I wonder about the accuracy of critical text methods like the ones that have been used to putatively reconstruct the Q document and to argue about authorship and dates. Have these methods ever been validated against a ground truth that the arguers didn't know about beforehand? Like, have we ever philologically reconstructed a text from other texts, and then found exactly that text buried somewhere? Or even something close to it?
In the case of Q, you could argue that the Gospel of Thomas validates that there were texts of that kind (sayings gospels) floating around, but Thomas doesn't match the content of Q.
Outside biblical scholarship, another area where people have tried to reconstruct what is going on in ancient texts is the Chinese classics, especially the really cryptic ones like the Yijing. But whenever some actual ancient manuscript gets dug out of an old grave or a bog, it seems like it just brings up more questions and complications, instead of validating anyone's theories.
Compare to the philology methods that people use to reconstruct ancient languages. These have been validated pretty well. For example in the 19th century linguists were able to deduce that the Proto-Indo-European language must have had guttural consonants not found in any extant language, and then later when the Hittite language was decoded, the guttural consonants were right there. The theory was validated on held-out data. Has this ever happened for critical methods for discerning authorship and sources and missing texts?
The issue is that your standard is borderline setting up an impossible strawman, and when we actually do textual (and/or biblical) analysis and historical science, we never really have a "this is THE version of Q" nor do we have a "this is the FINAL/REAL version of the book" or "this is the final/absolute version of the hypothesis".
The idea that there is "one authoritative version and it was the version that was copied into this one authoritative derivative and we found the derivative so now we have to find that exact original or else its all bumpkin" simply isn't the way 2000 year old books or texts were written, copied or used. You will never find it because that's not what happened.
But we can lay out the texts side by side, arrange the narratives and see how they differ chronologiaclly from book to book, notice where particular linguistic quirks take place, notice where words are copied word for word in a particular order, where embellishments or insertions or changes are made, then just like taking several witness accounts, we build up a probablistic version of events that happened.
So there isn't "one Q", just as there isn't one authoritative version of mark, luke, john, mathew, etc. But there's patterns in the texts which strongly suggest that there was some kind of shared knowledge and a common source in the authors of the later gospels. We hypothesised that this common source seemed to be shared amongst the other gospels was a "sayings gospel", because the common ground that seemed to be repeated in the other books were primarily sayings and the other bits seemed to come from mark, which at the time met the problem that people didn't accept that such a book or source would actually exist because we'd never seen one before.
Then, after this hypothesis was formed and that objection raised, with the discovery of the nag hammadi library and the gospel of thomas, we found an actual historical sayings gospel. A confirmation that this type of literature did exist and was written in early christian communities. It was not Q, but it confirmed the hypothesised genre and existance of early christian literature.
If you're waiting for the discovery of two literal peices of text, whereby the carbon copy of the first is deduced from the discovery of multiple other historical books to the letter that followed, well then you're setting up an impossible standard. Even literal transcription probably wouldn't meet that standard.
Well, I usually reconstruct what TFA is about in Hacker News from what readers are saying about it and I can report that it works almost as well for a lot less effort!
I jest, but on a serious note, a leading theological text would probably have the same ambiguity as to its meaning even if everyone had access to the original text. Knowing what everyone thinks something means isn't better than knowing what it means... but scientifically, they're indistinguishable!
I think that diff algorithms have more in common with traditional, “lower” textual criticism than with the sort of source criticism canjobear is pondering.
"For example in the 19th century linguists were able to deduce that the Proto-Indo-European language must have had guttural consonants not found in any extant language, and then later when the Hittite language was decoded, the guttural consonants were right there. The theory was validated on held-out data."
I find reconstruction fascinating, but it will never be completely accurate, because it just can't be. Every language has quirks, and I believe PIE probably had one or two complex features that never survived into the age of writing. Most of its vocabulary is lost, although I hold out more hopes for phonology.
Reading the early Christian church leaders was enlightening, as a member of an evangelical church. My church didn't really have any answers when I asked why our practices/beliefs diverged so intensely, which was somewhat disappointing. The writings of the early Christian leaders are filled with Greek philosophy, genuine debates about theology, and a ton of wisdom for both believers and unbelievers.
Try reading the bible with a Greek Orthodox Priest. Their insights from reading it as written and not from a vibe based translation, their knowledge of the background, have been some of the best theological discussions of my life. I used to go to a bible group with a Greek Orthodox Priest and he would just demolish the evangelicals and their strict interpretation of the english translation.
I'm sure he would pick up on some things, but he would also be heavily influenced by much later forms of Greek, where means would have changed. I have spoken to Greeks about ancient texts and their reactions vary — some indicated they could understand a lot and some very little. A bit like a modern English speaker approaching Chaucer — I can understand a fair bit and am helped by my knowledge of Broad Scots but other people complain it is barely intelligible to them. (There are people who complain the same about Shakespeare and even Dickens.)
The Catholic answer is relatively straightforward in terms of decisions at various councils (or similar structures) about the trinity, iconoclasm, clerical celibacy etc.
With some mix of apostolic succession providing authority and the Holy Spirit guiding the big picture.
Jaroslav Pelikan's history of Christian doctrine runs to five volumes. I haven't read the last, but the first four are very readable. The Emergence of the Catholic Tradition (100-600) runs to something under 400 pages. Given the word "Catholic", I will add that Pelikan started off Lutheran and ended in one of the Orthodox churches.
Given the borrowing of ideas, why then do modern Christians, including evangelicals, dismiss other cultures so aggressively? For example Greek and Roman beliefs in god are described as “pagan”, which is a negative term. And obviously evangelicals are very hostile to other faiths even today, whether it’s Buddhism or Islam or Hinduism or whatever.
> Given the borrowing of ideas, why then do modern Christians, including evangelicals, dismiss other cultures so aggressively?
That's really just an American thing. Americans have this concept of "manifest destiny" in their culture is the final one and it is their duty to spread it to the rest of the world. The American settlers have colonized the entire continent, but the spirit of Manifest Destiny still persists, just embodied in different forms.
For example, among evangelicals there is this paranoia of anything that might be considered pagan. Some will go even so far as to consider Christmas pagan. Meanwhile in the rest of the world it's perfectly accepted that Christianity has taken some local practices and re-dedicated them to Christ. This is not a concession to pagans to make Christianity more palatable for them (pagans are not stupid, they know it's a different religion). I can recommend the YouTube Channel "Jonathan Pageau", he used to talk a lot about this sort of stuff in his older videos.
It's not the only answer, but I would direct you to the Fundamentalist-Modernist Controversy.
Around a hundred, hundred and fifty years ago when our understanding of the universe had finally reached the point where it became obvious that (a) all of our creation stories were just stories and (b) we actually kind of knew the actual story now, everyone had a big crisis over how to deal with that.
The two options on the table where fundamentalism -- doubling down on Biblical literalism and faith -- and modernism, taking the Bible as more a spiritual message, adapting our understanding of it for the modern world.
Some churches went one way, others the other, but over the following century the fundamentalist churches have proven to be better at attracting, retaining and motivating their members.
There are still modernist churches, but the loudest Christians in America are almost all of the fundamentalist bent.
I’ve always seen American evangelism as a political movement first and a religious one second.
This impression has strengthened quite a bit in recent years as it’s become clear that political movements and politicians that are diametrically opposed to the teachings of Jesus are perfectly okay if they align on other more immediate secular political issues.
There’s always been a claim that the US is an outlier compared to other developed nations in terms of religiosity. I don’t really believe this anymore. I think we have a lot of politics with heavy religious veneer, but if you look only at sincere belief in the tenets of a faith I don’t think the US is much more religious than the UK for example.
>why then do modern Christians, including evangelicals, dismiss other cultures so aggressively?
The vast majority of modern Christians doesn't, the influences of Greek culture are readily apparent in the conceptual language of the New Testament, John most obviously when he turns Christ into the Logos. Culturally many pre-Christian practices have been incorporated into for example, Latin American Catholicism. You can literally see it in the architecture of churches.
American Evangelical Christianity is a bit of a different beast and best viewed as a nationalist program that brings particular American tendencies to bear on the religion rather than the other way around.
Because all ideas and all thought and all knowledge stem from Jesus and eventually will be used to worship HIM only but other gods are just made up distractions.
This is the profound underlying theology
It's even weirder than that, there's many ideas that might very easily be described as "pagan" except that they're entirely accepted as orthodox. For instance the entire notion of the Trinity is at its root a straightforward application of Neoplatonic philosophy, where the "One" Godhead exists as three lower "hypostases" (Greek) or "persons" (Latin). And much Stoic ethics was adopted directly within early Christianity.
To be entirely fair about it, the linkage may easily go back to the very time of Jesus in some important ways, seeing as many of Jesus's teachings were shared with the Essenes', and the Essenes in turn were quite knowledgeable about Greek/Hellenistic philosophy.
I have the same questions as you. I find many Hindu and Buddhist practices are compatible with Christianity. Eastern religion has different words than western religion for certain things, and concepts naturally get misunderstood, so I think Christians (in America at least) are somewhat afraid that by learning about eastern religion they will be worshiping a false God. The condemnation that comes with Christian groups unfortunately dissuades people from seeking the truth outside the church for fear of social exclusion.
Anyone, Christian or atheist, who has any interest in the Science Vs Religion debate as it has existed since Darwin should look at "Against Celsus" by Origen. It provides a fascinating example of a well educated Roman philosopher and a well educated Christian Platonist philosopher arguing with each other.
I am the knowledge of my inquiry,
and the finding of those who seek after me,
and the command of those who ask of me,
and the power of the powers in my knowledge
of the angels, who have been sent at my word,
and of gods in their seasons by my counsel,
and of spirits of every man who exists with me,
and of women who dwell within me.
I am the one who is honored, and who is praised,
and who is despised scornfully.
I am peace,
and war has come because of me.
And I am an alien and a citizen.
This has been a source I’ve referred to on and off for years. It’s really interesting to read some things that don’t show up in our everyday Bible. Including things that were considered not canon by the early church. I enjoyed reading the translation of the Shepherds of Hermas. It was not the easiest to follow, but in a sense it was a very popular allegory like Pilgrim’s Progress was centuries later!
Interesting to hear someone discuss Hermas. I have never taken to it personally, but have attempted to get into it a few times. Hermas was very popular at one stage, and I've even heard some people argue that it should have been in the canon and the Book of Revelation taken out. (Although both books tend towards metaphorical imagery which is not always clear.)
It was certainly popular enough to be included in the 4th-century Codex Sinaiticus, which is the oldest extant "complete" Bible (Genesis through Revelation) in a single bound volume. Interestingly, in that manuscript, The Shepherd of Hermas and the Epistle of Barnabas actually appear right after the New Testament. The library has published scanned copies online at https://www.codexsinaiticus.org/en/. It is an epic resource for anyone studying this history or textual criticism.
It’s interesting that they’re organized by date. On an intuitive level, that makes sense. But so many of the dates are hotly debated, and reorganizing the list would produce such a different impression, that it’s a surprising choice.
I am not a scholar of such things, but a quick glance at the documents I am familiar with suggests that the date ranges represent uncertainty within the compiler’s point of view. That’s reasonable, but when it’s linked out of context it’s not immediately obvious that it doesn’t reflect the range of debate in the broader secular scholarship, let alone secular and conservative religious scholarship taken together. So caveat lector.
That said, the breadth of documents linked here is really impressive.
Historical documents should really have four dates:
1) Oldest full manuscript to be carbon dated (or similarly rigorous scientific dating)
2) Oldest fragments to be carbon dated
3) Oldest citations
4) Estimated date from internal factors within the text
The initial methods would serve as an objective upper bound for age, and the later would give a more accurate subjective view.
Most people don't realize this but Paul is the earliest known Christian writer and the earliest surviving source for the Gospel. His letters also independently corroborate not only Jesus' existence as a real person (in addition to secular sources), but also that Jesus' close followers genuinely believed they met Jesus' resurrected form. Since Paul's witness is dated to within 3-5 years of Jesus' death, this also shows that the Gospel didn't develop as a myth/legend, but as something people genuinely believed who had personally met Jesus. It's a fascinating story of a Jewish religious scholar who hallucinates on the road to Damascus, has a sudden complete change of heart, and ends up transforming Christianity from a local Jewish cult into a worldwide religion.
Another fascinating topic in biblical study is the criterion of embarrassment, where the early Christian writings left in bizarre and unflattering events that members of a cult would generally leave out. The most obvious example is the crucifixion itself (considered by Jews to be extremely shameful and cursed), the repeated unflattering presentation of the disciples (portrayed as regularly confused, lacking in faith, petty about status, falling asleep at critical moments, even rejecting Jesus at the end), even Jesus' own despair when he was publicly humiliated and executed, crying out asking God why he was forsaken. This is in contrast to Islam, which has Jesus rescued and replaced at the moment of execution.
Spot on. The Criterion of Embarrassment is a powerful tool here; the fact that women were the primary witnesses to the resurrection is a classic example, given that a woman's testimony held little to no legal weight in 1st-century Roman or Jewish contexts. If you were inventing a myth to gain social traction, you simply wouldn't write it that way.
Your point about verisimilitude extends to Onomastics as well. Research shows that the New Testament Gospels accurately reflect the specific frequency of Jewish names in 1st-century Palestine. In contrast, Gnostic texts often use names that don't fit the era or geography, frequently showing 3rd-century Egyptian linguistic influences instead. It suggests the canonical authors had "boots on the ground" knowledge that the later Gnostic writers lacked.
I feel we should be hesitant about claims like this. It might well be true that Paul was the earliest writer.
But it also seems strange that Matthew, a presumably literate tax collector, wrote nothing at all before Paul despite being a disciple during the time Jesus was around.
Mind you I am only saying the earliest known writer, it's likely that most Christian writings are lost to history. And technically we don't even know who wrote the Gospels with any certainty. Only Paul's 7 undisputed letters are universally accepted by secular scholarship as being genuinely authored by Paul, the authorship of the rest of the New Testament is disputed.
Paul did not "transform Christianity from a local Jewish cult into a worldwide religion".
That was done through military force. Convert, or be burnt at the stake, heretic.
One of the most curious things about Christianity, is how most of the sauce in the plate doesn't even come from the figure their very religion is meant to be based on. The idea that followers of a religion about a figure, are spending most of their time talking, reading and doing stuff unrelated to the figure they meant to follow is such a human thing to do.
After 2k years of divergence, what is there in common with that figure. Can't read or speak his language, experience his culture or the geopolitics of his world. Everything is seen through 2k years of subjective lenses that people with various goals give to you.
At what point, do you call it a day or focus on the Gospels exclusively? Because that's arguably as close as you can get to him. Everything else seems secondary accounts of secondary accounts and people claiming to have authority to speak on behalf of someone who can't refuse that anymore.
“Another parable put he forth unto them, saying, The kingdom of heaven is like to a grain of mustard seed, which a man took, and sowed in his field: Which indeed is the least of all seeds: but when it is grown, it is the greatest among herbs, and becometh a tree, so that the birds of the air come and lodge in the branches thereof.”
I started exploring Christianity from an archetypal or psychological lens last year, and have found it really rewarding. I've put in thousands of hours of westernized Buddhist oriented meditation (I think "Pragmatic Dharma" is the term), and ultimately found it and the communities attached to it cultures of avoidance that loses something in its detachment of meditation technology from its larger context. I also grew up vaguely Presbyterian and hated it, so this was a great moment for me to reclaim my heritage on my own terms.
I started with various books of the Nag Hammadi collection, reading the excellent Meyer translations, and started noticing some metaphors that felt like "hidden signposts" in the text (and had some relevance to some ideas in Buddhism). Gospel of Thomas and especially Gospel of Philip felt like they map quite well to non-dual ideas in Buddhism.
I decided after some explorations of gnostic text to jump back into the gospels, wondering if I noticed the same kinds of hidden signposts there. I started this exploration during a trip to London with my wife, where I went and hunted down a copy of Bruce Rogers's amazing Oxford Lectern Bible at the Church of England reading room. What a beautiful bible -- it's so forward thinking that it feels like it was typeset last year, but while it is a beautiful piece, the King James translation of the bible is pretty incomprehensible. This little journey led me to the Sarah Ruden translations of the gospels, and as soon as I read them I felt the same kind of resonance.
This all eventually led me to Cynthia Bourgeault's amazing "The Heart of Centering Prayer," which explores the non-dual kind of ideas in esoteric Christianity and lays out the practice of centering prayer as a basis of Christian spirituality. And I would remiss if I didn't mention Jacob Needleman: Esoteric Christianity was good, but his "Money and the Meaning of Life," really helped me put my own relationship with money in perspective.
This is all a long winded way of saying: Christianity has a rich set of amazing spiritual resources, but they need to be consumed in a sort of non-literal way, where you're meeting the authors in the same mind as they were when they wrote the text. I'd also note that this kind of reading is not scholarly, the point isn't to find the right answer but to impute a larger meeting by meeting the author with your own struggles.
We live in a time that is committed to a materialist reductionist mindset, but I believe that humans are naturally mystical beings, and that we leave a lot of real meaning on the table when we reduce the world down into solely material order.
Rob Burbea explored these ideas (largely inspired by James Hillman's concept of "soulmaking") in his soulmaking dharma (https://hermesamara.org/), the idea being an extension of emptiness: if all is fabrication, why wouldn't we make meaning that is beautiful?
I'm sure I'm coming off quite a bit rambly, but it's very exciting to see such a resource on the HN front page. If you read my comment and feel any similar excitement, please check my profile and feel free to email me!
The point of religion and beliefs is that it can't be proven. If gods existence could be proven we wouldn't believe anymore. We don't believe in gravity for example.
Who cares? It. Is. Not. Real.
Time to stop coddling religion. All religion is politics and all politics require force to power.
Stop caring about nonsense.
The very language of religion is rooted in political and economic struggle. Concepts such as "guilt," "sin," and "redemption" originally emerged from ancient debates regarding debt, law, and social obligation. During the "Axial Age," major world religions like Buddhism, Christianity, and Islam developed specifically to address the social dislocations caused by the rise of markets, coinage, and professional armies. For example, the biblical "Law of Jubilee"—which mandated the cancellation of debts and freedom for bondservants—was a direct political intervention into the economic sphere. Similarly, the Christian concept of "redemption" was originally a financial term referring to buying back something (or someone) held as security for a loan.
It doesn't have to be. From the guidelines (link at the bottom):
On-Topic: Anything that good hackers would find interesting. That includes more than hacking and startups. If you had to reduce it to a sentence, the answer might be: anything that gratifies one's intellectual curiosity
The actual way you reason today has in large part to do with your religious cultural heritage. This is true regardless of whether you accept it or not. To say that Christianity has not impacted western culture including thinking and reasoning would be naive at best.
Understanding this will help you to understand why you view the world and morality the way you do and in turn how you answer hard questions like technology's place in culture, life, workplace, etc.
Because it's interesting as hell. I'm Catholic, and clicking around in here there's practically nothing religious in it to me at all. No part of my own faith engages with Celsus Description of the Ophite Diagrams. But it sounds like something out of a Clive Barker book --- and, behold, it is like something out of a Clive Barker book:
He is the Demiurge of this world, the God of Moses described in his creation
narrative. Of the Seven archontic demons, the first is lion-shaped; the second
is a bull; the third is amphibious and hisses horribly; the fourth is in the
form of an eagle ; the fifth has the appearance of a bear, the sixth, that of
a dog ; and the seventh, that of an ass named Thaphabaoth or Onoel.
This is like a weird parallel of Greek mythology. But it's got a little extra charge because it ostensibly plugs into a modern religion. Super fascinating.
Can I ask why do you identify as "Catholic" and not as "Christian"? I have seen that a few times and it does seem like attempt from you to essentially state that you are making your own religion. How much splintering off can you do and still call yourself Christian?
This is not an online bible, it's an archive of the surviving material from a movement that has had unimaginable reach and impact on the world we live. You can see first hand how diverse their thelogy was prior to canon and orthodox enclosure.
Why not? I have been on this particular website quite a few times, but there have been other pages linked on here which I haven't been to so much. It's good to have a variety of interests. I am getting a broader range of websites and articles off here than mainstream media.
The link includes all sorts of stuff that modern Christians generally consider heretical, so I don't think it's proselytizing.
Most people underestimate the diversity of beliefs in early Christianity. A lot of that was violently suppressed by Constantine, to the point that some of it was only dug up in the last century.
One of the current top 100 posts relates to western religion. It’s easy to avoid if uninterested. I enjoy that every now and then we have an ancient history, archeology, theology, literature, futurism or etc. post make the front page.
I wonder about the accuracy of critical text methods like the ones that have been used to putatively reconstruct the Q document and to argue about authorship and dates. Have these methods ever been validated against a ground truth that the arguers didn't know about beforehand? Like, have we ever philologically reconstructed a text from other texts, and then found exactly that text buried somewhere? Or even something close to it?
In the case of Q, you could argue that the Gospel of Thomas validates that there were texts of that kind (sayings gospels) floating around, but Thomas doesn't match the content of Q.
Outside biblical scholarship, another area where people have tried to reconstruct what is going on in ancient texts is the Chinese classics, especially the really cryptic ones like the Yijing. But whenever some actual ancient manuscript gets dug out of an old grave or a bog, it seems like it just brings up more questions and complications, instead of validating anyone's theories.
Compare to the philology methods that people use to reconstruct ancient languages. These have been validated pretty well. For example in the 19th century linguists were able to deduce that the Proto-Indo-European language must have had guttural consonants not found in any extant language, and then later when the Hittite language was decoded, the guttural consonants were right there. The theory was validated on held-out data. Has this ever happened for critical methods for discerning authorship and sources and missing texts?
The issue is that your standard is borderline setting up an impossible strawman, and when we actually do textual (and/or biblical) analysis and historical science, we never really have a "this is THE version of Q" nor do we have a "this is the FINAL/REAL version of the book" or "this is the final/absolute version of the hypothesis".
The idea that there is "one authoritative version and it was the version that was copied into this one authoritative derivative and we found the derivative so now we have to find that exact original or else its all bumpkin" simply isn't the way 2000 year old books or texts were written, copied or used. You will never find it because that's not what happened.
But we can lay out the texts side by side, arrange the narratives and see how they differ chronologiaclly from book to book, notice where particular linguistic quirks take place, notice where words are copied word for word in a particular order, where embellishments or insertions or changes are made, then just like taking several witness accounts, we build up a probablistic version of events that happened.
So there isn't "one Q", just as there isn't one authoritative version of mark, luke, john, mathew, etc. But there's patterns in the texts which strongly suggest that there was some kind of shared knowledge and a common source in the authors of the later gospels. We hypothesised that this common source seemed to be shared amongst the other gospels was a "sayings gospel", because the common ground that seemed to be repeated in the other books were primarily sayings and the other bits seemed to come from mark, which at the time met the problem that people didn't accept that such a book or source would actually exist because we'd never seen one before.
Then, after this hypothesis was formed and that objection raised, with the discovery of the nag hammadi library and the gospel of thomas, we found an actual historical sayings gospel. A confirmation that this type of literature did exist and was written in early christian communities. It was not Q, but it confirmed the hypothesised genre and existance of early christian literature.
If you're waiting for the discovery of two literal peices of text, whereby the carbon copy of the first is deduced from the discovery of multiple other historical books to the letter that followed, well then you're setting up an impossible standard. Even literal transcription probably wouldn't meet that standard.
Well, I usually reconstruct what TFA is about in Hacker News from what readers are saying about it and I can report that it works almost as well for a lot less effort!
I jest, but on a serious note, a leading theological text would probably have the same ambiguity as to its meaning even if everyone had access to the original text. Knowing what everyone thinks something means isn't better than knowing what it means... but scientifically, they're indistinguishable!
Those groups have more overlap than you'd think.
Also, diff algorithms are derived from these methods...
I think that diff algorithms have more in common with traditional, “lower” textual criticism than with the sort of source criticism canjobear is pondering.
"For example in the 19th century linguists were able to deduce that the Proto-Indo-European language must have had guttural consonants not found in any extant language, and then later when the Hittite language was decoded, the guttural consonants were right there. The theory was validated on held-out data."
I find reconstruction fascinating, but it will never be completely accurate, because it just can't be. Every language has quirks, and I believe PIE probably had one or two complex features that never survived into the age of writing. Most of its vocabulary is lost, although I hold out more hopes for phonology.
Reading the early Christian church leaders was enlightening, as a member of an evangelical church. My church didn't really have any answers when I asked why our practices/beliefs diverged so intensely, which was somewhat disappointing. The writings of the early Christian leaders are filled with Greek philosophy, genuine debates about theology, and a ton of wisdom for both believers and unbelievers.
Try reading the bible with a Greek Orthodox Priest. Their insights from reading it as written and not from a vibe based translation, their knowledge of the background, have been some of the best theological discussions of my life. I used to go to a bible group with a Greek Orthodox Priest and he would just demolish the evangelicals and their strict interpretation of the english translation.
I'm sure he would pick up on some things, but he would also be heavily influenced by much later forms of Greek, where means would have changed. I have spoken to Greeks about ancient texts and their reactions vary — some indicated they could understand a lot and some very little. A bit like a modern English speaker approaching Chaucer — I can understand a fair bit and am helped by my knowledge of Broad Scots but other people complain it is barely intelligible to them. (There are people who complain the same about Shakespeare and even Dickens.)
What's the answer? Why have they diverged so much?
The Catholic answer is relatively straightforward in terms of decisions at various councils (or similar structures) about the trinity, iconoclasm, clerical celibacy etc.
With some mix of apostolic succession providing authority and the Holy Spirit guiding the big picture.
Can you recommend specific books?
Jaroslav Pelikan's history of Christian doctrine runs to five volumes. I haven't read the last, but the first four are very readable. The Emergence of the Catholic Tradition (100-600) runs to something under 400 pages. Given the word "Catholic", I will add that Pelikan started off Lutheran and ended in one of the Orthodox churches.
Given the borrowing of ideas, why then do modern Christians, including evangelicals, dismiss other cultures so aggressively? For example Greek and Roman beliefs in god are described as “pagan”, which is a negative term. And obviously evangelicals are very hostile to other faiths even today, whether it’s Buddhism or Islam or Hinduism or whatever.
> Given the borrowing of ideas, why then do modern Christians, including evangelicals, dismiss other cultures so aggressively?
That's really just an American thing. Americans have this concept of "manifest destiny" in their culture is the final one and it is their duty to spread it to the rest of the world. The American settlers have colonized the entire continent, but the spirit of Manifest Destiny still persists, just embodied in different forms.
For example, among evangelicals there is this paranoia of anything that might be considered pagan. Some will go even so far as to consider Christmas pagan. Meanwhile in the rest of the world it's perfectly accepted that Christianity has taken some local practices and re-dedicated them to Christ. This is not a concession to pagans to make Christianity more palatable for them (pagans are not stupid, they know it's a different religion). I can recommend the YouTube Channel "Jonathan Pageau", he used to talk a lot about this sort of stuff in his older videos.
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It's not the only answer, but I would direct you to the Fundamentalist-Modernist Controversy.
Around a hundred, hundred and fifty years ago when our understanding of the universe had finally reached the point where it became obvious that (a) all of our creation stories were just stories and (b) we actually kind of knew the actual story now, everyone had a big crisis over how to deal with that.
The two options on the table where fundamentalism -- doubling down on Biblical literalism and faith -- and modernism, taking the Bible as more a spiritual message, adapting our understanding of it for the modern world.
Some churches went one way, others the other, but over the following century the fundamentalist churches have proven to be better at attracting, retaining and motivating their members.
There are still modernist churches, but the loudest Christians in America are almost all of the fundamentalist bent.
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I’ve always seen American evangelism as a political movement first and a religious one second.
This impression has strengthened quite a bit in recent years as it’s become clear that political movements and politicians that are diametrically opposed to the teachings of Jesus are perfectly okay if they align on other more immediate secular political issues.
There’s always been a claim that the US is an outlier compared to other developed nations in terms of religiosity. I don’t really believe this anymore. I think we have a lot of politics with heavy religious veneer, but if you look only at sincere belief in the tenets of a faith I don’t think the US is much more religious than the UK for example.
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>why then do modern Christians, including evangelicals, dismiss other cultures so aggressively?
The vast majority of modern Christians doesn't, the influences of Greek culture are readily apparent in the conceptual language of the New Testament, John most obviously when he turns Christ into the Logos. Culturally many pre-Christian practices have been incorporated into for example, Latin American Catholicism. You can literally see it in the architecture of churches.
American Evangelical Christianity is a bit of a different beast and best viewed as a nationalist program that brings particular American tendencies to bear on the religion rather than the other way around.
Because all ideas and all thought and all knowledge stem from Jesus and eventually will be used to worship HIM only but other gods are just made up distractions. This is the profound underlying theology
It's even weirder than that, there's many ideas that might very easily be described as "pagan" except that they're entirely accepted as orthodox. For instance the entire notion of the Trinity is at its root a straightforward application of Neoplatonic philosophy, where the "One" Godhead exists as three lower "hypostases" (Greek) or "persons" (Latin). And much Stoic ethics was adopted directly within early Christianity.
To be entirely fair about it, the linkage may easily go back to the very time of Jesus in some important ways, seeing as many of Jesus's teachings were shared with the Essenes', and the Essenes in turn were quite knowledgeable about Greek/Hellenistic philosophy.
I have the same questions as you. I find many Hindu and Buddhist practices are compatible with Christianity. Eastern religion has different words than western religion for certain things, and concepts naturally get misunderstood, so I think Christians (in America at least) are somewhat afraid that by learning about eastern religion they will be worshiping a false God. The condemnation that comes with Christian groups unfortunately dissuades people from seeking the truth outside the church for fear of social exclusion.
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Anyone, Christian or atheist, who has any interest in the Science Vs Religion debate as it has existed since Darwin should look at "Against Celsus" by Origen. It provides a fascinating example of a well educated Roman philosopher and a well educated Christian Platonist philosopher arguing with each other.
I'm a fan of "Thunder, Perfect Mind"
This poem must have been a major inspiration for a character named The Thunderhead in the Arc of a Scythe sci-fi series.
The poem reads like the private confessions of that character, which made it feel modern to me, but wow it’s actually many centuries old.
the full thing is a long read, but its very good and interesting!
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This has been a source I’ve referred to on and off for years. It’s really interesting to read some things that don’t show up in our everyday Bible. Including things that were considered not canon by the early church. I enjoyed reading the translation of the Shepherds of Hermas. It was not the easiest to follow, but in a sense it was a very popular allegory like Pilgrim’s Progress was centuries later!
Interesting to hear someone discuss Hermas. I have never taken to it personally, but have attempted to get into it a few times. Hermas was very popular at one stage, and I've even heard some people argue that it should have been in the canon and the Book of Revelation taken out. (Although both books tend towards metaphorical imagery which is not always clear.)
It was certainly popular enough to be included in the 4th-century Codex Sinaiticus, which is the oldest extant "complete" Bible (Genesis through Revelation) in a single bound volume. Interestingly, in that manuscript, The Shepherd of Hermas and the Epistle of Barnabas actually appear right after the New Testament. The library has published scanned copies online at https://www.codexsinaiticus.org/en/. It is an epic resource for anyone studying this history or textual criticism.
It’s interesting that they’re organized by date. On an intuitive level, that makes sense. But so many of the dates are hotly debated, and reorganizing the list would produce such a different impression, that it’s a surprising choice.
I am not a scholar of such things, but a quick glance at the documents I am familiar with suggests that the date ranges represent uncertainty within the compiler’s point of view. That’s reasonable, but when it’s linked out of context it’s not immediately obvious that it doesn’t reflect the range of debate in the broader secular scholarship, let alone secular and conservative religious scholarship taken together. So caveat lector.
That said, the breadth of documents linked here is really impressive.
Historical documents should really have four dates:
1) Oldest full manuscript to be carbon dated (or similarly rigorous scientific dating) 2) Oldest fragments to be carbon dated 3) Oldest citations 4) Estimated date from internal factors within the text
The initial methods would serve as an objective upper bound for age, and the later would give a more accurate subjective view.
Most people don't realize this but Paul is the earliest known Christian writer and the earliest surviving source for the Gospel. His letters also independently corroborate not only Jesus' existence as a real person (in addition to secular sources), but also that Jesus' close followers genuinely believed they met Jesus' resurrected form. Since Paul's witness is dated to within 3-5 years of Jesus' death, this also shows that the Gospel didn't develop as a myth/legend, but as something people genuinely believed who had personally met Jesus. It's a fascinating story of a Jewish religious scholar who hallucinates on the road to Damascus, has a sudden complete change of heart, and ends up transforming Christianity from a local Jewish cult into a worldwide religion.
Another fascinating topic in biblical study is the criterion of embarrassment, where the early Christian writings left in bizarre and unflattering events that members of a cult would generally leave out. The most obvious example is the crucifixion itself (considered by Jews to be extremely shameful and cursed), the repeated unflattering presentation of the disciples (portrayed as regularly confused, lacking in faith, petty about status, falling asleep at critical moments, even rejecting Jesus at the end), even Jesus' own despair when he was publicly humiliated and executed, crying out asking God why he was forsaken. This is in contrast to Islam, which has Jesus rescued and replaced at the moment of execution.
Spot on. The Criterion of Embarrassment is a powerful tool here; the fact that women were the primary witnesses to the resurrection is a classic example, given that a woman's testimony held little to no legal weight in 1st-century Roman or Jewish contexts. If you were inventing a myth to gain social traction, you simply wouldn't write it that way.
Your point about verisimilitude extends to Onomastics as well. Research shows that the New Testament Gospels accurately reflect the specific frequency of Jewish names in 1st-century Palestine. In contrast, Gnostic texts often use names that don't fit the era or geography, frequently showing 3rd-century Egyptian linguistic influences instead. It suggests the canonical authors had "boots on the ground" knowledge that the later Gnostic writers lacked.
I feel we should be hesitant about claims like this. It might well be true that Paul was the earliest writer.
But it also seems strange that Matthew, a presumably literate tax collector, wrote nothing at all before Paul despite being a disciple during the time Jesus was around.
Mind you I am only saying the earliest known writer, it's likely that most Christian writings are lost to history. And technically we don't even know who wrote the Gospels with any certainty. Only Paul's 7 undisputed letters are universally accepted by secular scholarship as being genuinely authored by Paul, the authorship of the rest of the New Testament is disputed.
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I would expect Jesus to be the earliest writer.
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Paul did not "transform Christianity from a local Jewish cult into a worldwide religion". That was done through military force. Convert, or be burnt at the stake, heretic.
Christians were being thrown to the lions for spreading to too many people long before Christians had the power to throw others to the lions.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Persecution_of_Christians_in_t...
One of the most curious things about Christianity, is how most of the sauce in the plate doesn't even come from the figure their very religion is meant to be based on. The idea that followers of a religion about a figure, are spending most of their time talking, reading and doing stuff unrelated to the figure they meant to follow is such a human thing to do.
After 2k years of divergence, what is there in common with that figure. Can't read or speak his language, experience his culture or the geopolitics of his world. Everything is seen through 2k years of subjective lenses that people with various goals give to you.
At what point, do you call it a day or focus on the Gospels exclusively? Because that's arguably as close as you can get to him. Everything else seems secondary accounts of secondary accounts and people claiming to have authority to speak on behalf of someone who can't refuse that anymore.
“Another parable put he forth unto them, saying, The kingdom of heaven is like to a grain of mustard seed, which a man took, and sowed in his field: Which indeed is the least of all seeds: but when it is grown, it is the greatest among herbs, and becometh a tree, so that the birds of the air come and lodge in the branches thereof.”
Writing some 70 or 80 years down the line, of course they would say that. Or say that Jesus said that.
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Personally, i like occasional non-tech links like this ..
I started exploring Christianity from an archetypal or psychological lens last year, and have found it really rewarding. I've put in thousands of hours of westernized Buddhist oriented meditation (I think "Pragmatic Dharma" is the term), and ultimately found it and the communities attached to it cultures of avoidance that loses something in its detachment of meditation technology from its larger context. I also grew up vaguely Presbyterian and hated it, so this was a great moment for me to reclaim my heritage on my own terms.
I started with various books of the Nag Hammadi collection, reading the excellent Meyer translations, and started noticing some metaphors that felt like "hidden signposts" in the text (and had some relevance to some ideas in Buddhism). Gospel of Thomas and especially Gospel of Philip felt like they map quite well to non-dual ideas in Buddhism.
I decided after some explorations of gnostic text to jump back into the gospels, wondering if I noticed the same kinds of hidden signposts there. I started this exploration during a trip to London with my wife, where I went and hunted down a copy of Bruce Rogers's amazing Oxford Lectern Bible at the Church of England reading room. What a beautiful bible -- it's so forward thinking that it feels like it was typeset last year, but while it is a beautiful piece, the King James translation of the bible is pretty incomprehensible. This little journey led me to the Sarah Ruden translations of the gospels, and as soon as I read them I felt the same kind of resonance.
This all eventually led me to Cynthia Bourgeault's amazing "The Heart of Centering Prayer," which explores the non-dual kind of ideas in esoteric Christianity and lays out the practice of centering prayer as a basis of Christian spirituality. And I would remiss if I didn't mention Jacob Needleman: Esoteric Christianity was good, but his "Money and the Meaning of Life," really helped me put my own relationship with money in perspective.
This is all a long winded way of saying: Christianity has a rich set of amazing spiritual resources, but they need to be consumed in a sort of non-literal way, where you're meeting the authors in the same mind as they were when they wrote the text. I'd also note that this kind of reading is not scholarly, the point isn't to find the right answer but to impute a larger meeting by meeting the author with your own struggles.
We live in a time that is committed to a materialist reductionist mindset, but I believe that humans are naturally mystical beings, and that we leave a lot of real meaning on the table when we reduce the world down into solely material order.
Rob Burbea explored these ideas (largely inspired by James Hillman's concept of "soulmaking") in his soulmaking dharma (https://hermesamara.org/), the idea being an extension of emptiness: if all is fabrication, why wouldn't we make meaning that is beautiful?
I'm sure I'm coming off quite a bit rambly, but it's very exciting to see such a resource on the HN front page. If you read my comment and feel any similar excitement, please check my profile and feel free to email me!
I'm just excited someone has one of my favorite novels of all time as a user name. Already a win!
Just a reminder.
The point of religion and beliefs is that it can't be proven. If gods existence could be proven we wouldn't believe anymore. We don't believe in gravity for example.
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Who cares? It. Is. Not. Real. Time to stop coddling religion. All religion is politics and all politics require force to power. Stop caring about nonsense.
> Who cares? It. Is. Not. Real.
Early Christian writings are real.
> All religion is politics and all politics require force to power.
Politics in religion - this is how we know those adherents have lost their way.
Religion has always been political.
The very language of religion is rooted in political and economic struggle. Concepts such as "guilt," "sin," and "redemption" originally emerged from ancient debates regarding debt, law, and social obligation. During the "Axial Age," major world religions like Buddhism, Christianity, and Islam developed specifically to address the social dislocations caused by the rise of markets, coinage, and professional armies. For example, the biblical "Law of Jubilee"—which mandated the cancellation of debts and freedom for bondservants—was a direct political intervention into the economic sphere. Similarly, the Christian concept of "redemption" was originally a financial term referring to buying back something (or someone) held as security for a loan.
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How is this technology related?
It doesn't have to be. From the guidelines (link at the bottom):
On-Topic: Anything that good hackers would find interesting. That includes more than hacking and startups. If you had to reduce it to a sentence, the answer might be: anything that gratifies one's intellectual curiosity
The actual way you reason today has in large part to do with your religious cultural heritage. This is true regardless of whether you accept it or not. To say that Christianity has not impacted western culture including thinking and reasoning would be naive at best.
Understanding this will help you to understand why you view the world and morality the way you do and in turn how you answer hard questions like technology's place in culture, life, workplace, etc.
Docetism is an early version of the Holographic Universe theory.
Religion is basically assembly for civilization?
Why is this being presented to the HN community?
Because it's interesting as hell. I'm Catholic, and clicking around in here there's practically nothing religious in it to me at all. No part of my own faith engages with Celsus Description of the Ophite Diagrams. But it sounds like something out of a Clive Barker book --- and, behold, it is like something out of a Clive Barker book:
This is like a weird parallel of Greek mythology. But it's got a little extra charge because it ostensibly plugs into a modern religion. Super fascinating.
Can I ask why do you identify as "Catholic" and not as "Christian"? I have seen that a few times and it does seem like attempt from you to essentially state that you are making your own religion. How much splintering off can you do and still call yourself Christian?
I am asking this in a purely curious way, btw!
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This is not an online bible, it's an archive of the surviving material from a movement that has had unimaginable reach and impact on the world we live. You can see first hand how diverse their thelogy was prior to canon and orthodox enclosure.
Why not? It's a wonderful summary of writings. I'm so glad I found this resource on HN.
As I said there, I've used this particular website many times. It's a great historical resource in some ways.
Why not? I have been on this particular website quite a few times, but there have been other pages linked on here which I haven't been to so much. It's good to have a variety of interests. I am getting a broader range of websites and articles off here than mainstream media.
Are there other such archives for other religions or cultures?
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Why not? They're nice stories. People like stories, even if they're entirely made up.
I guess maybe it does feel a bit like gross proselytizing. Hm.
The link includes all sorts of stuff that modern Christians generally consider heretical, so I don't think it's proselytizing.
Most people underestimate the diversity of beliefs in early Christianity. A lot of that was violently suppressed by Constantine, to the point that some of it was only dug up in the last century.
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I, also frequent this sight to avoid religious dogma.
That’s not a reason to visit this site.
One of the current top 100 posts relates to western religion. It’s easy to avoid if uninterested. I enjoy that every now and then we have an ancient history, archeology, theology, literature, futurism or etc. post make the front page.
Considering how often, say, lesswrong.com gets posted that may have been unwise.