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!
"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.
I think that diff algorithms have more in common with traditional, “lower” textual criticism than with the sort of source criticism canjobear is pondering.
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.
Not only that, but there are both non western Christian traditional (middle eastern, Ethiopian, Indian) and these are both accepted in the major churches (e.g. the Syro-Malabar rite within the Catholic church) and encouraged (its called inculturation).
> For example, among evangelicals there is this paranoia of anything that might be considered pagan.
Many Christians also see much of value in aspects of paganism. its pretty mainstream - for example CS Lewis argues that God can reveal himself to pagans too (there is quite a bit about this in The Pilgrims Regress).
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.
One important bit of background to it is that people had been arguing (and it had been the accepted view) that the creation stories were just stories pretty much from the beginning. Augustine and Origen, for example.
I think the division your are referring to may be true of American evangelical churches, but its not true of Christianity globally. "Modernist" is not a good term for a view that has been around (and generally accepted) for most of two millennia.
Those unable or unwilling to expend cognitive effort love black & white thinking & are also easily swayed by emotional manipulation.
It doesn't help that they attract power hungry sociopaths who seek to influence them for profit.
Of course, the only way I can think of to address this would be for the state to violate the first amendment & promote the concept that anyone who believes in Hell condemns themselves to Hell. (Matthew 7:1-2)
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.
It’s a legit religion. People go every Sunday for prayer, worship, etc.
Political movements tend to be ecumenical - across religious boundaries. The Civil Rights movement was a political movement, as was the labor movement, etc.
> I think the religiosity of the US is an illusion.
I grew up in the Bible Belt around Baptists and Evangelicals and even a few Pentecostals. I assure you it isn't an illusion.
While there may be some outliers and grifters, particularly where religion intersects with politics (I doubt Trump believes in God half as much as Evangelicals believe in him) the vast majority of these people absolutely do believe what they say, and that they're right with God.
When I lived in the bible belt, I had a hilarious idea for a "student film" project on the life and times of Jesus. Stuff like using little-kids' floaties on his ankles to walk on water, accidentally raising an undead zombie, etc. My good friend told me he couldn't morally participate in the project.
We were 18 and he should have been able to laugh at a funny project but he saw it as insulting an important deity. What a sad and limited life organized religion constructed around him.
I also remember when my father started dating and he complained to me that he always made it clear that he was an atheist but then a few dates in the women would start talking about their faith and getting all Christy. I was incredulous and explained that it had always been that way since we moved there. He just wasn't divorced yet, so he didn't notice.
These people's lives are all about their faith. It's a fucking brain rot. It's a sickness and it greatly contributes to the misery of others.
I can understand your POV. My parents were atheists. Then, in college, it was just assumed everyone was one. So, I just accepted that as truth. I went on to read all the philosophy and religions. I always avoided Jesus though because honestly his name was a "bad word" in my crowd. Then, a few years ago I picked up the Gospel (nothing else) and decided to read it for informational purposes. And, it stuck with me. Then, I kept reading more and more, and realized that it was all cohesive and coherent. And, for years I tried to find flaws, but it was just too good and life changing and real.
What I mean is that for some people, the Gospel toggle some previously unknown bits in the brain that activates and transforms them. And, worship just becomes what they do. It's the freedom of it - they become unshackled. I really don't know how to describe it in a way that my previous atheist self would understand.
You seem to have an almost religious devotion to your worldview. Which makes sense: it works for you and you feel compelled to convince others. You also limit yourself to thoughts and practices that align with these views. Imagine for a moment that this is also true of other people for other beliefs.
If you read about early christianity (which I did for 18months), you will see that the "gospel" is a mess.
If you couldn't find flaws, you are clearly biased. Even religious institutions have found flaws. The contradictions are so well published that you have to ignore them to not know about them,
I don't think you have any true knowledge of the history of your faith (said the atheist).
I can’t speak for your friend, but as a former atheist who brcame a Christian (albeit a very mediocre one) I feel like I can see both sides of this so perhaps I can offer a perspective that might help you understand each other better.
When I was an atheist, I assumed that anyone who didn’t care for the kinds of jokes you mentioned was worried that God would zap them with a lightning bolt.
Now I see it a little differently: if you see something as being of great importance, then it simply feels off / wrong / weird / missing the point to treat it as if it’s of little or no importance. In a word, it feels cringe. If such a project holds no allure for you, then you’re not missing much by sitting it out.
Not to harsh on your sense of humor, but I hope it might help to understand your friend better.
If an atheist has a weak explanation of religiosity, perhaps that atheist gets infected with religion.
It shouldn't come as great revelation, to an atheist, that to those infected with a mind virus it "feels cringe" when anything attacks the virus. That's its whole mechanism of action, its fangs. Besides, there's things like faith healing, and gospel churches, and the phrase "religious ecstacy", and all these other signs of the religious getting off on religion, so it should be obvious that they're defending something that feels precious, and are not merely terrorized.
However, if the atheist instead made a shallow assumption that religiosity is simple fear of a smiting bogeyman god, then it would come as a revelation that the religious are in fact having euphoric feelings, and this might be mistaken by the now ex-atheist for divine revelation of the way and the truth and the light, as the fangs sink in.
Using the "mind virus" language of the Right isn't helpful. We know it's a disease. They claim treating people with respect is a disease. Don't reinforce that.
> ...he should have been able to laugh at a funny project but he saw it as
> insulting an important deity.
He may have been an outlier. I know that I've heard god-jokes from the pulpits of evangelical (using that in the sense it was used 30 years ago). The one I remember best is about the difference between a dog and a cat (based on evidence of how their master treats them, the dog thinks its owner is god, the cat thinks he is god--that's a synopsis, it was much funnier in the full version).
No. My mother also told me I shouldn't joke about Jesus when I relayed a pretty harmless joke to her. It's a thing in the midwest.
I recognize the pet-God joke. I shared a meme pic with my partner that had that. Regarding cats and dogs, it's completely accurate. Our cats are in charge more than we are (or so they think).
What the fuck are you talking about? My mother didn't laugh at a joke because Jesus was in it. That's the kind of adherence that leads to hurting people because they disagree with you. Religion is stupid, it hurts people.
> I grew up in the Bible Belt around Baptists and Evangelicals and even a few Pentecostals. I assure you it isn't an illusion.
The religiosity might be an illusion, but in many cases the religion is drifting away from Christianity. It has certainly very different from traditional Christianity in the rest of the world. Many fundamentalists themselves will say that the major churches are not really Christians, which implies they are not the same religion as the major churches. Other American groups have broken with Christian theology in major ways, such as rejecting the trinity of the incarnation. Some have their own scriptures. Many have beliefs that are not taken from either Christian scriptures or tradition.
> I doubt Trump believes in God half as much as Evangelicals believe in him
Again, if he does, his beliefs are significantly different from traditional Christianity. He seems to know very little about what Christians believe - he once tweeted "Happy Good Friday"!
Then again the Bible has a lot to say about the rich, none of it good.
If you took Jesus' teachings and stripped the name off, would most of these people agree with them? Things like welcoming the foreigner and treating them as one of your own, not judging others, etc.?
I don't think using the name and trappings of a religion as a cultural label and dog whistle is the same as sincere belief.
Scripture is pretty clear the name of Christ matters. The genealogies refer to a specific individual, not a message. The Epistles even single out Christ’s name as worthy of praise.
The messages of the gospel aren’t obvious, or obviously good. Without an actual man-god preaching them, I don’t see why we should love our enemies as we love ourselves.
They sincerely believe what they consider to be the teachings of Jesus. They aren't just using the name and trappings of a religion as a cultural label.
You can call them hypocrites, and maybe that's fair (most Christians are) but they are sincere.
It was an agency of the Spanish monarchy that aimed to strengthen the state, motivated by a history of being occupied by an empire, and fearing the the descendents of the former conquerors would be disloyal to the new state.
>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.
It's important to realize that Christianity has its own mystically inclined, ascetic and/or meditative practices. There may even be a shared lineage going back to the very time of Jesus, seeing as the Essenes drew significant inspiration from the Greek Cynics, and the Cynics in turn (like other Hellenistic philosophies) from early Eastern sources that are reflected today in Hinduism and Buddhism. Some Stoic ascetic practices were definitely taken up in early Christianity and are now valued in a Christian context as "spiritual exercises".
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.
There has never been a manuscript of a Gospel with anyone other than the traditional author attributed. And they’ve always been cited by the traditional names - even in Islamic, Jewish or heretical writings.
The arguments made in favour of Paul’s authenticity largely come from internal textual cues - but is that really more persuasive?
I don’t mean to suggest too strongly one side of the Gospel authorship debate over the other, only that these issues mix objective facts with subjective interpretation in a way that makes it very difficult to outsource to scholarly consensus.
Bible scholar Dan McClellan is on youtube and does short videos rebutting popular youtube/tiktok videos that make claims that aren't historical. Dan has said that the four names were not assigned to the texts until the second half of the 2nd century, probably around 180CE or so. That leaves 80-100 years where the books were in circulation before the naming convention was established.
The subject of authorship comes up frequently so he has addressed it a few times, but here is a short (under 7 minute) video. It isn't just an assertion, he gives reasons why he makes these claims:
There’s a big difference between the gospels not being cited by name directly, and not having a name. For example, the Gospels often cite Isaiah without using his name - just lifting direct quotes.
And there’re allusions to apostolic naming in things like Justin Martyr’s first apology, Ch67 (155CE, dating largely from it being co-addressed to Marcus Aurelius):
“ the memoirs of the apostles or the writings of the prophets are read, as long as time permit”
"Data over dogma." Dr. Dan McClellen is an engaging source for historically accurate interpretations and understandings of the bible. I encourage others to check his content out.
I am only repeating what modern scholarship has determined, wikipedia does far more justice than I could. Church tradition is far more assertive in authorship claims.
While Jesus is portrayed as extremely fluent in Jewish scripture, he's only ever shown to have written once and in the ground. Nothing exists indicating he ever wrote any works to be passed down. Some theologians theorize that Jesus purposely avoided writing due to parallels with the Old Testament's written laws that condemned man, while Jesus came to do the opposite.
I wouldn't expect God to go through the trouble of personally delivering his most important message then leave it to chance, knowing he wouldn't be around to answer questions and knowing nobody would write it down for decades, that only parts would survive, that there would be differences in interpretation. Knowing the fate of people who misunderstood.
Previously he wrote down ten commandments on stone tablets, and with his power he could easily write the most perfect book in a language everyone could understand that would leave no doubts as to what is required to be saved then ensure it survived forever. There would be no need for later writers on soteriology.
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.”
Yes, these are the central mysteries of Christianity. We have to reckon with imperfect people writing about a perfect person. And there is never any absolute proof or disproof. We make the justification by faith alone.
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.
I offer that intersection isn't definition. To run across politics and then need to navigate it doesn't transform an entity into a political one.
Folks who have transformed their faith into a political entity tended to utilize methods and beliefs that fall outside of the scope of the faith's founding principles (ex: Republican Jesus).
Jesus was very political. The archetype of the Messiah was understood to be explicitly political in the context of liberation from Roman occupation. Overturning the tables of the moneychangers was political. "Render unto Caesar what is Caesar's and Render unto God what is God's" is political. "It is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the Kingdom of God", "If anyone wants to sue you and take your shirt, let him have your coat also.", "If anyone slaps you on the right cheek, turn to them the other cheek also.", "Let the dead bury their own dead." All political.
"Supply side Jesus" obviously has nothing to do with Jesus' actual teachings but the faith's founding principles are inextricable from politics because those principles are inextricable from the followers' relationship with the world and its power structures.
You're not going to find, with me, a realm of life that's not fundamentally political—"the personal is political," and one's religious choices are social choices fundamentally shaping your relations to others. Think of Siddhartha Gauthama—his renunciation was a withdrawal from a governing class, not just from private life and, in his final instructions, the Buddha is portrayed as telling the monks to govern themselves on the model of the Vajjian republic: regular assemblies, harmony, shared resources, and respect for agreed rules.
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?
Can't speak for anyone else, but it is not unusual (nor new) for someone to describe themselves as "Catholic." Briefly, they usually mean that they are a member of the Roman Catholic Church. Wikipedia will provide a great deal of reading about it.
Neither is it unusual for someone to describe themselves as a particular Protestant denomination: Lutheran, Baptist, Methodist, Presbyterian, Episcopalian, et al. Again, Wikipedia is a good starting place.
People who simply describe themselves as "Christian" are what, in my experience at least, is relatively new. Going back, say, fifty years, it was somewhat unusual in many parts of the US to find people who described themselves that way.
In my experience, most of these people belong to one or another of what might be called non-denominational Christian churches. My preferred term for many of them is "contemporary American fundamentalist Christian," but that is not a widely used term, at least not that I know of.
Your question is strange enough that I'm honestly not sure whether or not you're trolling. If you are, as it seems you might be, a member of a contemporary American non-denominational Christian church, it is very weird, whether you know it or not, to suggest that a church that has existed for roughly two thousand years and has many more than a billion members wordwide is "splintering off" and "making [its] own religion."
That's weird to me because most Catholic people I know (Chicago is a very Catholic city) would identify themselves as "Catholic", not as "Christian". If you ask us "are you Christian", we'll say "yes", but it's not the word we use.
Maybe that's totally different for evangelicals or some other mainline denomination. I wouldn't know.
"Catholic" is just a Greek word that means "general, universal", derived from "kata holou" ("in accordance with the whole"). It's the opposite of a splintering off, though there is a viable argument that they splintered off of Orthodox Christianity (due originally to the filioque controversy, and arguably with broader differences relating e.g. to the worship of graven images, and the like).
I will actually argue that it is very useful and wish that more people started to be more specific about their faith. Firstly, stating that one is Catholic/Lutheran/... demonstrates that one understand that one is not representing the entire Christianity. Secondly, it is useful for discussion as it makes one's dogmas/axioms more explicit. And thirdly, it allows better granularity as some general teachings are really Christian (like the resurrection and most of the Credo) while other are specific to the tradition one follows (like the sacraments).
For example, a Catholic would hesitate to receive a "Christian eucharist" as the Catholic and protestant understanding of the Eucharist is so profoundly different
A final point, given the subject of the thread, is that since the Catholic Church regards itself as founded by Christ, it is older than the Bible, and that the Bible was primarily written by the Church, for the Church, to complement Tradition. They would consider splintering off Tradition and leaving Catholicism as moving away from Christ (as Christ is head of the Catholic Church)
A lot of people assume "Christian" implies American evangelical values and beliefs (especially online), and many people want to make it clear they do not share those - e.g. biblical literalism.
Its common for people of many denominations to specify their denomination. People often say they are Anglican or Orthodox or whatever.
I often experience this. I saw that a co worker had written something about God in their Twitter bio. "Are you a Christian?" "I'm a Catholic" they replied. Any other denomination would say "yes I'm a Christian" (there are no denominations in heaven, nor was there in the early church).
To understand this behaviour, it should be known that Catholics have introduced man made rules that they have additionally decided are not up for discussion (infallible) even if the Bible appears to say otherwise. Catholics teach that there is no salvation outside the church. By definition, this makes sense - the church is by definition a body of people who belong to Christ.
However what the catholics actually mean is "the Roman Catholic church". Whether your average Catholic realises this or not it's debatable, but the common clarification "I'm a Catholic" is because they have absorbed a corrupt teaching that only catholics can be saved.
Read this and the linked article at the bottom https://www.catholic.com/magazine/online-edition/is-there-re...
"I often experience this. I saw that a co worker had written something about God in their Twitter bio. 'Are you a Christian?' 'I'm a Catholic' they replied. Any other denomination would say 'yes I'm a Christian'"
I'm going to suggest that if you would find it surprising to have your question answered with "Yes, Greek Orthodox," or "Yes, Southern Baptist," or "Yes, United Methodist," or some similar variation, your personal experience may not be as broad or definitive as you seem to think it is.
Well it's a common question I've asked of people during my life, and only catholics ever make that distinction, almost a correction. And there's a reason why - because they think it's the one true church.
I'm not in the USA btw.
OK. I'm curious, roughly where are you? And if non-denominational, sort of generic "Christians" are common there now, what was the situation historically?
I'm in the UK.
Normal conversation: what did you do on Sunday? I was in church. "Oh are you a Christian" "yes".
Now, if the first person is not a Christian , that's often the end of the conversation.
If first person is also a Christian they would say "oh me too! What sort of church do you go to".
They might then answer, oh I got to st Luke's, have you heard of it. Or I go to so and so in the town. The baptist church? Yeah that one"
It's very unusual for a non Catholic to go straight to denominations in answer to the "are you a Christian", because that's not the question, and due to the appeal to unity, because of the belief that we're all part of god's family, rather than go straight for dividing lines. And never would anyone identify as "I'm a protestant", that would be odd.
OK thanks. By the UK, do you mean Great Britain? England? Something else?
As far as I know (admittedly not far), Christians in the UK are about one-third Church of England, one-third non-denominational, one-fifth Catholic, and the rest other. I think most of the growth in non-denominational Christian churches in the UK has taken place in my lifetime.
There is a particular part of the UK where, in fairly recent decades, I think self-identifying as "Protestant," as quite specifically opposed to "Catholic," was not at all odd, to use your word. Not sure of the extent to which that's still the case.
Here in (South-adjacent) Texas, if someone asks if I'm Christian, I'm likely to respond, "Well, I'm Episcopalian, if that counts" — because to some folks in this neck of the woods, Episcopalians aren't really Christians.
Edit: Nevermind apparently this is incorrect. This is just my take from trying to understand why we were Catholic and not Christian, and then avoiding being mistaken for 'Christian' later in life and not clarifying and staying in my lane. But I guess there is something else I don't understand going on.
'Christians' in the US don't consider Catholics 'Christians' (using quotes to show it's a group identifier based not solely on following Christs teachings). They (Christians) are also the newer splinter group. So Catholics have taken to identifying themselves as Catholics to 'stay in their lane' or to self identify to the 'Christians' that they aren't part of the accepted/in group. Catholics were lower status historically, look at the talk around Kennedy. Also Christians might not want to be friendly with Catholics but they would with Christians, so you out yourself as Catholic from the start to avoid that bullshit (so back to 'stay in your lane').
The two have very different approaches to religion, with Catholics following the 'love they neighbor' 'care for the poor' live Jesus' teachings and Christians building mega churches and following prosperity gospel. Or most upsetting to my grandma, the Christian holy roller stuff. Or more upsetting to the Christians Mother Mary in the Catholic church.
When I was a kid there was also a huge racial element. WASPs versus Catholic congregations made up of Italians, Irish, Filipinos, Latin Americans, Middle Easterners and Germans.
But from my experience it's largely the 'stay in your lane' thing. I've had people be friendly with me because since I was christian they assumed I was Christian christian, and when they found out I was Catholic they stopped talking to me (past tense as I'm not really religious).
I don't think any of this is really true? If I was Lutheran, I assume I'd just describe myself as "Lutheran".
This whole subthread is pretty weird. There's no deeper meaning to my describing myself as "Catholic". It's how any Catholic would describe themselves.
I encountered such discussions living overseas. For people who come from traditions from outside the Christian world, few know the differences between the various branches or the complex history or rites or terminology, and tend to lump them all in together regardless of the identity or faith of the person they’re speaking with. This is also true of outsiders regarding Islam, Buddhism, or other religions with long and splintered histories.
TBH it’s hard for many people who were raised in a specific Christian faith to concisely explain many of the differences themselves … I would struggle when asked “what’s the difference between Catholicism and Christianity“ or “Catholics and Baptists” back then.
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.
Are you looking for a yes/no answer, or for someone else to do the legwork for you?
I'll save you some time, the answer to you question is unequivocally: no. There are no other such archives for other religions or cultures. Just this one website.
Mileage may vary! The basic problem for an English speaker is that some languages are more translated than others. There are far more people translating from Greek, Hebrew and Latin works, than from Tibetan or Ge'ez (an Ethiopian language).
I've heard about the Taoist canon recently, which is seemingly vast, and despite Chinese being a major language, and a substantial number of people knowing both Chinese and English... Only a fraction of the Taoist canon is available in English.
There is a basic problem with some eastern texts, i.e. that many have not been translated into English. I was watching a video on Taoism recently, and a huge number of their scriptures are unavailable in English.
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.
Or perhaps those who are saying otherwise are trying to spread their own mind virus.
It is interesting how derisive your comment is compared to those who are in support of interesting and diverging content.
I am, however a bit confused by your comment as I have read several posts this week that had absolutely nothing to do with software/technology and most interestingly only two having to do anything with a compiler. Are you saying we should only post about compilers.
I am waiting to be enlightened by your list of acceptable topics and content.
I find it all fascinating, and I'm closer to being an atheist than any sort of Christian. There are so many religions in the world, and people have worshiped so many different Gods. And most of them think theirs is correct and all the rest are misguided, at best.
I am absolutely not a Jesus freak and I find it interesting because I find ancient culture, sociology and mythology interesting.
But I do get where you're coming from. Whenever a topic like this comes up a Christian will inevitably show up to proselytize (it should be considered a corollary to Godwin's Law.)
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.
This satisfies people's intellectual curiosity, therefore it's "Hacker News."
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!
"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.
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.
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.
Not only that, but there are both non western Christian traditional (middle eastern, Ethiopian, Indian) and these are both accepted in the major churches (e.g. the Syro-Malabar rite within the Catholic church) and encouraged (its called inculturation).
> For example, among evangelicals there is this paranoia of anything that might be considered pagan.
Many Christians also see much of value in aspects of paganism. its pretty mainstream - for example CS Lewis argues that God can reveal himself to pagans too (there is quite a bit about this in The Pilgrims Regress).
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.
One important bit of background to it is that people had been arguing (and it had been the accepted view) that the creation stories were just stories pretty much from the beginning. Augustine and Origen, for example.
I think the division your are referring to may be true of American evangelical churches, but its not true of Christianity globally. "Modernist" is not a good term for a view that has been around (and generally accepted) for most of two millennia.
Those unable or unwilling to expend cognitive effort love black & white thinking & are also easily swayed by emotional manipulation.
It doesn't help that they attract power hungry sociopaths who seek to influence them for profit.
Of course, the only way I can think of to address this would be for the state to violate the first amendment & promote the concept that anyone who believes in Hell condemns themselves to Hell. (Matthew 7:1-2)
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.
It’s a legit religion. People go every Sunday for prayer, worship, etc.
Political movements tend to be ecumenical - across religious boundaries. The Civil Rights movement was a political movement, as was the labor movement, etc.
> I think the religiosity of the US is an illusion.
I grew up in the Bible Belt around Baptists and Evangelicals and even a few Pentecostals. I assure you it isn't an illusion.
While there may be some outliers and grifters, particularly where religion intersects with politics (I doubt Trump believes in God half as much as Evangelicals believe in him) the vast majority of these people absolutely do believe what they say, and that they're right with God.
This is the depressing reality.
When I lived in the bible belt, I had a hilarious idea for a "student film" project on the life and times of Jesus. Stuff like using little-kids' floaties on his ankles to walk on water, accidentally raising an undead zombie, etc. My good friend told me he couldn't morally participate in the project.
We were 18 and he should have been able to laugh at a funny project but he saw it as insulting an important deity. What a sad and limited life organized religion constructed around him.
I also remember when my father started dating and he complained to me that he always made it clear that he was an atheist but then a few dates in the women would start talking about their faith and getting all Christy. I was incredulous and explained that it had always been that way since we moved there. He just wasn't divorced yet, so he didn't notice.
These people's lives are all about their faith. It's a fucking brain rot. It's a sickness and it greatly contributes to the misery of others.
I can understand your POV. My parents were atheists. Then, in college, it was just assumed everyone was one. So, I just accepted that as truth. I went on to read all the philosophy and religions. I always avoided Jesus though because honestly his name was a "bad word" in my crowd. Then, a few years ago I picked up the Gospel (nothing else) and decided to read it for informational purposes. And, it stuck with me. Then, I kept reading more and more, and realized that it was all cohesive and coherent. And, for years I tried to find flaws, but it was just too good and life changing and real.
I too like some philosophers. One or two of them were writing back in the iron age. But I don't worship them.
exactly - the worship part is essential, having obedience to good
Ideas should speak for themselves and compete fairly on their own merits, and there should be no faith.
What I mean is that for some people, the Gospel toggle some previously unknown bits in the brain that activates and transforms them. And, worship just becomes what they do. It's the freedom of it - they become unshackled. I really don't know how to describe it in a way that my previous atheist self would understand.
> It's the freedom of it - they become unshackled.
Slave. That's what you describe.
I'm not attacking you when I say this: drugs can get you there, too.
How about "shackled" instead of "unshackled"? That might make the thing you're describing seem less extraordinary.
You seem to have an almost religious devotion to your worldview. Which makes sense: it works for you and you feel compelled to convince others. You also limit yourself to thoughts and practices that align with these views. Imagine for a moment that this is also true of other people for other beliefs.
What are you trying to argue? This is nonsensical.
If you read about early christianity (which I did for 18months), you will see that the "gospel" is a mess.
If you couldn't find flaws, you are clearly biased. Even religious institutions have found flaws. The contradictions are so well published that you have to ignore them to not know about them,
I don't think you have any true knowledge of the history of your faith (said the atheist).
Hi!
I can’t speak for your friend, but as a former atheist who brcame a Christian (albeit a very mediocre one) I feel like I can see both sides of this so perhaps I can offer a perspective that might help you understand each other better.
When I was an atheist, I assumed that anyone who didn’t care for the kinds of jokes you mentioned was worried that God would zap them with a lightning bolt.
Now I see it a little differently: if you see something as being of great importance, then it simply feels off / wrong / weird / missing the point to treat it as if it’s of little or no importance. In a word, it feels cringe. If such a project holds no allure for you, then you’re not missing much by sitting it out.
Not to harsh on your sense of humor, but I hope it might help to understand your friend better.
If an atheist has a weak explanation of religiosity, perhaps that atheist gets infected with religion.
It shouldn't come as great revelation, to an atheist, that to those infected with a mind virus it "feels cringe" when anything attacks the virus. That's its whole mechanism of action, its fangs. Besides, there's things like faith healing, and gospel churches, and the phrase "religious ecstacy", and all these other signs of the religious getting off on religion, so it should be obvious that they're defending something that feels precious, and are not merely terrorized.
However, if the atheist instead made a shallow assumption that religiosity is simple fear of a smiting bogeyman god, then it would come as a revelation that the religious are in fact having euphoric feelings, and this might be mistaken by the now ex-atheist for divine revelation of the way and the truth and the light, as the fangs sink in.
Using the "mind virus" language of the Right isn't helpful. We know it's a disease. They claim treating people with respect is a disease. Don't reinforce that.
> ...he should have been able to laugh at a funny project but he saw it as > insulting an important deity.
He may have been an outlier. I know that I've heard god-jokes from the pulpits of evangelical (using that in the sense it was used 30 years ago). The one I remember best is about the difference between a dog and a cat (based on evidence of how their master treats them, the dog thinks its owner is god, the cat thinks he is god--that's a synopsis, it was much funnier in the full version).
No. My mother also told me I shouldn't joke about Jesus when I relayed a pretty harmless joke to her. It's a thing in the midwest.
I recognize the pet-God joke. I shared a meme pic with my partner that had that. Regarding cats and dogs, it's completely accurate. Our cats are in charge more than we are (or so they think).
You wanted to make a mockery of that which he held sacred and you're surprised he didn't want to participate?
Did you also suggest wearing blackface, telling women to get back in the kitchen, and burning the Quran?
What the fuck are you talking about? My mother didn't laugh at a joke because Jesus was in it. That's the kind of adherence that leads to hurting people because they disagree with you. Religion is stupid, it hurts people.
Edit: letter
> I grew up in the Bible Belt around Baptists and Evangelicals and even a few Pentecostals. I assure you it isn't an illusion.
The religiosity might be an illusion, but in many cases the religion is drifting away from Christianity. It has certainly very different from traditional Christianity in the rest of the world. Many fundamentalists themselves will say that the major churches are not really Christians, which implies they are not the same religion as the major churches. Other American groups have broken with Christian theology in major ways, such as rejecting the trinity of the incarnation. Some have their own scriptures. Many have beliefs that are not taken from either Christian scriptures or tradition.
> I doubt Trump believes in God half as much as Evangelicals believe in him
Again, if he does, his beliefs are significantly different from traditional Christianity. He seems to know very little about what Christians believe - he once tweeted "Happy Good Friday"!
Then again the Bible has a lot to say about the rich, none of it good.
If you took Jesus' teachings and stripped the name off, would most of these people agree with them? Things like welcoming the foreigner and treating them as one of your own, not judging others, etc.?
I don't think using the name and trappings of a religion as a cultural label and dog whistle is the same as sincere belief.
Scripture is pretty clear the name of Christ matters. The genealogies refer to a specific individual, not a message. The Epistles even single out Christ’s name as worthy of praise.
The messages of the gospel aren’t obvious, or obviously good. Without an actual man-god preaching them, I don’t see why we should love our enemies as we love ourselves.
They sincerely believe what they consider to be the teachings of Jesus. They aren't just using the name and trappings of a religion as a cultural label.
You can call them hypocrites, and maybe that's fair (most Christians are) but they are sincere.
What about the Spanish Inquisition?
Nobody expects it
What about it?
It was an agency of the Spanish monarchy that aimed to strengthen the state, motivated by a history of being occupied by an empire, and fearing the the descendents of the former conquerors would be disloyal to the new state.
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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.
I have also found similarities with things in the Bhagavad Gita. Paramahansa Yogananda also writes on this topic.
It's important to realize that Christianity has its own mystically inclined, ascetic and/or meditative practices. There may even be a shared lineage going back to the very time of Jesus, seeing as the Essenes drew significant inspiration from the Greek Cynics, and the Cynics in turn (like other Hellenistic philosophies) from early Eastern sources that are reflected today in Hinduism and Buddhism. Some Stoic ascetic practices were definitely taken up in early Christianity and are now valued in a Christian context as "spiritual exercises".
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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!
Is this a decent translation?
http://www.gnosis.org/naghamm/thunder.html
It's the same translation provided at the collection mentioned in the post. https://earlychristianwritings.com/text/thunder.html
Here's a more recent rendition https://diotima-doctafemina.org/translations/coptic/the-thun...
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.
There has never been a manuscript of a Gospel with anyone other than the traditional author attributed. And they’ve always been cited by the traditional names - even in Islamic, Jewish or heretical writings.
The arguments made in favour of Paul’s authenticity largely come from internal textual cues - but is that really more persuasive?
I don’t mean to suggest too strongly one side of the Gospel authorship debate over the other, only that these issues mix objective facts with subjective interpretation in a way that makes it very difficult to outsource to scholarly consensus.
Bible scholar Dan McClellan is on youtube and does short videos rebutting popular youtube/tiktok videos that make claims that aren't historical. Dan has said that the four names were not assigned to the texts until the second half of the 2nd century, probably around 180CE or so. That leaves 80-100 years where the books were in circulation before the naming convention was established.
The subject of authorship comes up frequently so he has addressed it a few times, but here is a short (under 7 minute) video. It isn't just an assertion, he gives reasons why he makes these claims:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xxyiUg1D6N0
There’s a big difference between the gospels not being cited by name directly, and not having a name. For example, the Gospels often cite Isaiah without using his name - just lifting direct quotes.
And there’re allusions to apostolic naming in things like Justin Martyr’s first apology, Ch67 (155CE, dating largely from it being co-addressed to Marcus Aurelius):
“ the memoirs of the apostles or the writings of the prophets are read, as long as time permit”
https://www.ccel.org/ccel/schaff/anf01.viii.ii.lxvii.html
"Data over dogma." Dr. Dan McClellen is an engaging source for historically accurate interpretations and understandings of the bible. I encourage others to check his content out.
Which ones do you think are undisputed? And why do you think the others are disputed?
I am only repeating what modern scholarship has determined, wikipedia does far more justice than I could. Church tradition is far more assertive in authorship claims.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Authorship_of_the_Pauline_epis...
I would expect Jesus to be the earliest writer.
While Jesus is portrayed as extremely fluent in Jewish scripture, he's only ever shown to have written once and in the ground. Nothing exists indicating he ever wrote any works to be passed down. Some theologians theorize that Jesus purposely avoided writing due to parallels with the Old Testament's written laws that condemned man, while Jesus came to do the opposite.
Why?
I wouldn't expect God to go through the trouble of personally delivering his most important message then leave it to chance, knowing he wouldn't be around to answer questions and knowing nobody would write it down for decades, that only parts would survive, that there would be differences in interpretation. Knowing the fate of people who misunderstood.
Previously he wrote down ten commandments on stone tablets, and with his power he could easily write the most perfect book in a language everyone could understand that would leave no doubts as to what is required to be saved then ensure it survived forever. There would be no need for later writers on soteriology.
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.
Yes, these are the central mysteries of Christianity. We have to reckon with imperfect people writing about a perfect person. And there is never any absolute proof or disproof. We make the justification by faith alone.
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.
I offer that intersection isn't definition. To run across politics and then need to navigate it doesn't transform an entity into a political one.
Folks who have transformed their faith into a political entity tended to utilize methods and beliefs that fall outside of the scope of the faith's founding principles (ex: Republican Jesus).
Jesus was very political. The archetype of the Messiah was understood to be explicitly political in the context of liberation from Roman occupation. Overturning the tables of the moneychangers was political. "Render unto Caesar what is Caesar's and Render unto God what is God's" is political. "It is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the Kingdom of God", "If anyone wants to sue you and take your shirt, let him have your coat also.", "If anyone slaps you on the right cheek, turn to them the other cheek also.", "Let the dead bury their own dead." All political.
"Supply side Jesus" obviously has nothing to do with Jesus' actual teachings but the faith's founding principles are inextricable from politics because those principles are inextricable from the followers' relationship with the world and its power structures.
You're not going to find, with me, a realm of life that's not fundamentally political—"the personal is political," and one's religious choices are social choices fundamentally shaping your relations to others. Think of Siddhartha Gauthama—his renunciation was a withdrawal from a governing class, not just from private life and, in his final instructions, the Buddha is portrayed as telling the monks to govern themselves on the model of the Vajjian republic: regular assemblies, harmony, shared resources, and respect for agreed rules.
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!
Can't speak for anyone else, but it is not unusual (nor new) for someone to describe themselves as "Catholic." Briefly, they usually mean that they are a member of the Roman Catholic Church. Wikipedia will provide a great deal of reading about it.
Neither is it unusual for someone to describe themselves as a particular Protestant denomination: Lutheran, Baptist, Methodist, Presbyterian, Episcopalian, et al. Again, Wikipedia is a good starting place.
People who simply describe themselves as "Christian" are what, in my experience at least, is relatively new. Going back, say, fifty years, it was somewhat unusual in many parts of the US to find people who described themselves that way.
In my experience, most of these people belong to one or another of what might be called non-denominational Christian churches. My preferred term for many of them is "contemporary American fundamentalist Christian," but that is not a widely used term, at least not that I know of.
Your question is strange enough that I'm honestly not sure whether or not you're trolling. If you are, as it seems you might be, a member of a contemporary American non-denominational Christian church, it is very weird, whether you know it or not, to suggest that a church that has existed for roughly two thousand years and has many more than a billion members wordwide is "splintering off" and "making [its] own religion."
That's weird to me because most Catholic people I know (Chicago is a very Catholic city) would identify themselves as "Catholic", not as "Christian". If you ask us "are you Christian", we'll say "yes", but it's not the word we use.
Maybe that's totally different for evangelicals or some other mainline denomination. I wouldn't know.
"Catholic" is just a Greek word that means "general, universal", derived from "kata holou" ("in accordance with the whole"). It's the opposite of a splintering off, though there is a viable argument that they splintered off of Orthodox Christianity (due originally to the filioque controversy, and arguably with broader differences relating e.g. to the worship of graven images, and the like).
Right, I was taught that in 4th grade by the nuns.
What I was not taught was the archontic ass-demon Thaphabaoth.
Standards have dropped.
I will actually argue that it is very useful and wish that more people started to be more specific about their faith. Firstly, stating that one is Catholic/Lutheran/... demonstrates that one understand that one is not representing the entire Christianity. Secondly, it is useful for discussion as it makes one's dogmas/axioms more explicit. And thirdly, it allows better granularity as some general teachings are really Christian (like the resurrection and most of the Credo) while other are specific to the tradition one follows (like the sacraments).
For example, a Catholic would hesitate to receive a "Christian eucharist" as the Catholic and protestant understanding of the Eucharist is so profoundly different
A final point, given the subject of the thread, is that since the Catholic Church regards itself as founded by Christ, it is older than the Bible, and that the Bible was primarily written by the Church, for the Church, to complement Tradition. They would consider splintering off Tradition and leaving Catholicism as moving away from Christ (as Christ is head of the Catholic Church)
Its more information in one word.
A lot of people assume "Christian" implies American evangelical values and beliefs (especially online), and many people want to make it clear they do not share those - e.g. biblical literalism.
Its common for people of many denominations to specify their denomination. People often say they are Anglican or Orthodox or whatever.
I often experience this. I saw that a co worker had written something about God in their Twitter bio. "Are you a Christian?" "I'm a Catholic" they replied. Any other denomination would say "yes I'm a Christian" (there are no denominations in heaven, nor was there in the early church).
To understand this behaviour, it should be known that Catholics have introduced man made rules that they have additionally decided are not up for discussion (infallible) even if the Bible appears to say otherwise. Catholics teach that there is no salvation outside the church. By definition, this makes sense - the church is by definition a body of people who belong to Christ. However what the catholics actually mean is "the Roman Catholic church". Whether your average Catholic realises this or not it's debatable, but the common clarification "I'm a Catholic" is because they have absorbed a corrupt teaching that only catholics can be saved. Read this and the linked article at the bottom https://www.catholic.com/magazine/online-edition/is-there-re...
"I often experience this. I saw that a co worker had written something about God in their Twitter bio. 'Are you a Christian?' 'I'm a Catholic' they replied. Any other denomination would say 'yes I'm a Christian'"
I'm going to suggest that if you would find it surprising to have your question answered with "Yes, Greek Orthodox," or "Yes, Southern Baptist," or "Yes, United Methodist," or some similar variation, your personal experience may not be as broad or definitive as you seem to think it is.
Well it's a common question I've asked of people during my life, and only catholics ever make that distinction, almost a correction. And there's a reason why - because they think it's the one true church. I'm not in the USA btw.
OK. I'm curious, roughly where are you? And if non-denominational, sort of generic "Christians" are common there now, what was the situation historically?
I'm in the UK. Normal conversation: what did you do on Sunday? I was in church. "Oh are you a Christian" "yes". Now, if the first person is not a Christian , that's often the end of the conversation. If first person is also a Christian they would say "oh me too! What sort of church do you go to". They might then answer, oh I got to st Luke's, have you heard of it. Or I go to so and so in the town. The baptist church? Yeah that one" It's very unusual for a non Catholic to go straight to denominations in answer to the "are you a Christian", because that's not the question, and due to the appeal to unity, because of the belief that we're all part of god's family, rather than go straight for dividing lines. And never would anyone identify as "I'm a protestant", that would be odd.
OK thanks. By the UK, do you mean Great Britain? England? Something else?
As far as I know (admittedly not far), Christians in the UK are about one-third Church of England, one-third non-denominational, one-fifth Catholic, and the rest other. I think most of the growth in non-denominational Christian churches in the UK has taken place in my lifetime.
There is a particular part of the UK where, in fairly recent decades, I think self-identifying as "Protestant," as quite specifically opposed to "Catholic," was not at all odd, to use your word. Not sure of the extent to which that's still the case.
I was never taught anything like this and am "Catholic" rather than "Episcopalian" the same way a Baptist isn't "Episcopalian".
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ANNX_XiuA78
Here in (South-adjacent) Texas, if someone asks if I'm Christian, I'm likely to respond, "Well, I'm Episcopalian, if that counts" — because to some folks in this neck of the woods, Episcopalians aren't really Christians.
Like, I believe this is a thing, but it's a not a thing in Chicagoland. :)
It would sound weird if I described myself as "Christian" here. I think I'd get asked "uh, what kind?"
Edit: Nevermind apparently this is incorrect. This is just my take from trying to understand why we were Catholic and not Christian, and then avoiding being mistaken for 'Christian' later in life and not clarifying and staying in my lane. But I guess there is something else I don't understand going on.
'Christians' in the US don't consider Catholics 'Christians' (using quotes to show it's a group identifier based not solely on following Christs teachings). They (Christians) are also the newer splinter group. So Catholics have taken to identifying themselves as Catholics to 'stay in their lane' or to self identify to the 'Christians' that they aren't part of the accepted/in group. Catholics were lower status historically, look at the talk around Kennedy. Also Christians might not want to be friendly with Catholics but they would with Christians, so you out yourself as Catholic from the start to avoid that bullshit (so back to 'stay in your lane').
The two have very different approaches to religion, with Catholics following the 'love they neighbor' 'care for the poor' live Jesus' teachings and Christians building mega churches and following prosperity gospel. Or most upsetting to my grandma, the Christian holy roller stuff. Or more upsetting to the Christians Mother Mary in the Catholic church.
When I was a kid there was also a huge racial element. WASPs versus Catholic congregations made up of Italians, Irish, Filipinos, Latin Americans, Middle Easterners and Germans.
But from my experience it's largely the 'stay in your lane' thing. I've had people be friendly with me because since I was christian they assumed I was Christian christian, and when they found out I was Catholic they stopped talking to me (past tense as I'm not really religious).
I don't think any of this is really true? If I was Lutheran, I assume I'd just describe myself as "Lutheran".
This whole subthread is pretty weird. There's no deeper meaning to my describing myself as "Catholic". It's how any Catholic would describe themselves.
I encountered such discussions living overseas. For people who come from traditions from outside the Christian world, few know the differences between the various branches or the complex history or rites or terminology, and tend to lump them all in together regardless of the identity or faith of the person they’re speaking with. This is also true of outsiders regarding Islam, Buddhism, or other religions with long and splintered histories.
TBH it’s hard for many people who were raised in a specific Christian faith to concisely explain many of the differences themselves … I would struggle when asked “what’s the difference between Catholicism and Christianity“ or “Catholics and Baptists” back then.
I think the bit about some "Christians" (mostly American evangelicals) not regarding Catholics as Christians is definitely true.
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?
Are you looking for a yes/no answer, or for someone else to do the legwork for you?
I'll save you some time, the answer to you question is unequivocally: no. There are no other such archives for other religions or cultures. Just this one website.
See how silly that sounds?
Mileage may vary! The basic problem for an English speaker is that some languages are more translated than others. There are far more people translating from Greek, Hebrew and Latin works, than from Tibetan or Ge'ez (an Ethiopian language).
I've heard about the Taoist canon recently, which is seemingly vast, and despite Chinese being a major language, and a substantial number of people knowing both Chinese and English... Only a fraction of the Taoist canon is available in English.
I saw no claims the website needed to be written in English!
Dharmapedia
https://en.dharmapedia.net
There's the sacred texts archive.
https://sacred-texts.com/index.htm
Sacred Texts is excellent. I use that one too.
There is a basic problem with some eastern texts, i.e. that many have not been translated into English. I was watching a video on Taoism recently, and a huge number of their scriptures are unavailable in English.
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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Or perhaps those who are saying otherwise are trying to spread their own mind virus.
It is interesting how derisive your comment is compared to those who are in support of interesting and diverging content.
I am, however a bit confused by your comment as I have read several posts this week that had absolutely nothing to do with software/technology and most interestingly only two having to do anything with a compiler. Are you saying we should only post about compilers.
I am waiting to be enlightened by your list of acceptable topics and content.
Well, actually, my culture doesn't program me to "bear witness", so no.
I mean, you guys don't even try to hide it.
If you think the Jesus freaks want to propagate ancient gnostic texts, then you really don't know your Jesus freaks.
I find it all fascinating, and I'm closer to being an atheist than any sort of Christian. There are so many religions in the world, and people have worshiped so many different Gods. And most of them think theirs is correct and all the rest are misguided, at best.
@qarl but you ARE bearing witness. The beliefs you have accepted or you believe you have chosen has compelled you to bear witness here.
You're a riot. Thank you for assisting me in proving my point.
I am absolutely not a Jesus freak and I find it interesting because I find ancient culture, sociology and mythology interesting.
But I do get where you're coming from. Whenever a topic like this comes up a Christian will inevitably show up to proselytize (it should be considered a corollary to Godwin's Law.)
Yes, I agree, it's entirely possible to find random links interesting. That does not mean they are related to "hacker news".
The only reason these stories get upvoted is because of that audience you mentioned.
Don't make me tap the sign:
This satisfies people's intellectual curiosity, therefore it's "Hacker News."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.