Comments on: The Archaeological Quest for the Earliest Christians

By: Jim Vickers

Jim Vickers — Wed, 28 Feb 2018 17:38:31 +0000

Catholic here means universal, not Roman Catholic.

By: Dirk Anderson

Dirk Anderson — Sun, 25 Feb 2018 17:20:55 +0000

Equating Catholicism with Paul? You kidding me? Pope etc. Not even mentioned in the Bible, this a joke, read your book, no way.

By: Karl Oakes

Karl Oakes — Wed, 21 Feb 2018 20:51:13 +0000

I recommend that you read my book From Torah to Paul: The Prehistory of the Catholic Church. Catholic Christianity was a simple home-based fellowship until the third century. These people left few material artifacts for us to dig up. We can chart the course of their development from the literary record, but that’s all we have.

By: Urdu

Urdu — Mon, 19 Feb 2018 17:53:19 +0000

It’s never wise to state an argument by way of silence, namely, something does or does not exist because we don’t see or have evidence. The epic failure of illiberal skeptics at the turn of the nineteenth century was that the Hittites mentioned in the Bible were proof of the Bible’s fallibility. All this because nothing had been found. Then in 1905 evidence poured forth, so much that it became a study all its own. Christianity flows from its Jewish roots; the Jewish roots, as well, is deep and varied. Xnty does not flow FROM Josephus nor from Augustine but flows THROUGH their observations; they are not the source, they are just points along the way. Agreed: let’s not look for spectacular finds to substantiate Christianity; let’s just do the work of archaeology and not impose our (im)pious biases. Truth will out.

By: dianetanner

dianetanner — Mon, 04 Dec 2017 16:32:46 +0000

Amen!

By: Mike Seigle

Mike Seigle — Sun, 05 Mar 2017 06:33:26 +0000

The Hinton St. Mary Mosiac in the British Musuem is clearly a Christian image created in the 2 or 3 hundreds. Probably not the earliest.

By: Gabriel Sorzano

Gabriel Sorzano — Wed, 27 Apr 2016 16:19:29 +0000

It is not only in things that you find Jesus in the modern world, Jesus is in the history of the world in the last 2000 years, if you don’t want to see it, archeologize a little more, other people have found traces.

It is difficult to believe that the huge amount of traces of Christianity was produced by the combined effort of a large amount of people arguing and fighting the whole time, and the great variations of some traces need a logical contortionism to blur them.

By: Eric

Eric — Tue, 01 Dec 2015 19:48:37 +0000

The 2 theoretical assumptions presented in the article are incomplete in my opinion, and to be fair, a 3rd is needed i.e that Christianity was created by the Flavian Dynasty after Josephus completed “The Jewish War,” circa 95 CE, and therefore Jesus would be a literary figure. Which explains why no archaeological evidence exists in the periods you speak of. Furthermore, found in this theory is the Flavian Signature, which is present inside Josephus works. It is a typology the Flavians used as a meta-model to create a new testament religious story to overcome militaristic Messianic Judaism and replace it with a passive “turn-the-other-cheek” Messianic Movement – where people are more apt to be politically controlled to pay tribute to local authorities. People everywhere need to be aware of this compelling evidence! Christianity may very well have been hoodwinked by Ceasar!

By: Shiva

Shiva — Thu, 26 Mar 2015 22:53:51 +0000

I really wish this went more in-depth with the issue of the Second Commandment. I don’t feel that it adequately deals with whether or not this was an issue for early Christians, and it also doesn’t mention why the Christians who depicted Jesus weren’t concerned with breaking the Second Commandment. I would love to see more about the opinions on imagery, particularly of divinity, from Second Temple Judaism and how that relates to Christianity.

By: Sharon Jurist

Sharon Jurist — Fri, 02 Jan 2015 23:25:22 +0000

The answer is simple. Since Yeshua was a Jew, and his talmidim and early followers were Jews (and some God-fearers), and they lived as Jews, worshiping in the synagogues and the Temple as Jews, believing that Yeshua was the Jewish Messiah, WHY in the world would you expect to find evidence of Christians in the first century? Christian was the name given to GENTILES who embraced the Jewish God through the Jewish Messiah. In the beginning they were few in number and dependent on the Jewish Messianic leaders for everything regarding the faith for at least the first century. Even so they began to dilute the inherent Jewishness of the faith in the Jewish Messiah through syncretism with their religions and cultures and philosophies. Saul of Tarsus already had to begin teaching these Gentiles Believers against these tendencies but it wasn’t until later, when Christians became the majority and men like Origin, Justin Martyr, Ignatius, Tertullian, Clement of Alexandria etc. preached their brand of syncretism that you see the beginning of the religion called Christianity. By the time Augustine brought about a new theology of the Hebrew Scriptures and emperor Constantine made Christianity official it was a totally new religion, separate from the faith of the Jewish and God-fearing followers of the Jewish Messiah.