He was God.

Even in the simplest form we know that the Pauline epistles require significant "work" to explain just what St Paul means by "Lord" if not God. The fact that they were broadly accepted - some of the earliest and most broadly attested books in the NT - shows that there was broad consensus on their contents.

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The point is they were written decades after the events in the gospels. Even the earliest epistles are written years after the fact. There isn't evidence of a single theology about Jesus amongst the original apostles because we have nothing from them and what we know about their relationship with Paul suggests a lot of disagreement.

Silent For Too Long said:

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Simply not true, on all accounts.

As I have already established, the earliest writings we have of any person even remotely claiming to be a Christian clearly state Christ is divine.

Furthermore, from the oldest of the old jewish writings to the 2nd temple writings just before Christ was born a plethora of divine subordinates are mentioned.

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Really? Can you find me Jewish scholarship that supports an interpretation of the messiah that Christians use?

What social constructs are you speaking about?

His archetypes are nothing more than simply laying out how human society works. He's not coming up with new ways to think, just pointing how the machine works.

We have writings from Paul. Anything else is highly speculative and not accepted by a majority of scholars

You skipped the bulk to talk about a point.

Even if we say that none of the writings - even the Pauline epistles - belong to their purported namesakes, it doesn't matter. The rest supports it on its own.

The guard over and over again in both early patristic writing and the New Testament itself is public teaching. There is no reason to believe that somehow a different message than what was publicly preached was mistakenly inserted into the tradition...globally...during the lifetime of the same people that knew the Apostles.

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That's my point. We have evidence of theologies that placed Jesus as less that God from the same era and a very, very long history of Jewish theology that does not divide God into different persons or essences.

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One thing we have to remember is that most of these theologians did not live in the information age. They could only read with adequate light vs a lit computer monitor. We can do word study's in a few hours with a computer which would take them months to look for certain words in all of their contexts. We also remember that the hebrew theologians of the time had corrupt political power. Look at the trial of Jesus.

How good was this long list of Jewish theologians at theology given the Jewish text below?
How corrupt where these theologians to hand over an innocent person for Roman Crucifixion?
How often did Jesus teach rebuke the experts in the law, the scribes, and pharisees?

Given that we have the OT in English, we can exam the scriptures ourselves as a baseline to judge each theologian. Jesus is God and has been so from the beginning.


There are many Hebrew non-Christian writings contained in the OT that confirmed the deity of Jesus ranging from 500 to over 1500 years BC depending on the author

• one has to identify the US and Our: Then God said, "Let Us make man in Our image, according to Our likeness; and let them rule over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the sky and over the cattle and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth." Moses over 1500 years BC
• The Lord says to my Lord: "Sit at My right hand Until I make Your enemies a footstool for Your feet." Psalms 110 approx 1000 years bc
• Zechariah 12:1,10 - The oracle of the word of the Lord concerning Israel: Thus declares the Lord [Jehovah] "And I will pour out on the house of David and the inhabitants of Jerusalem a spirit of grace and pleas for mercy, so that, when they look on me, on him whom they have pierced, they shall mourn for him, as one mourns for an only child, and weep bitterly over him, as one weeps over a firstborn. About 500 years BC
• 14 Therefore the Lord Himself will give you a sign: Behold, a virgin will be with child and bear a son, and she will call His name Immanuel. Isaiah 7 approximately 700 BC
• Immanuel = "God with us" or "with us is God"
• For a child will be born to us, a son will be given to us; And the government will rest on His shoulders;
  And His name will be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Eternal Father, Prince of Peace. Isaiah 9
• "But as for you, Bethlehem Ephrathah,Too little to be among the clans of Judah, From you One will go forth for Me to be ruler in Israel.His goings forth are from long ago,From the days of eternity." Micah 5:2

k2aggie07 said:

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You skipped the bulk to talk about a point.

Even if we say that none of the writings - even the Pauline epistles - belong to their purported namesakes, it doesn't matter. The rest supports it on its own.

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Wait...What?

So you go from saying that we have writings from all 12 apostles and Paul to saying even if we don't know it was them, it's still holds up?

I said three of the twelve, possibly five if you include James and Jude.

And yes, even if the Bible were to be eradicated from the earth and all we had were Patristic writing you could still reconstruct almost the whole bible and certainly the majority of the NT from their quotes, and there would be no change in the manner or structure of the faith. The public teaching of the Apostles is used by St Irenaeus and others as an independent witness to the faith. The idea that if it isn't written it isn't real is more modern.

k2aggie07 said:

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I said three of the twelve, possibly five if you include James and Jude.

And yes, even if the Bible were to be eradicated from the earth and all we had were Patristic writing you could still reconstruct almost the whole bible and certainly the majority of the NT from their quotes, and there would be no change in the manner or structure of the faith. The public teaching of the Apostles is used by St Irenaeus and others as an independent witness to the faith. The idea that if it isn't written it isn't real is more modern.

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OK. I misread that part, but It's pretty much established that the three we do have really could not have been the three they are attributed. That doesn't give you any pause?

I don't agree that it's "pretty much established" - and even if it was, no, it doesn't bother me at all. My faith is not predicated on a book.

I think the atheists and agnostic on this thread have successfuly moved the goal posts away from what is important. Regardless of who wrote the gospels, and when, and wether or not Paul only wrote 7 of the 12 epistles attributed to him, the fact remains that we don't have, and let me make this perfectly clear in hopes ya'll don't keep glossing over it:

YOU HAVE VIRTUALLY NO EVIDENCE SUPPORTING YOUR NARRATIVE

4 canonical Gospels written within 70 years of Christ, another 20+ gospels, 7 to 12 epistles of Paul, dozens of other epistles both canonized and written by the early fathers, compared to what?

What?

Some loosely mentioned writings on heresies written in the the 3rd and 4th century that mention maybe one or two sects that possibly, maybe, according to the writer, didn't believe Christ was divine.

You cannot with a straight face and anything remotely resembling intellectual honesty tell me the evidence for the two opposing narratives is even remotely the same. It baffles me that people who claim to shape their worldview with reason and free thinking would cling to such an obviously flawed idea. Does it somehow justify your apostasy if you convince yourself that Christ never claimed to be, and his earliest followers never found him to be, divine? Does it really matter?

Dr. Watson said:

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Really? Can you find me Jewish scholarship that supports an interpretation of the messiah that Christians use?

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Please tell me all the "jewish scholarship" you are referencing that was written prior to Christ. Anything written after the second century is completely irrelevant to the discussion at hand, for reasons I have already mentioned.

I can tell you I've read quite a bit of the 2nd temple writings and there is a ton of synergy between them and the early Christian writings. The 200 BC to birth of Christ Jews and the early Christians (who were largely jews themselves) were absolutely on the same page in regards to a variety of perspectives.

Silent For Too Long said:

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Dr. Watson said:

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Really? Can you find me Jewish scholarship that supports an interpretation of the messiah that Christians use?

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Please tell me all the "jewish scholarship" you are referencing that was written prior to Christ. Anything written after the second century is completely irrelevant to the discussion at hand, for reasons I have already mentioned.

I can tell you I've read quite a bit of the 2nd temple writings and there is a ton of synergy between them and the early Christian writings. The 200 BC to birth of Christ Jews and the early Christians (who were largely jews themselves) were absolutely on the same page in regards to a variety of perspectives.

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I asked you for sources. I'm still waiting.

Dr. Watson said:

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Your position is simply not based on the evidence and scholarship we have and ignores important issues. The 4 gospels were not written within 70 years of Jesus. Maybe 2 were.

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False. You really have no clue what you are talking about, do you? Mathew, Mark and Luke are all mentioned by Polycarp and are all widely agreed by the overwhelming majority of scholarship to have been written by 80-90 AD, at the latest. John is generally accepted to be written by about 100 AD. All of which would be written within 70 years of christ's death.

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all the other stuff you wrote

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So what? Do you even understand what I'm discussing here? I've never said once that Christianity had one orthodox, perfectly constructed, belief from the beginning. HOWEVER, they absolutely believed that, at the very least Christ was divine. That's the only point I'm making, and you have to be unbelievably obtuse not to see that.

Dr. Watson said:

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I asked you for sources. I'm still waiting.

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Can you not read? I've given you hundreds. What are your sources? You've given me zero.

This is akin to someone stating there was some general disagreement on the exact details of 911 and the technical details on how they contributed to total collapse and a conspiracy theorist using that the shoehorn in their tinfoil hat narrative.

The "Christ's earliest followers didn't believe he was divine" is the tinfoil hat narrative. Congrats, Sapper. I'll see if I can get you on the Alex Jones show as soon as possible.

Silent For Too Long said:

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Dr. Watson said:

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I asked you for sources. I'm still waiting.

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Can you not read? I've given you hundreds. What are your sources? You've given me zero.

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What Jewish sources have you given that support your argument?

Silent For Too Long said:

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Dr. Watson said:

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Your position is simply not based on the evidence and scholarship we have and ignores important issues. The 4 gospels were not written within 70 years of Jesus. Maybe 2 were.

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False. You really have no clue what you are talking about, do you? Mathew, Mark and Luke are all mentioned by Polycarp and are all widely agreed by the overwhelming majority of scholarship to have been written by 80-90 AD, at the latest. John is generally accepted to be written by about 100 AD. All of which would be written within 70 years of christ's death.

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all the other stuff you wrote

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So what? Do you even understand what I'm discussing here? I've never said once that Christianity had one orthodox, perfectly constructed, belief from the beginning. HOWEVER, they absolutely believed that, at the very least Christ was divine. That's the only point I'm making, and you have to be unbelievably obtuse not to see that.

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The overwhelming majority of scholarship says John was written by 100? BS. And the nature of Jesus in relation to God was not decided from the beginning. He was not universally seen as divine on the same level as God.

Dr. Watson said:

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What Jewish sources have you given that support your argument?

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Mathew, Mark, Luke, John, Acts, Romans, 1 Corinthians, 2 Corinthians, Galatians, Ephesians, Philippians, Colossians, 1 Thessalonians, 2 Thessalonians, 1 Timothy, 2 Timothy, Titus, Philemon, Hebrews, James, 1 John, 2 John, 3 John, Jude, Revelations, Epistles of Barnabas, Epistles of Clement, Epistles of the Corinthians to Paul, Epistles of Ignatius to the Smyrneans, Epistles of Ignatius to the Tralians, Epistles of Polycarp, Book of Jubilees...


Your turn.

Listening to Jordan Peterson teach on the archetypes of the Bible after having read Who Wrote the New Testament really put the idea together on how the most resonating versions of Jesus' life and what he said are what slowly started to take shape over the course of the first 100 years. It was fine tuned into what moved the most people until it was made into books and even then shaped further by Paul who changed it all targeting gentiles even more so than already was. The people that decided what was canon and what got changed were shaping a society. And thank god they did.

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The overwhelming majority of scholarship says John was written by 100? BS. And the nature of Jesus in relation to God was not decided from the beginning. He was not universally seen as divine on the same level as God.

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You have severe reading problems. My quote "John is generally accepted to be written by 100 AD." To be fair, most would put a date of 100 to 110 AD. It's absolutely not BS, and your insistence otherwise makes it rather obvious you are talking out of your posterior.

Now you are moving the goal posts again. You are getting slightly more accurate now, but that is a far cry for the Bart position that he was totally JAG run of the mill prophet.

He was nearly universally seen as either equal to or one rung on the ladder below God. There was near universal agreement among the very first Christians that he was, at worst, the second most important entity in existence.