Reddit Reddit reviews The Myth of Persecution: How Early Christians Invented a Story of Martyrdom

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18 Reddit comments about The Myth of Persecution: How Early Christians Invented a Story of Martyrdom:

u/brojangles · 83 pointsr/DebateAnAtheist

First, the Gospels are not independent. Mark came first and Mark created most of the narrative template. Matthew and Luke both copy large parts of Mark word for word in Greek. Matthew copies over 90% of Mark's Gospel verbatim, Luke copies just over half. John does not copy verbatim, but seems to show knowledge of Mark and Luke and looks to be a free redaction of the basic Synoptic outline (although some scholars do still try to argue that John is completely independent of the Synoptics, but I believe this view is falling away, It's a least problematic).

More significantly,none of the Gospels were written by witnesses or anyone who knew witnesses. They did not even begin to be written until at least 40 years after the crucifixion and the last Gospel, John, was not finished until 100-110 CE. The Gospels are all formally anonymous. Their traditional authorship ascriptions ("Matthew, Mark, Luke and John") were attributed to originally anonymous writings in the late 2nd Century and all four of those traditions are now regarded as spurious by critical scholars. For a number of reasons, both internal and external to those books, scholars do not believe they could have been witnesses, and it should be stressed, they don't claim to be. None of the authors identify themselves, none claim to have seen anything themselves or speak in the first person at all except for Luke in his very brief "Theophilus" preamble. None of them even claim to have known any witnesses.

The Gospels also contain a number of factual errors, historical, geographical and legal, they contain demonstrably fictive narrative constructs and literary inventions and they contradict each other like crazy and in significant ways.

There is no evidence that the authors "risked persecution," nor is there any actual evidence that any of the disciples were persecuted or martyred for their beliefs. Those legends are 2nd and 3rd Century apocrypha with no demonstrable historical basis.

A good book on this is The Myth of Persecution: How Early Christians Invented a Story of Martyrdom by Candida Moss, who is a Professor of New Testament at Notre Dame.


The TLDR:

The Gospels are anonymous books written 40-70 years after the life of Jesus by non-witnesses living in a different country. When they are not copying each other, they are contradicting each other. All four Gospels contain errors of fact, and all contain demonstrable fiction. They are not reliable accounts, nor are they independent accounts and they are certainly not eyewitness accounts.

u/lifeonatlantis · 41 pointsr/exchristian

well for one, christian persecution at the beginning is something of a myth - there were some persecutions, but they were isolated events.

there's this idea that the romans just hungrily wanted all the christians dead because they were christians. however, christians at the time WANTED to be martyred - it was preached by bishops as a noble thing, it was played up in christian literature, and whenever christians were arrested they did everything they could to not co-operate so they'd be executed. (for more info, read Candida Moss' "The Myth Of Persecution", and Catherine Nixey's "The Darkening Age")

if the romans were so giddy to execute, and the christians happy to be nixed, there would be no christianity today. there woulda been no christianity by the time of constantine, to be sure.

if you want to talk about a religion that's been persecuted and survived, try judaism. compared to that culture, christianity is a wimpy crybaby.

u/Corohr · 27 pointsr/exchristian

There was a question asked about this very movie over at r/AcademicBiblical. u/brojangles gave an excellent point by point rebuttal of some of the claims made:


>500 eyewitnesses in 1 Corinthians 15:3-8 dates within 3 years of jesus' death according to Gerd Ludemann and a few months after the cross according to Gary Habermas

We have no dating for when Paul thinks this happened. 1 Corinthians 15 was written at least 17 years after Pal's conversion by Paul's own reckoning. This alleged "creed" is usually claimed to pre-date Paul, but that's conjecture based on style. Paul himself denied that he learned anything about Jesus from other people. There is also reason to believe that the Corinthians creed was tampered with or added to later, but assuming Paul is reciting a pre-Pauline creed (and this is not actually proved, even though it is generally accepted even by critical scholars), all it says is that Jesus was "seen" by people after his death. Nothing is said about exactly what they saw or where or when or what is meant by "seen." That could include a number of things, including dreams. Paul names none of these 500 people or says where to find them. It's also not an incident that appears to be known by the Gospels. so either it wasn't very important or (as I suspect) the 500 is a later interpolation. It doesn't mean much. A Fatima type even is possible or what is meant by "seen" could mean manifestations of the spirit or something. Paul gives some reason to think this when he says things like "God revealed his son in me" or says in Galatians 3:1 that Jesus was "portrayed as crucified before your eyes."

Paul also never says how he knows what these people saw or how he verified it, so this is an absolutely valueless claim. It certainly does not prove a dead body came back to life or even that anybody had thought a dead body came back to life. It's (at best) a second hand and completely uncorroborated claim that some people "saw" Jesus after his death, but doesn't say what that means, and it could men a lot of things. There is reason to believe that people first thought they had seen Jesus in Heaven, so a bunch of people staring at the sun until they thought they saw something would not be extraordinary. How did they even know it was Jesus?

>- 9 sources for post-mortem appearances (1 was a jewish persecutor called paul of tarsus with a very early report)

There is only one source. Paul (and he never actually says he was from Tarsus. That's only in Acts).

>- All we have to show for the resurrection is that Jesus died and was seen afterwards.

No. People see Elvis. People still see Jesus now. They have to prove that a dead body came back to life.

>The apostles were in a position to know whether or not their religion was made-up false hood or truth so they would not willingly die for a lie. Moreover, the disciples had no motivation to lie

There is no evidence that they died for their beliefs. This is 2nd and 3rd century Christian folklore. See Candida Moss' The Myth of Persecution: How Early Christians Invented a Story of Martyrdom.

We also don't actually know what the disciples claimed. There is no actual evidence that they ever claimed Jesus' dead body had come back to life and walked out of a tomb.

>- 5843 Greek manuscripts for the new testament which is in better shape than most historical documents that we would be lucky to find 5 manuscripts for.

Irrelevant. For hundreds of years, Christians were in charge of of what books got copied and preserved. The fact that Christians mostly copied Christian writings does not prove a dead body came back to life. A book having lots of copies also does not make it true. There are millions of perfect copies of Harry Potter novels. So what?

>P52 dates to 125 based on paleography so it is within 30 years of the autographs


The dating of P52 is contentious and it could be as late as 175. Even if the 125 date is accurate (which is really just an optimistic low end) it doesn't prove anything except that there was already a Gospel of John in the 2nd Century. It doesn't prove that a dead body came back to life.

>- No evidence that the Romans threw crucified bodies to the dogs.

Who says they were? The Romans either left bodies on the cross for scavengers (including dogs) or put them in shallow common pits, where they could also be gotten to by scavengers. Nobody says they were "thrown to dogs."

>The Romans did allow proper burial for some crucifixion victims

Asserted without evidence.

>- The 4 gospels and 1 Corinthians 15:3-8 ar all early sources that attest that jesus had a proper burial.

1 Corinthians does not say that. It says Jesus was "buried," not that he was given an honorable burial, which is the issue. Even Jewish law required that executed criminals be buried without honor, at night and without an audience. Jesus could well have been buried in a criminals' pit, but the odds are none of he disciples even knew what had happened to his body. If they fled when he was arrested, he would have been disposed of in an unmarked grave with other criminals, at night, without an audience and no one would have known where.

The Gospels are not independent. The empty tomb story originates with Mark and the other gospels got it from Mark. Mark himself says that nobody was ever told about it.

>The empty tomb eyewitnesses were all women and the testimony of women was deemed unreliable by jewish custom so why would the gospel writers make this up? Why would they make up unreliable eyewitnesses as the chief eyewitnesses to the resurrection?

First, it's not true that women could not be called as witnesses, they could in some circumstances, but it's not even necessary to talk about that because the women are not presented as witnesses. In Mark, they run away without telling anybody. This is Mark's explanation for why nobody knew about the tomb. Those stupid women were too afraid to tell anybody. The other Gospels all have the women running to the disciples and then the disciples go to the tomb, so the audience is not expected to take the women's word for anything. The legal restraints on women's testimony also does not mean that nobody ever believed anything a woman said in day to day life. That is a very stupid and tendentious inference to draw.

> Internal inconsistencies in the secondary details among the 4 gospels actually makes the accounts credible because it shows a lack of collusion and supports the notion of independent testimony.

No, because they are all fairly consistent when they have Mark as a guideline, then they fly off in totally different directions where Mark leaves off. Once they lose Mark, their appearance stories are all completely contradictory with no overlap. It's not different versions of the same story, it's three different stories, all of which contradict their original source text, Mark, which says that the women never old anybody about the tomb. The Gospels are not personal testimonies. None of them were written by witnesses or anybody who knew witnesses. The Gospels also all contradict the Corinthians creed, by the way.

>Shroud of turin may be authentic

Ridiculous

>Roberta waters, president of the american association of psychoanalysists who is an agnostic professor at indiana university states that A mass hallucination of 500 people is completely impossible

Fatima.

There is no actual reason to even discuss the 500 until we now exactly what it is they claimed to have seen, what the circumstances were, etc.

>- Even if the disciples and the 500 had a psychological hallucination, why was the tomb found empty?

There is no good evidence that there ever was a tomb at all, but a missing body proves nothing more than a missing body. There are some perfectly plausible explanations for how a body could go missing from a tomb besides magical reanimation. King Herod's tomb was found a few years ago. The body was missing from the sarcophagus. According to Habermas, this means that Herod was resurrected from the dead and Herod is lord?

>The swoon theory is "rubbish" according to Alexander Metherell

This is not even a real theory. This is an apologist strawman. I have never heard any critical scholar even suggest this. Everybody agrees that Jesus was dead. He just stayed dead, that's all.

Just for the record, though. Josephus said he saw a guy survive a crucifixion after being taken down.

>The crucifixion is one of the best attested events in the ancient world.

No it isn't. There isn't a single eyewitness report or bit of contemporary documentation. Why are they so comfortable just making shit up like this? Having said that, yes, we all agree that Jesus was crucified. So were thousands of other people. They are really proud of how easily they can knock down this non-existent "swoon theory" aren't they?

>- It takes a leap of faith to deny the resurrection as equal as the leap of faith required to accept it.

Does this even require a response. This is nothing but a a statement of personal faith.











u/vacuous_comment · 27 pointsr/atheism

Turns out nothing has changed.

Almost all Christian martyrdom stories from early Christianity are false. Read all about it in this book book by Candida Moss.

u/Endendros · 8 pointsr/exchristian

His league is pretty much normal academic Biblical scholarship. He just condenses the issues for layman audience.

Check out r/AcademicBiblical

u/brojangles always has good responses.

Elaine Pagels has good books on Gnosticism and early Christianity.

The Myth of Persecution: How Early Christians Invented a Story of Martyrdom, Candida Moss is a good one.

u/raatz01 · 3 pointsr/politics

Comparison more apt than you think. Christians were never fed to lions and their persecution by Romans was [vastly exaggerated.] (https://www.amazon.com/Myth-Persecution-Christians-Invented-Martyrdom/dp/0062104551 )

u/geophagus · 3 pointsr/atheism

Sure thing! Her name is Candida Moss. Here's a link to her book on Amazon. The Myth of Persecution

u/MJtheProphet · 3 pointsr/DebateReligion

>The earliest written records of Jesus were written within 40 years of Jesus's life, which are some of the earliest records when compared with other historical figures.

The dating of Mark to around 70 is contentious; it could easily be an early-2nd-century document. It's also not true that more contemporaneous records are not common; many figures from history we know from things they or their contemporaries wrote. And the stories about Jesus aren't histories, so comparing them with things that are histories, like Arrian's work about Alexander, is disingenuous.

>They are also very consistent, which would seem unlikely if Jesus's life had been exaggerated.

No, they're not. And in almost all the places where the Gospels agree, they're identifiably using an earlier Gospel as a source, often Mark. That doesn't mean that source is any more reliable.

>Somehow, Christianity survived for 300 years while being actively punished and rejected by the Roman Empire.

Not really.

>Since then, Christianity has taken a huge part in western civilization.

This is in no way an indicator that its historical claims are true.

I think Jesus began as a preexistent celestial being, an archangel granted special power by God, crucified in the heavens by Satan and his demons, just as Paul presents him. The stories placing him on Earth were a later invention, probably originally meant as allegories, or to use a familiar Christian term, parables. Taking them literally proved to make them convincing, which proved to be politically advantageous.

u/ObviousBodybuilder · 2 pointsr/politics
u/Farmer771122 · 2 pointsr/DebateReligion

> As in, the early days when Christianity was illegal and Christians were frequently jailed or martyred

The Myth of Persecution: How Early Christians Invented a Story of Martyrdom, by Candida Moss

u/MikeTheInfidel · 2 pointsr/DebateAnAtheist

> Given what we know about the early church (many were martyred)

This is actually not true.

u/trailrider · 2 pointsr/atheism

There's no real debate about the authorship of the gospels as far as being eyewitness accounts. They're not. Bart Ehrman is a biblical scholar and has written about this. I would advise you to start reading his books. Misquoting Jesus is a good one to start with. He's got a Youtube channel where you can listen to him lecture/debate on a variety of NT topics.

You might also want to read The Myth of Persecution: How Early Christians Invented a Story of Martyrdom by NT scholar Candida Moss

u/LesRong · 1 pointr/DebateReligion

>I'm not jumping to conclusions on zero evidence.

Well then, I look forward to reviewing the evidence on which you are relying. I assume it will come from neutral, reliable sources, not Christian propaganda, right?

​

> historical facts which no reputable historian denies.

Like Candida Moss, Paul Hertog, Laurie Guy, and Joseph Lynch, all of whom agree that

> Despite mountains of contrary evidence, many myths are so deeply embedded in consciousness that they are almost impossible to dislodge. Such is the case with the mountains of myths surrounding the topic of the persecution of the early church.

​

> The fact is that Christians were told to recant on penalty of imprisonment, and other not so pleasant forms of punishment.

Do you have a neutral, reliable source to support this "fact"?

> The author of John's gospel was exiled to the island of Patmos.

We don't know who wrote the gospel of John.

​

So you agree that Christians were not "persecuted" as Christians, but just the same as all the Jews?

u/Goo-Goo-GJoob · 1 pointr/atheism

This article briefly summarizes the evidence for the martyrdom of all twelve apostles:

http://www.patheos.com/blogs/daylightatheism/2007/06/how-did-the-apostles-die-2/

For a deeper look at how such myths about persecution arose, check out the book by Candida Moss:

https://www.amazon.com/The-Myth-Persecution-Christians-Martyrdom/dp/0062104551

u/muffinlemma · 1 pointr/DebateACatholic

Have you read Gibbon's Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire? You should really check it out, the 1st century history you're talking about is the victim of significant revisionism by Christian historians. Here's a more modern source if you're interested.

>You’re making a lot of very big generalizations here. There were many concurrent systems of authority in Jerusalem at the time. To say “Look, I know that every source says the trial proceeded thusly, and that actually makes historically, but it fails my narrative so it didn’t happen” doesn’t make sense.

>Jesus could have been a tax collector rather than a carpenter. “Every source disagrees.” They disagree? Then they’re wrong.

>Right? If you’re going to blatantly contradict every account, there has to be a good reason. I’m not even entirely sure contradicting the traditional account here is even relevant to your case; it’s just there to be there.

Every account says Muhammad was God's final prophet. Every account says Joseph Smith found the book of Mormon inscribed on golden plates somewhere near Palmyra NY. Every account says the Buddha calmed a raging elephant merely by meditating. I'm saying the source material is not reliable history, it's not an account of facts but the amalgamated legends of a couple related cults.

> If only we had the Apostolic Fathers, who wrote within a few decades from the beginning of Christianity, who clearly disagree. Hmmmm...

The only reason you call them "apostolic fathers" and not "heretics" is because they were the political winners at the time. What I'm saying is that both "apostolic fathers" and "heretics" are the same in my eyes, they're all Christians. I have no reason to believe otherwise, unless I take your priests at their word...and we all know what I think of the value of their word.

> Tradition ordains we hold synods and councils when there’s massive disagreement. These are done regularly, from only a few decades after Christ’s death until the present day. It’s not a new thing and doesn’t disprove the Christian position that sometimes councils disagree with you.

I'm saying that your "truth" is the result of politics, not reason, not science, and certainly doesn't appear to be any kind of divine revelation. The councils disagree not only with me but with each other! Who is right, and how can anyone know?

> That is an entirely different discussion. This has no relevance. Peter was wrong about meat. Popes can be wrong. This is not the gotcha you think it is. The Pope should be listened to. Some Catholics don’t. If he’s formally rebuked, as Paul did Peter, that’s a different matter.

It's not a "gotcha," I'm merely pointing out that a person can rise through the ranks of the church and become appointed to the papacy while officially proclaiming doctrines that run contrary to prior papal and conciliar and even scriptural teachings.

If pope Francis himself posted some of his official encyclical statements on r/Catholicism under an anonymous pseudonym he would be called out for promoting heresy LOL. If your own pope can't get a grasp on your own teachings, how can you expect outsiders to think your priests are teaching anything valuable or even coherent?

> Listing all truths is kind of hard. If you can list all true statements about a topic, that’s pretty suggestive that either more work needs to be done on the topic, or the topic doesn’t really correspond to reality that well. You can’t list all the mathematical truths or all the scientific truths. And yet, you don’t shame either of those disciplines. Or maybe you do? IDK.

My wife has a PhD in mathematics. My best friend is a biologist. Of course one cannot list all possible mathematical and scientific truths, because our understanding of reality and truth are always changing based on new reasoning and new observations. But...you guys say "the fullness of truth" was handed on to your priests from God himself...so...where is it? Write all of this truth down so we can examine it. Clearly, the catechisms are trustworthy since they can apparently contain error, so go ahead, produce a book with all of the "truths" of Catholicism and then we can have a real debate. Until that time, it's all dodges and interpretations and hermeneutics and hand wringing.

> Can the blind know the shape of the moon by observation? No. Fact. They have to be told that by a person who can see, or have it otherwise communicated to them by an authority.

Epistemology is one of my favorite subjects and we can definitely discuss that, but maybe not right now in this particular thread.

The question of authority definitely IS relevant, however. OK, let me frame this differently. WHY do you listen to priests, if not "just 'cuz?"

u/HRBP · 1 pointr/Christianity
u/Mee6s · 0 pointsr/Christianity

I recommend you read this book as well. I have read yours. here


u/originalsoul · -3 pointsr/Christianity

Actually for a large part of the Roman Empire's existence, Christians weren't intensely persecuted. It's a pretty common myth that's been perpetuated since the 4th century. Scholar Candida Moss wrote a a book about it.