The myth of Persecution?

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I’ve noticed a book from Candida Moss who is Professor of New Testament and Early Christianity at the University of Notre Dame. It allegedly reveals how the early church exaggerated, invented, and forged stories of Christian martyrs. I’m surprised, is christian martyrdom a historical fact ? Never heard anyone question it. For me it like saying that Sept 11 was inside job. But she is professor at Notre Dame.
 
irom said:
I’ve noticed a book from Candida Moss who is Professor of New Testament and Early Christianity at the University of Notre Dame. It allegedly reveals how the early church exaggerated, invented, and forged stories of Christian martyrs. I’m surprised, is christian martyrdom a historical fact ? Never heard anyone question it. For me it like saying that Sept 11 was inside job. But she is professor at Notre Dame.
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I am a Notre Dame alum and I am not elated about this situation. I have not read the book.

But a friend who has seen her lecture says that she doesn’t dispute everything, just that the church overplayed the majority of it. I guess one has to do the research (read) to figure out the actual truth. 🤷
 
irom said:
I’ve noticed a book from Candida Moss who is Professor of New Testament and Early Christianity at the University of Notre Dame. It allegedly reveals how the early church exaggerated, invented, and forged stories of Christian martyrs. I’m surprised, is christian martyrdom a historical fact ? Never heard anyone question it. For me it like saying that Sept 11 was inside job. But she is professor at Notre Dame.
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Hello irom
She was there wasn’t she? She saw it all. Or did she? 🤷
I’m reading it as yet another attack on the church to sow seeds of doubt.
 
I have my doubts.

Just wait. Another scholar at a big university will write a follow up book that proves this book to be all wrong.

To me, this Notre Dame professor’s book sounds similar to Holocaust Denial. Holocaust Deniers use methods of serious scholars and can seem convincing. But they have an sinful motive, and they bend and twist facts to get the conclusion they so desperately want to get.

I have heard of “denialism” being a state of mind, or a kind of mental disease, even. There are groups who deny all sorts of things that most everyone can see is true. For example, those Creationists who deny that the earth is more than about 6,000 years old.
See: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Denialism
 
Steve_Jay said:
Hello irom
She was there wasn’t she? She saw it all. Or did she? 🤷
I’m reading it as yet another attack on the church to sow seeds of doubt.
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If that’s a fair criticism of Prof. Moss’s work, then wouldn’t it also be a fair criticism of the writer’s who originally wrote the accounts of persecutions and martyrs many years – sometimes hundreds of years – after the alleged incidents?

Speaking as someone who is prone to doubt, nothing could damage my image of the church more than discovering that it continued to sanction stories that had little or no historical basis.
 
There are large numbers of historical accounts of persecution of Christians, both in ancient times and more recently. The question of whether they faced persecution at times is hardly up for debate.

As to whether some of the stories were forged or exaggerated, that is outside my knowledge of the subject.
 
cornbread_r2 said:
If that’s a fair criticism of Prof. Moss’s work, then wouldn’t it also be a fair criticism of the writer’s who originally wrote the accounts of persecutions and martyrs many years – sometimes hundreds of years – after the alleged incidents?

Speaking as someone who is prone to doubt, nothing could damage my image of the church more than discovering that it continued to sanction stories that had little or no historical basis.
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Many persecutions are pretty easy to prove, and I doubt the author would dispute them. That some stories were folklore that got exaggerated over time, I don’t doubt.

I wouldn’t assume that they Church knew the latter. If the stories were written down only several hundred years after the supposed event, it down’t preclude that they orally transmitted prior to the documentation.
 
Right I agree, it’s very much similar to Holocaust Denial. I remember people questioning Holocaust because numbers did add up, but there was no book like The Myth of Holocaust I heard about. Now because some stories were exaggerated there is one denying christian martyrdom.
Life of saints and their heroism were exaggerated too, many legends are built around (saint Christopher?) What about miracles ? I guess we will have denying book here too.
 
There was no New York Times or CNN back in the Roman Empire days. They had very little means to record or collect accurate history. This professor surely must know that. If the early Church historians got some things wrong, or said things that can’t be substantiated by multiple sources, then that is no sign of dishonesty, but just a result of living in times that were, relatively speaking, primitive. But today’s Holocaust Deniers have no such excuse. They are monsters, criminals. I don’t know that motivate this author, but I smell something untoward.
 
Bartolome_Casas said:
There was no New York Times or CNN back in the Roman Empire days. They had very little means to record or collect accurate history. This professor surely must know that. If the early Church historians got some things wrong, or said things that can’t be substantiated by multiple sources, then that is no sign of dishonesty, but just a result of living in times that were, relatively speaking, primitive. But today’s Holocaust Deniers have no such excuse. They are monsters, criminals. I don’t know that motivate this author, but I smell something untoward.
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If you read the interview I linked to just above your latest post, Dr. Moss spells out pretty clearly what motivated her to write her book.

Here is article from the Catholic Encyclopedia on St. Ursala that outlines some of the difficulties in separating fact from fiction in the histories of the lives of many of the saints.
 
I read her interview. I think it is interesting. What I do think we have to remember is that much WAS written down, at the time it was happening. I also think we have to remember that the rise of Constantine in one part of the world would not have impacted the entire world in the same way as, say, the rise of a Constantine today.

His legalization of Christianity would not have gone out over the airwaves so that everyone would have gotten the information at once.

As for the idea that she decided to look into this because 'Christians today are not living in fear for their lives" shows, to me, that she has a very narrow view of the world. We lost 26 people in Nigeria on Christmas day. Don’t they count?
 
Typical modern scholarship of the “Jesus Seminar” sort. They come to the table with a presumption that anybody who claims to have had an experience of virtue or the supernatural that is inconsistent with what said scholars have experienced in their OWN lives and/or those of their families must be lying or deluded.

It’s ultimately a form of self-idolatry gussied up as scholarship.

I think this quote from Fr. Bob Barron (IIRC) sums it up nicely:
“The serious struggle in the church today really isn’t between liberals and conservatives, it’s between those who believe in a literal, personal and supernatural God… and those who really don’t.”
 
=irom;10508714]I’ve noticed a book from Candida Moss who is Professor of New Testament and Early Christianity at the University of Notre Dame. It allegedly reveals how the early church exaggerated, invented, and forged stories of Christian martyrs. I’m surprised, is christian martyrdom a historical fact ? Never heard anyone question it. For me it like saying that Sept 11 was inside job. But she is professor at Notre Dame.
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I was taught by the Bothers of Holy Cross HQ’d at ND.

So let me ask my friend; do you think of ND as a “Catholic” University? IT"S NOT! More name only than actual practice and they seem to have MORE than their “fair share” of “I’M a catholic” Professors.

And to be fair this is TRUEs Sadly of MANY Universities that choose to call themselfs catholics but don’t live and practice [or teach] in Line wth our Pope and Magerterium.:bigyikes:
 
manualman said:
Typical modern scholarship of the “Jesus Seminar” sort. They come to the table with a presumption that anybody who claims to have had an experience of virtue or the supernatural that is inconsistent with what said scholars have experienced in their OWN lives and/or those of their families must be lying or deluded.

It’s ultimately a form of self-idolatry gussied up as scholarship.

I think this quote from Fr. Bob Barron (IIRC) sums it up nicely:
“The serious struggle in the church today really isn’t between liberals and conservatives, it’s between those who believe in a literal, personal and supernatural God… and those who really don’t.”
Click to expand...
As far as I can tell, Dr. Moss didn’t investigate claims of the supernatural.

Speaking of Fr. Barron: I saw part of his series on church history and while he stood inside the Roman Colosseum he noted – as opposed to popular belief – that few if any Christians died there. If Dr. Moss’s peer-reviewed work is as thoroughly documented as the research that led Fr. Barron to make his statement, then I see no reason to fear any of her conclusions.
 
Who’s “fearing” her ideas? Not me. I just think (as far as I can tell from the article) that they’re a manifestation of a lost faith or one in process of being lost. If you’ve not noticed the concerted effort to “demythologize” the faith in the last 50 years all I can say to you is “good luck.”
 
Okay! I admit that I have been experiencing my doubts in my faith-- but this ‘myth of martyrdom’ completely goes beyond jumping the shark-- it’s jumping the shark, coming back to it, shooting down the shark, eating its’ flesh, consuming its’ soul, mounting its’ head on the wall, and doing the sam e thing to 12 more shark just to be safe!

To say that all the stories about the early church being persecuted were fabricated lies, without considering both inside and outside sources (like Tacitus), is really going to far in my book.

It’s nothing more than the same ‘black vs white’ mentality that Chris Hedges warned us about that would go on in Christian/Non-Christian circles, in his writings.
 
TheoloJer said:
Okay! I admit that I have been experiencing my doubts in my faith-- but this ‘myth of martyrdom’ completely goes beyond jumping the shark-- it’s jumping the shark, coming back to it, shooting down the shark, eating its’ flesh, consuming its’ soul, mounting its’ head on the wall, and doing the sam e thing to 12 more shark just to be safe!

To say that all the stories about the early church being persecuted were fabricated lies, without considering both inside and outside sources (like Tacitus), is really going to far in my book.

It’s nothing more than the same ‘black vs white’ mentality that Chris Hedges warned us about that would go on in Christian/Non-Christian circles, in his writings.
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(emphasis mine)

Dr. Moss does not assert that there were no Christian persecutions in the early church.
 
manualman said:
Who’s “fearing” her ideas? Not me. I just think (as far as I can tell from the article) that they’re a manifestation of a lost faith or one in process of being lost. If you’ve not noticed the concerted effort to “demythologize” the faith in the last 50 years all I can say to you is “good luck.”
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Like a house built upon sand, faith based upon fabrication and exaggeration isn’t much of an asset, IMO.
 
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