Need non-christian sources for early church fathers

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cephastom187

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I am needing help. The other day I was teaching my nephew about the early church fathers and he was shocked to see how old the Catholic church is. His friend calls while I am teaching him and he tells his friend what he learned. The friend suddenly pauses and I know it is coming. Sure enough he goes into the Catholic church is not old because the Orthodox say it too, there was many different version of Christianity in the 1st century and also we don’t have the original Gospels or Bible or the original early church writings and you can’t trust copies because they could have just written on old paper. He goes on to say that we don’t really know all the meanings and word usage of Greek and Latin anymore or some of their meanings. The guy tries to bring up the Nag Hammadi too. So, I decided to keep teaching my nephew, but now I see I need outside sources that aren’t Christian that would verify the early church father’s of the 1st, 2nd and 3rd century and also prove the Catholic Church was not created in the 3rd and 4th century and how Orthodox split from us. I really feel these outside Christian sources from historians, scholars and archaeologist will help in building my nephews defense if ever faced with such words as his friend did.
 
The Catholic and Orthodox Churches share the same faith as the early Church which was in full communion for more than a millennium. As a matter of fact, the Catholic Church recognizes the Orthodox as having apostolic succession and valid Eucharist. This can be found in The Second Vatican Council’s DECREE ON ECUMENISM UNITATIS REDINTEGRATIO, starting on chapter 3.

When you look at the early Fathers of the Church you will see a variety of expressions of the faith (liturgically, theologically, spiritually) yet both East and West were in communion centered around the Eucharist. I’m not expert on the Fathers so this is just my interpretation from my readings of them.

ZP
 
Do you have any sources that are not Christian for the early church writings of the 1st and 2nd century?
 
cephastom187 said:
Do you have any sources that are not Christian for the early church writings of the 1st and 2nd century?
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Are you talking about modern scholarship? Or are you looking for non-Christians in the 100s writing about Christian theology? Just that they existed? Tacitus refers to Christians numerous times and had no love for them, and mentioned their persecution under Nero.
 
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cephastom187 said:
I am needing help.
…
So, I decided to keep teaching my nephew, but now I see I need outside sources that aren’t Christian that would verify the early church father’s of the 1st, 2nd and 3rd century and also prove the Catholic Church was not created in the 3rd and 4th century and how Orthodox split from us.
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Try…
http://earlychristianwritings.com/churchfathers.html

It is maintained by Peter Kirby who is a self-proclaimed agnostic with no affiliations to any religion whatsoever.

Also…

http://www.sacred-texts.com/chr/ecf/index.htm
 
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cephastom187 said:
and also we don’t have the original Gospels or Bible or the original early church writings and you can’t trust copies because they could have just written on old paper.
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" Ehrman iscorrect that we no longer possess the original manuscripts of the Bible. For example, we do not have the original scroll on which Paul wrote his letter to the Galatians. In fact, we don’t have any of the original copies of any of the books and letters in the Bible. This may seem worrisome; but keep in mind that we do not possess the original manuscripts for any work that was composed in the ancient world. We do not possess Plato’s original Republic . We do not possess the original Jewish histories of Josephus, the Roman histories of Tacitus, or the Greek histories of Thucydides. Those books were written on leaves or animal skins that were lost or destroyed or that simply decayed over time."
 
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I watched it, but the problem is saying “there was 300 witnesses” verses being able to show the exact witnesses is two different things. I don’t want to say, for example, “many scholars and histories do not doubt the authenticity of Clements letters.” I want to be able to say, "“many scholars and histories do not doubt the authenticity of Clements letters, like historian (name of non-Christian historian here).”
 
Guest1 said:
we no longer possess the original manuscripts of the Bible. For example, we do not have the original scroll on which Paul wrote his letter to the Galatians. In fact, we don’t have any of the original copies of any of the books and letters in the Bible. This may seem worrisome; but keep in mind that we do not possess the original manuscripts for any work that was composed in the ancient world. We do not possess Plato’s original Republic . We do not possess the original Jewish histories of Josephus, the Roman histories of Tacitus, or the Greek histories of Thucydides. Those books were written on leaves or animal skins that were lost or destroyed or that simply decayed over time."
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Thank you too, you also mention things I can bring up. It is odd how people question the bible and church documents because they are not original but not other things. What other nonchristian writings do we not have the original too? Anything of recent?
 
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