Jesus Before Constantine. Doug E. Taylor

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СКАЧАТЬ in the fourth century. Historical study, however, would not appear to agree with such a claim. In his work Orthodoxy and Heresy in Earliest Christianity, Walter Bauer said, “Where there is heresy, orthodoxy must have preceded.”26 While Bauer made the statement that orthodoxy must have preceded, his thesis in the end suggested the exact opposite. What must be asked is if it is true that orthodoxy must have preceded heresy. It is safe to say, at a minimum, that it is not possible to have a Christianity that predates the Christ.

This is in part why this work will build from the minimal facts argument. When we begin to look at source documents from groups that ultimately were not included in Scripture, debate centers on authenticity of the writings, the timing of the writings, and in many cases who the author actually was. Over the past century even most critical scholars have come to accept seven texts of the Christian New Testament as having authentically come from Paul. As such, the starting point for this book is different in that Bauer held the position that, “as we turn to our task, the New Testament seems to be both too unproductive and too much disputed to be able to serve as a point of departure. The majority of its anti-heretical writings cannot be arranged with confidence either chronologically or geographically; nor can the more precise circumstances of their origin be determined with sufficient precision.”27 Bauer desired to speak to the earliest Christianity, yet he appears to have not believed the source documents for Christianity to have been credible as a starting point.

James Dunn, in his two-volume work Christianity in the Making, suggested we cannot rightly use the term Christianity as something of a defining characteristic of beliefs until some eighty years following Luke penning Acts, suggesting that to use the term for the earlier church would run the risk of superimposing a modern mindset onto the data rather than letting the data reveal what constituted, and when, one was to be identified as a Christian.28 While caution is warranted, what has been missed is that a lack of total knowledge does not equate to an absence of any knowledge. According to Dunn’s thinking, he would have us believe Christianity as a clearly defined system of belief was not established until the latter half of the second century (ca. 160). However, if we consider the statement by Paul in Gal 1:6–9 we find there were others presenting different gospels from what Paul had already established. Dunn notes that in the immediate time following the reported resurrection event, multiple terms were used to describe followers of Jesus, and that the issue of identifying what it meant to be a Christian, if the term could rightly be used, gave indication of a multifaceted structure lacking in a single, overarching designator.29

      Some have suggested that Christianity grew because of the existence of a common language. While a common language certainly would have made it easier to communicate the message, that common language did not make Christianity spread. Moreover, that same common language would have been available to all religious groups, so language may have contributed to the speed of growth, but it does not explain why people chose to become Christian.

      Likewise, some have pointed to the pax Romana, or the peace of Rome, as the reason for the growth of Christianity. Again, this was a condition that was not unique to any one group, so it did not provide an advantage for any religious group’s growth. The same would hold true for arguments in favor of roads and improved shipping being the cause for Christianity’s spread. Stated differently, the existence of the roads or improved shipping does not cause people to share their newfound faith. Again, the roads and shipping were available to all, whether Jewish, Christian, gnostic, or other.

      Notwithstanding, the truth claims of Christianity are bound up with the person and work of Jesus, who he was and what he did. What would make Christianity unique in an absolute sense, with no possible historical rival, would be for Jesus to be what is claimed for him—the one and only Son of God, God who has come in the flesh; and to have done what is affirmed for him—to have brought a salvation and relationship with God that no one other than the Son of God could have brought. There we pass from history to faith.

      1. Ehrman, How Jesus Became God, 2. What is conspicuously absent in Ehrman’s work is any explanation on how the church was wrong for centuries, and then what specifically was it that surfaced from a historical perspective that justified dismissing that which the church had held to over the centuries. In short, no evidence was offered that would refute the reports of the existence of Jesus of Nazareth, that he was an itinerant preacher who was reported to have done wondrous things labeled by many as miracles, that he died by crucifixion under Pontius Pilate, that he was buried in a borrowed tomb, that there were reports of Jesus having been seen alive by many shortly following his death and burial, or that would explain the transformation of the disciples, as well as the conversion of the skeptic James and the enemy of the church, Saul.

      2. Menuge, review Debating Christian Theism, 451–56.

      3. Habermas, Philosophy of History, 49–50.

      4. It is recognized and acknowledged that there are scholars who interpret this passage in Galatians such that there were only fourteen years in which both Jerusalem visits happened, believing the three years first mentioned were concurrent to the fourteen years that follows. If one concludes there were only fourteen years in which both visits occurred, then it would be possible for an AD 33 crucifixion date. Whether one opts for fourteen or seventeen years in the exegesis of the text does no damage to my proposal.

      5. Making such a move will necessitate that valuable pieces of work such as The Epistle to Diognetus will not be considered as part of this research. Equally, by not allowing certain pseudo works, pieces where there may be disagreement as to whether an early father actually wrote a certain document will be exempted from this research in an attempt to avoid pieces that are more likely to draw the criticism that the research is speculative, having drawn conclusions from those speculations, and then gone further to build additional arguments presuming any speculations to be fact. It is important to note that the decision to not include such works is in keeping with the stated methodological approach of this research and should not be interpreted as meaning such works lack value for scholars researching this era but with a different focus.

      6. Barnett, Birth of Christianity, 17. See also Momigliano, “Rules of the Game,” 39–45. If Momigliano’s “rules” are applied here and accepted as an accurate method to investigating historical claims, then it would appear to follow that if one was to desire to challenge the offered SPAC of this research, they would have to demonstrate that other materials, such as those of Marcion, Celsus, etc., were actually produced and circulated prior to the material examined here as being considered original.

      7. Hegel, Philosophy of History, 1–7. The differentiation is made between the geschichte, or story, as compared to the historie, or what actually happened.

      8. Hegel, Philosophy of History, 3.

      9. Ehrman, Did Jesus Exist?, 39–40.

      10. Habermas, Historical Jesus, 260.

      11. Examples of root cause analysis being used by agencies in the United States include: a fatal accident investigation report where an isomerization unit explosion took place killing seventeen people in Texas City, Texas, in 2005 (http://www.csb.gov/bp-america-refinery-explosion/); Deepwater Horizon СКАЧАТЬ