I personally follow the school of thinking that none of the canonical Gospels can have been written in the form we know them any earlier than the third century and I certainly don't believe that any can have been written within the lifetime of anyone who actually knew Christ personally.
What about James? I know it's contended, but many scholars believe James is the oldest book in the New Testament and may even have been written by James the brother of Jesus.
I didn't realize that John Calvin was the father of present-day American christian fundamentalism. I thought it was a much later development, like late nineteenth century.
In a way, he was. Back when Christianity was a start-up, the Christians were largely poor and persecuted. After the fall of the Roman empire and the middle ages began, medieval society was so fief-based that wealth wasn't really a problem unless you were ennobled but then nobles were supposed to be wealthy because they were the assistants of God's temporal representative, the monarch, who ruled in the name of God and the church. It was when the middle classes started growing at the end of the 14th century that a peculiar problem of how to deal with rich non-noble, non-royal, non-ecclesiastical people. The church could be rich as God deserved splendor and riches and so did his servants. Kings could be rich because they were fortuned by God to rule the people. Nobles could be rich because they served the monarch and the church. Peasants were always relatively poor so when peasants turned into merchants and land owners, there was no justification for their wealth. This may seem trivial to us but in medieval thinking, it was important. Medievals had three pillars of society (remember the Estates General of France?): The church, the king and nobles, and the peasantry. Each had their place, each had their function, and each did had a very specific role. Peasants may have far outnumbered the clergy and the nobility/royalty but it was they who, if they lived piously, were definitely going to heaven.
If poor wasn't what non-nobles and non-clergy weren't supposed to be, then why on earth were they amassing wealth? To be wealthy was, in the medieval mind, a gift from God. If you ruled then you deserved it and God showed you his favor by making you fortunate in wealth. Wealth also was not necessarily precious metals and gold. Many wealthy people were land poor and to be wealthy was to hold resources in trust for the common good. Peasants may not have expected much, but they did expect protection from their nobility and king, the grace of God from their church, and the opportunity to work the land the nobles and king owned or to have their trade goods purchased by the wealthy. In short, it was a kickback scheme and it worked very well when things were balanced.
The rise of the middle class presented issues for the common peasantry who weren't keeping up with the Joneses. They wondered how such a thing could happen and it was such a concern that, at first, many rich merchant families were ennobled to quell suspicion that God was favoring some peasants over others in such an obviously explicit fashion. If common peasants could get rich, then perhaps it wasn't God who had anything to do with it. As you might imagine, the medieval power structure did not want that kind of question raised.
Luther, and later Calvin, were essentially pointing out what had been largely suspected and accepted in those countries where the peasantry were turning into a middle class: God did favor those he loved with riches but one needn't be noble or clergy to be so. Luther said that many things in his Theses, but the really important one was that faith alone was enough to achieve salvation. With that, the middle class could obtain salvation without having to give away all their money via those pesky good acts. Calvin improved on this by emphasizing that if you're rich and prosperous then it's a good sign that God is favoring you and thus you will be saved. Certainly give to charity and all that, but on your death bed, really truly believing in God is all that you'll need to enter heaven so feel free to be generous.... in your will. This is why Protestantism made such a big hit among the wealthy. Luther and Calvin delivered a slight but important twist on the medieval mindset which legitimized the accumulation of wealth and capital... even the obscene accumulation of wealth and capital because you could do these things and go to heaven too!
Why do you believe that the Q exists? Why are you using a Coptic codex to cite Jesus, rather than a canonical book?
I'm not accusing you of anything... I'm just curious.
I don't know if
Q exists but I'm in with the scholars who believe that the four gospels are all from a central source and that
Thomas is also derived from
Q in a purer form than the other four are.
The four gospels tend to leave one wondering just how dangerous Jesus could have been. He seems like just one of various spouting prophets who makes an occasional nuisance of himself.
Thomas reveals a Jesus with some seriously radical ideals who, if he had a following, would prove to be dangerous enough to warrant the attention of the highest powers in Judea.
I know that Thomas is a Gnostic text but I'm not convinced Jesus himself wasn't a Gnostic or, at least, influenced heavily by them.
One of the fun things about being a nominal Unitarian is that questions and theories like these aren't forbidden by any dogma. I'm free to interpret Jesus, Mohamed, and yes, even Zoroaster as I see fit.
If you want to see what a dumb-ass perversion Americans are making of Christianity, read about
the prosperity gospel (article in
The Atlantic).
I'm reading it right after posting this. Thank you Cal!
Zoroastrianism and Manichaeism are not the same thing, and in the east Manichaeism most certainly was a very serious threat to Christianity, throughout Syria and Anatolia, even in Palestine, certainly in Mesopotamia where it was briefly the largest faith in the region.
You're not confusing Manichaeism with Mazdaism are you ? :wink:
Trust me I know my shit too Luka :tongue::wink:
Please keep this on point. I'd love to see you two discuss this without getting personal. Marquess of Queensbury on this one gentlemen!
was involved with choosing Easter over Passover and stuff like that, rather than compiling which books were in the New Testament, which could've been done much earlier? (I'm no scholar on this btw - just interested. :smile
