rationalskepticism.org

RealityRules wrote:

Leucius Charinus wrote:
RE: Papias and Ignatius et al

I view these as [purported] Christian references to the 'historicity' of Christians.

I am seeking the [purported] Non Christian references to the 'historicity' of Christians.

Eusebius has produced a sort of "Nationalistic Literature" for the nation of Early Christians in his "Church History" and "In Preparation ...". Eusebius gathers together his material. However what this thread is asking for are the references to the existence of Christians in literature written by authors who are external to Eusebius' Nicene Church. If Christians existed prior to Eusebius, what corroborating literary attestations do we have from the pagan writers of the 1st-3rd centuries.

And what is the integrity of these references?

Sure, but they're worth commentating on b/c they're supposedly early witnesses, but, as you infer, their integrity is highly questionable, especially Ignatius.

For sure. Suspect to the nth degree.

But my approach here is systematic. By category. Let's first examine in this thread the literary references external to the testimony of the holy flaming church fathers. Those literary references which are in some cases still held to HOLD HISTORICAL INTEGRITY by many or some classical scholars and which support the inference that the nation of Early Christians were actually known to the great mass of unwashed pagans. When we examine this list of references were can immediate perceive that these pagan references include many completely fake bogus forgeries that have been identified as forgeries since the age of enlightenment, such as the TF and the Sybil.

We should begin to perceive evident a specific pattern of factual evidence. Namely that the church organisation slash industry, somewhere in a scriptorium back-office, have forged the literary material, or interpolated the material, in order to fabricate the very historical inferences that they wish to maintain. Here, this historical inference is the very existence of some ideological and/or religious nation of "Early Christians", in the centuries prior to Eusebius and Constantine publishing the New Testament + LXX Bible.

If the church has been able to forge and/or interpolate into the classical (non-church generated) literature of antiquity, what might they have done with their own category of literature

Leucius Charinus wrote:
... Tertullian is likely to have been fabricated in a Roman scriptorium in the later 4th century.

Nevertheless, because Tertullian is supposedly a Christian witness to the historicity of the Christians, this list of pagan witnesses does not list him.

Sure, so he is not likely to be a real early 3rd C witness. Even if he is, his works -as I show above- seem to align with the Rome/Nero fire -persecution schtick of Annals 14 and Nero 16 attributed to Suetonius.

.

YES, AND

with the idea of the apostolic succession of the pope (Damasus was very interested in this) in Rome.
with the idea of the trinity as expressed in Latin ha ha
with the idea of the heretics

Tertullian is a valuable source for the Latin Church and thus the Church.

The best way I know of to expose the forgeries of the church history, is to first examine the forgeries that the church has undertaken in the classical literature. Stuff which was SUPPOSEDLY out of their control.

This thread aims to identify these passages.