No we dont.Where?Papyrus can be preserved.See all the manuscripts of the ancient egypt and the dead sea scrolls
Synagogues contained a genizah where worn out documents containing the name of God were stored until they could be buried. Many of the document fragments that have been found appear to have been stored in a genizah.
The Dead Sea Scrolls were stored in a environment that was very favorable for papyrus preservation. And how much of the the scrolls actually survived? Certainly not all of them. And many are tiny fragments.
The reason for the shift from papyrus to parchment was due to parchmentās durability given it was more costly than papyrus.
Edit to add: Papyrus is plant fibers that are glued together with a water based glue. Subject to damage from humidity or rot.
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@Vinnie, I would not expect a secular historian to take theology seriously. God the Father sent the Son to the world, both Jews and Greeks to reconcile them to Godself and to each other. The Greeks did a better job of accepting Jesus than the Jews, which is sad, but true. The Greeks gave up their old religions and adjusted their philosophy. The Jews persisted in their old ways, although they have now adjusted culturally.
Christianity is Not Judaism based on the moral law as many Christians seem to think. It is a different faith based on faith in Jesus as the Messiah of God. Judaism is not a missionary faith. Christianity is and must be.
We seen from the story of Stephen and Paul that the Hellenistic Jews were both some of the most open to Christianity and opposed to Christianity. The Jewish Christians were probably not as fluent in Greek and more traditional toward the Law. Still James was killed and Peter imprisoned.
Christianity threatened the unique position of the Jews as Godās Chosen People. This is basic. The rejection of the Torah as Godās Law opened the way to Gentiles to become members of the Kingdom without becoming Barbarians.
When was the Torah rejected as Godās Law? I donāt recall Paul saying any such thing and Jesus certainly did not according to Matthew 5.
James was killed but Josephus tells us the law-abiding Jews were upset at this and successfully petitioned and had Ananus replaced. And the account of Peterās imprisonment in Acts looks legendary to me but I donāt dispute he had run ins with Jewish leaders or people at local synagoguesāespecially so after Paul started preaching and the Gentile mission kicked into gear.
But the disputes in the early church over food, the council of Jerusalem and its demands for Gentiles, and the behavior of James strongly suggests Jesusā original follows did not break with the Law. It was still binding to them and this occurred over time. There was no immediate break with the Torah. James may never have. Paul certainly reinterpreted its role in light of Jesusās death on the cross and it makes sense that Gentiles converting to Christianity were not overly interested in following all 613 precepts of the Mosaic dispensation.
Vinnie
125CE? Or maybe 150 or 175 or 200CE or a pinch later. Dating handwriting (paleography) is not an exact science. It was found in Egypt which does push the date of composition of John back significantly earlier than its date since it probably was NOT composed there.But considering the small, fragmentary nature of this, narrowing down a very specific date is difficult.
Vinnie
They were copied and passed around and recopied and passed around. As they were read they deteriorated over time if not in some other faster calamity. For example, maybe when Christians were blamed for the fire in Rome and persecuted some of their āpropagandaā was destroyed. You want a specific temperature and humidity range as well to preserve their life-span This is why the Dead Sea Scrolls survived as well as they did.
The literacy rate was probably around 3% or so. Most of the preaching was probably oral into the second century (e.g. Papias) when written works started becoming more normative. By the middle of the second century written works were now established as we can tell by Justin Martyrās writings and Tatianās Diatessaron or harmony of the Gospels.
Vinnie
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For instance, this is what happens when people think they can study Christ āobjectivelyā, and treat him as any other man with impartial reasoning, approaching the history of his life āwithout biasāā¦
For more than ten years, the Jesus Seminar has researched and debated the life and death of the historical Jesus. They have concluded that the Jesus of history is very different from the icon of traditional Christianity: Jesus did not walk on water, feed the multitude, change water into wine, or raise Lazarus from the dead. He was executed as a public nuisance, not for claiming to be the son of God. And in the view of the Seminar, he did not rise bodily from the dead; the resurrection is based instead on visionary experiences of Peter, Paul, and Mary.
They have no evidence yet the say non biased?He wasnt executed for claiming he wasnt the Son Of God?Am i missing something?What historical extra-biblical sources support their view?None
from the discussion and questions youāre asking I think you may really appreciate C S Lewisās insightful critique on the way modern critical scholars approach biblical criticism, and the many false assumptions they make and take for granted without ever noticing they are making such assumptions. i think his talk is as relevant today as ever. I found a copy online you can read at the following: https://scholarsarchive.byu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1324&context=byusq
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Im just saying.Since they want historical "evidence"for the supernatural(i want too to be honest and i would be more than happy to had but ohh well)they need evidence as well to dismish it.Since now they dont have neither
Right, that would be so, and Sparks acknowledges that. He actually purposely avoids that very āno miracle is possibleā bias. I canāt write it out right now. Iām still cramming with work. He takes a long time to thoroughly treat that very question, so as to avoid bias, from an evangelical point of view (and criticizes the like of Bultmann).
It would be a good book to discuss sometime.
@DOL, would you say the same? Thanks.
@Vinnie, I think you said you are thinking of reading it?
Hi,
I believe in miraclesāIāve experienced them.
Iām charismatic.
And Jesus is God in the Flesh.
Iāve also read the Jesus Seminar stuff years ago,
but wasnāt not at all convinced.
Hope this helps,
Denis
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Thanks. I do, too. Iām referring to Sparksā bookā¦ I felt he was not one of those who discounts miracles. You had recommended it, and In am about 1/3 through.
I find it all feeds in to the dismal swamp, to borrow a phrase from Montgomery on the history of the exegesis of the 70 Weeks of āDanielā, of the history of the gospels. It brings the PA closer to the source from the C5th, but it gets bogged down in the second half of the C1st - early C2nd. If the sources are non-first person Lukan via Papiasā C1st Didascalia and another via Didymusā C2nd Gospel of the Hebrews. So near, yet so far. Sigh.
But back to the OP, Barabbas works as history, i.e. is historically feasible, theoretically could be found, like Jesus shorn of miracles. Jesus with added miracles is still historically feasible of course, because they could not be found.
Iām largely with those here who see no reason to try to invent problems where none exist in straightforward accounts that weāre given in the gospels. And the following example could be in just such a category, and yet I also canāt help but wonder about another hermeneutical danger we are often in today.
When we are preoccupied with historicity (and establishing or defending historicity) it could be that we miss deeper lessons that the original authors may have intended. I offer the following as just such a possibility.
Markās account of the passion week includes several fascinating, and unique-to-Mark details, one of which is the mysterious young man wearing nothing but a linen sheet, who then runs off naked when approached by the soldiers. Iāve never given too much thought to that particular event - but have noticed that some commentators speculate that the young man might be referring to John-Mark (the author) himself. And yet, here is a new take on that which Iād never heard before, and which makes it much more interesting (and significant!) that the author includes this. Listen to how the Catholic Bishop Barron interprets Markās inclusion of this detail in his passion week homily here (13 minutes long - and all good; but if you are eager to get to the point Iām referring to, then start at about 8:00 minutes in). To me this is a much more interesting (and significant) spiritual lesson that Mark may have been imparting with his then quite deliberate inclusion of that event. If the only reason he includes it is because ā¦ it happened, then it tends to become just another āho-humā detail of it all. And Iām not saying that the āho-humā details are unimportant, or that accounts shouldnāt include those simply on the strength of their historical veracity alone (it seems that the Barrabas detail is a good example of that). But this particular detail becomes much more interesting if one knows that the author inserted it precisely for a symbolic significance and teaching. And what a shame to deflate or lose the strength of that in our modern obsession to privilege historicity! If a newspaper account says the accident occurred at such and such a place and time, we have no invitation to delve any deeper into such details other than to accept that it is just a simple recounting of facts. But if a fiction author places an event at a certain place or time - we have great cause to explore what sorts of meanings and significance the author may have intended by including [choosing] that information. Once again ā¦ Iām not calling Markās gospel a fiction. Iām only highlighting that early gospel writers may have been way ahead of many of us moderns in how they thought about literature. And it could be that some of us today, under unfortunately excessive fundamentalistic influence may be missing much spiritual lesson that the early authors were keen to impart.
[And ā¦ (Iāll bet Iām channeling @Daniel_Fisher here in noting this) ā¦ one could fairly ask why it couldnāt be both? Perhaps God uses reality to arrange these spiritually significant lessons for us? And that would be a fair challenge. Far be it from me to think God never does such things. Let me ask any of you readers this, though: In our modern tendency to have āeither/orā brain regarding truth vs. fiction, how many of you actually sought out, or considered any possible spiritual lesson from such a detail while you were still in the mindset that this is only a simple relaying of physical facts? I sure wasnāt. We tend to not look quite so hard for deliberately crafted spiritual lessons from a literal, physical chronologies of events. But once we are told that an author wishes to call our attention to something ā¦ then suddenly new worlds of significance are more likely to dawn on us. Iām pretty confident that the biblical authors were pretty intelligent in these regards. Probably much more intelligent (and inspired) than what we give them credit for.]
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No it couldnāt be both. God does not micro-nano-pico-femto-manage reality. It adds nothing to and in fact detracts from the intelligence of the biblical authors in their striving to reach for the divine. Even around the Incarnation normality, cause and effect, nature, time and chance, chaos filled all possible, necessary space.
This definitely isnāt right. To insist that it is either/or is also to deny the spiritual significance of many a major and minor thing (from Judas kissing Jesus, all the way up to the crucifixion and resurrection themselves) - where historicity and spiritual significance necessarily shine on at the very heart of Christian orthodoxy. Iām only insisting that we donāt shackle the Spiritually-led authors by imposing on them a modern rubric of āthou-shalt-notā with regard to putting in their own glosses, parables, selectivity of which events to include, and even insertions of visionary devices for our consideration and study.
[But thanks for helping reinforce my point. Your response showcases our modern mindset to reject either one or the other. It reveals the scriptural poverty of the fundamentalist who, being so tied up in knots over mere historicities are then forced to invent all sorts of gimmicks in attempting to import spiritual relevance for us today (like insisting that original sin must be a ābuilt-inā biological feature so that we can then āinherit itā from a common ancestor, Adam, etc.) Whereas many Catholics, church fathers, and rabbis of old felt free to find the spiritual significance already there: We are Adam and Adam is us. They seemed much more at home with the language of visions, metaphor, parables, etc. Whereas moderns tend to run screaming from the room if any of those should peak in at the door - and insist that, if such ādangerous materialā must be present at all, it must come prepackaged with warning and āhazardā labels. ā¦ āWarning this is a parable ā¦ this is only a parable ā¦ were it a real lesson, the hazard alarms would not be sounding!ā]
What definitely isnāt right Mervin? That faith is valid despite everything? Despite there being no ID in the minds of the Bible writers. What is your point? That the meaning the writers extracted from events is absolutely objective? Can you give an example?
Your absolute preclusion of the possibility that God might orchestrate events that are both historical and filled with spiritual significance and lessons for us to ponder. You take too far, my simple objection to the absolute preclusion (the other way) of anything that is non-historical ā¦ or that may have been embellished in or added to the narrative under the supervision of the Spirit.
I think Judas kissing Jesus is just such an example. There is little doubt that it really happened ā¦ and it is one event that has been obviously ripe for us deriving spiritual significance to ponder up and down the ages ā¦ the betrayal with a kiss. A classic example of ābothā, but Iām suggesting our modern-enculturated minds donāt typically go that way for just every detail we find.
I donāt understand Mervin. Judas kissing Jesus was a miracle? Part of precision ID in the death of Christ? Despite the fact that itās not necessary at all to invoke it? Or what?