Originally posted by divegeester
Slowness.

There's probably no Christian institution big enough to achieve such a thing ~ i.e. incorporating some new facts into Christian understanding/literature and seeing it adopted by large numbers of Christians ~ aside from the Catholic Church.

Originally posted by FMF
There's probably no Christian institution big enough to achieve such a thing ~ i.e. incorporating some new facts into Christian understanding/literature and seeing it adopted by large numbers of Christians ~ aside from the Catholic Church.

If there is new alleged information about Christ in these documents it will be very interesting but will likely not affect contemporary Christian canon. Consider these posibilities regarding new information:

It disagrees with current scripture - Christendom dismissess it as apocryphal, hearsay or lies. Non Christendom acuses Christendom of being closed, defensive and intellectually retarded (or words to that effect).

It agrees with current scripture - Christendom claims a "home run, slam-dunk, back-of-the-net" result. Non Christendom claims parallel plagiarism (as with the Gospels).

The whole thing is interesting but completely moot when it comes to the impact on Christianity. In my slightly jaundiced point of view anyway.

Originally posted by divegeester
It agrees with current scripture - Christendom claims a "home run, slam-dunk, back-of-the-net" result. Non Christendom claims parallel plagiarism (as with the Gospels).

The whole thing is interesting but completely moot when it comes to the impact on Christianity. In my slightly jaundiced point of view anyway.

The inclusion of Revelation took some brass balls. No part of Christendom could get away with something like that again. 😉

Originally posted by FMF
The inclusion of Revelation took some brass balls. No part of Christendom could get away with something like that again. 😉

Well I don't know; if I step away from my own belief in Christ for a moment and think about trying to create a new religion, then I would certainly want to include some deeply mysterious elements which could be interpreted by my followers but be seen as being completely incomprehensible to those on the outside. Surely this is the potion in all mystery religions, secret societies. Even the Freemasons for example.

Originally posted by divegeester
Well I don't know; if I step away from my own belief in Christ for a moment and think about trying to create a new religion, then I would certainly want to include some deeply mysterious elements which could be interpreted by my followers but be seen as being completely incomprehensible to those on the outside. Surely this is the potion in all mystery religions, secret societies. Even the Freemasons for example.

Some technocrat working for corporate Christianity's interests had a... er... vision... in which Jesus ~ decades after his death ~ appeared and said a whole load of things he didn't actually say during his lifetime, in private, to one person, who then wrote it all down and carefully tied it in with all the ancient mythology and literature that preceded it, most likely with help. And Christians have little choice but to accept its credibility because it was canonized ~ making it officially holy ~ in 419 AD.

Originally posted by FMF
There's probably no Christian institution big enough to achieve such a thing ~ i.e. incorporating some new facts into Christian understanding/literature and seeing it adopted by large numbers of Christians ~ aside from the Catholic Church.

I suppose, come to think of it (which I do), the Mormons and the JWs did incorporate stuff, albeit affecting believers in Christ on a smaller scale.

Originally posted by FreakyKBH
It wouldn't be surprising to see a reference to Christ/Christianity or the absence thereof.
By the time of the eruption, Paul had been preaching the Gospel throughout the Mediterranean region for over three decades, and in the same year Paul evangelized in Greece (49 AD), the emperor Claudius expelled Christians from the city of Rome.
Fifteen years befor ...[text shortened]... ly had his works to go on in explaining the human experience, would we conclude there is no God?

Claudius didn't expel Christians from Rome he expelled Jews who were rioting at the instigation of "Chrestus". Chrestus could either be a misspelling of Christ or it could mean a "good" slave. It's very unlikely that there will be any references to Christianity in that library. It really won't have impinged on mainstream Roman thinking by then. At that time the Romans couldn't distinguish between Christians and Jews. This is about 20 years before Tacitus wrote his Annals and Tacitus gives Christ one brief mention, if that wasn't a later Christian interpolation. The library was started by one of Gaius Julius Ceasar's Grandfathers and will largely consist of older texts. The kind of records you need for information pertinent to Christianity from before 79 A.D. would be in Israel or Rome not Herculaneum.

Originally posted by DeepThought
I wouldn't have thought there'd be anything directly relevant to Christianity since they won't have had any records pertinent to Christianity in Herculaneum in 79 A.D.. It might give us information about the old Roman religion, along with numerous otherwise lost philosophical works which may shed light on later Christian thinking. They're still in the ...[text shortened]... ompressed longitudinally as well as being rolled up, so they have quite a lot of decoding to do.

Except that Paul was in Rome somewhere around that time and had made converts from the house of Caesar. Not that I think Lucius Calpurnius Piso Caesoninus would have noticed.

Originally posted by FMF
Some technocrat working for corporate Christianity's interests had a... er... vision... in which Jesus ~ decades after his death ~ appeared and said a whole load of things he didn't actually say during his lifetime, in private, to one person, who then wrote it all down and carefully tied it in with all the ancient mythology and literature that preceded it, most ...[text shortened]... accept its credibility because it was canonized ~ making it officially holy ~ in 419 AD.

There's a whole lot of denial going on in this thread, and we don't even know yet what kinds of things are in these scrolls.

Apparently, the Church isn't the only one with motive for making stuff up.

Originally posted by josephw
Except that Paul was in Rome somewhere around that time and had made converts from the house of Caesar. Not that I think Lucius Calpurnius Piso Caesoninus would have noticed.

Since Lucius Calpurnius died in 43 B.C.. we can be certain of that. I think that if there is anything of relevance to Christianity to be found in the library then it will be philosophical works which influenced early Christian thinking rather than histories. If they do manage to extract currently lost works then there is the rather nice paradox that something as destructive as the Vesuvius eruption preserved works which would otherwise have been lost.

Edit: I made a mistake in my earlier post, he was Caesar's father-in-law.

Originally posted by Suzianne
There's a whole lot of denial going on in this thread, and we don't even know yet what kinds of things are in these scrolls.

Apparently, the Church isn't the only one with motive for making stuff up.

The stuff about Revelation is clearly a deviation from the thread's OP.

Originally posted by Suzianne
There's a whole lot of denial going on in this thread, and we don't even know yet what kinds of things are in these scrolls.

Apparently, the Church isn't the only one with motive for making stuff up.

Ever wonder if trolls, constipated with frustration and unhappiness, perform their daily ablutions in private written correspondence and postcards with the same frequency and abandon as they they do in online public forums?

Originally posted by Grampy Bobby
Ever wonder if trolls, constipated with frustration and unhappiness, perform their daily ablutions in private written correspondence and postcards with the same frequency and abandon as they they do in online public forums?

I take it you disagree with my opinions about the nature of historical evidence and the credibility of Revelation, Grampy Bobby. 😛

Originally posted by FMF
I take it you disagree with my opinions about the nature of historical evidence and the credibility of Revelation, Grampy Bobby. 😛

The above question only focuses on "trolls".

Originally posted by Grampy Bobby
The above question only focuses on "trolls".

You seem to be trying to stir emotion or 'land a blow' with an otherwise substance-free post.