cyberjesus, the importance of the position of Jesus' death cannot be established archaeologically. This thread is about the earliest use of the cross as a Christian symbol, and there is simply no compelling archaeological evidence that it was used by Christians in Pompeii & Herculaneum at the time Vesuvius erupted.
Earnest
JoinedPosts by Earnest
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The Cross in Pompeii & Herculaneum in 79 AD
by Sea Breeze incan someone please tell the wt janitor to turn the lights off when the last jw leaves the watchtower after learning that early christians used the cross as a christian logo of sorts?
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Earnest
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The Cross in Pompeii & Herculaneum in 79 AD
by Sea Breeze incan someone please tell the wt janitor to turn the lights off when the last jw leaves the watchtower after learning that early christians used the cross as a christian logo of sorts?
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Earnest
In Acts 28:13, 14 it says regarding Paul’s journey to Rome “from [Syracuse] we went along and arrived at Rhegium. A day later a south wind sprang up and we made it into Puteoli on the second day. Here we found brothers and were urged to remain with them for seven days, and so we went toward Rome.”
So, we know that there were “brothers” at Puteoli in these early days and it is legitimate to speculate whether they were also in Pompeii and Herculaneum. But at the same time we should not allow wishful thinking to cause us to read more into the evidence than is actually there. And as we have already seen in the previous post that pagans used crosses in their worship, the existence of a cross in itself without a Christian context is not evidence of anything at all.
One reason Christianity may have taken a hold in Puteoli in particular is that there was a Jewish community there as early as 4 B.C.E. Both Philo and Josephus attest to a Jewish presence during the first century. The same cannot be said for Pompeii and Herculaneum.
What about evidence of crosses in Pompeii, referred to in the book “The Crosses of Pompeii” by Bruce W. Longenecker. The item with which Longenecker begins is a cross-shaped imprint on a ground floor wall in a bakery on the western side of Pompeii. Three other objects serve as primary pieces of evidence. These include a graffito of the Latin verb vivit (he lives) in which the final –it are combined into a cross-shaped ligature, another graffito in which Christians are discussed, and a cross found on a stamp ring that appears to have belonged to a certain Meges. He also refers to nineteen crosses faintly inscribed in paving stones around the city, and proposes that the crosses served a good-luck function to protect them from evil where they resided and worked.
Other scholars examined his “evidence” and came to different conclusions. For example, in Vigiliae Christianae (2018), John Cook, who is Professor of Religion and Philosophy at LaGrange College, Georgia, wrote an article “Alleged Christian Crosses in Herculaneum and Pompeii” about this.
Cook gives some further details about the bakery in which the cross-shaped imprint was found. He says on the west wall was a household shrine which consisted of a painting of a snake. Next to it was a brick fixed in the wall, which supported a lamp that “burned in honor of the custodial divinities [Janus, Ferculus, Limentius, and Cardea]. On the east wall was the cross-shaped imprint. Mounted above the oven was a plaque that depicts a large red phallus with an inscription “here lives good luck”. Francois Mazois, who included the cross-shaped imprint in his volume on the ruins of Pompeii in 1824, didn’t think it was a Christian cross and wrote “It is difficult to imagine that the same person could at the same time revere the cross of Christ and worship Janus, Ferculus, Limentius, and Cardea, divinities who guarded the doors. Especially if one considers an obscene image, from an incomprehensible cult, that is found near the same place.” If it was not a cross what could it have been? Lampe (“Christians at Rome in the First Two Centuries”) thought it could be a support for a shelf, like the one in Herculaneum. Cook (and Moormann in Pompeii’s Ashes) suggests it depicts a tool used in the bakery, maybe a large pestle. Whatever it depicts, Cook says, “there is no archaeological context for the belief that a Christian lived in the villa or bakery. None of the graffiti are ostensibly Christian. The household shrine and phallus of the bakery fit well into the context of Roman religion … The affirmation that [it] should be identified with the cross of Christ is groundless.”
What about the graffito of the Latin verb vivit (“he lives”)? Cook again shows this is simply unfounded speculation on the part of Longenecker. First, the scrawl on the wall was (perhaps) VIV, or it could have been VN, or possibly VRI, and the intention is vague. It could just be a scrawl. And there is no decisive reason to interpret intersecting lines as the cross of Christ. That is looking at it from a post-Constantinian viewpoint. Martin Langner, who writes about ancient graffiti (“Antike Graffitizeichnungen”, Wiesbaden, 2001), says regarding the intersecting lines “there are many scratchings on Pompeian walls. I do not think they mean anything or at least anything we can recognise today”.
The same goes for the nineteen “crosses” faintly inscribed on paving stones around the city. Longenecker proposes these were to ward off evil. There are many phalluses inscribed on the paving stones too. What was their purpose? The fact is that we simply don’t know in either case, and there is nothing to link these crosses with Christians. They may simply have been markers on the pavement indicating a route (like a cairn does) or some other helpful use.
Essentially, Longenecker’s argument is this :
- objects resembling a cross have been found in Pompeii/Herculaneum
- Evidence from a later period of early Christianity indicates that Christians adopted these symbols to identify themselves
- Therefore the objects found in Pompeii/Herculaneum must be Christian
Unless there is archaeological evidence that these “crosses” were found in a Christian context, it is simply wishful thinking. There is no evidence crosses were used as a Christian symbol before the second century.
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The Cross in Pompeii & Herculaneum in 79 AD
by Sea Breeze incan someone please tell the wt janitor to turn the lights off when the last jw leaves the watchtower after learning that early christians used the cross as a christian logo of sorts?
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Earnest
joe134cd : [The assertion that the cross was not the device used to kill Jesus] is rubbish.
“History is right, perhaps, but let us not forget, it was written by the victors”. That also goes for the shape of the stauros that Christ died on. If any of those who witnessed his death left a description of the stauros we have no record of it. There is evidence that some Christians in the second century believed that Jesus died on a T-shaped cross (crux commissa), however in the dialogue of Octavius (probably written in the mid-second century), Minucius Felix writes (in chapter 29) of both an upright pole (crux simplex) and a latin cross (crux immissa) :
Crosses, moreover, we neither worship nor wish for. You, indeed, who consecrate gods of wood, adore wooden crosses perhaps as parts of your gods. For your very standards, as well as your banners; and flags of your camp, what else are they but crosses gilded and adorned? Your victorious trophies not only imitate the appearance of a simple cross [simplicis crucis], but also that of a man affixed to it…Thus the sign of the cross either is sustained by a natural reason [a ship with swelling sails; a military yoke; a man adoring God with hands outstretched], or your religion is formed with respect to it.
But what do we actually know about the shape of the stauros at the time of Christ. Very little, as it turns out. In 2010 Gunnar Samuelsson published a thesis (and in 2011 wrote a book) “Crucifixion in Antiquity” which was discussed here at the time. The fact is that there was no terminology of crucifixion at the time of Jesus, only of suspension. In some cases, stauros is a kind of suspension device, used for the suspension of corpses, torture, or in a few cases executionary suspensions. Very little or nothing is said about what it was made of or how it looked. The fact that xulon is also used (Acts 5:30;10:39;13:29) indicates it was made of wood. The punishment of executionary suspension could be carried out in a way that was simply fitting for the moment. The manner in which Jesus was suspended at Calvary might then have been only a momentary expression of local caprice. Previous and subsequent executions might have been completely different.
He could have died on a latin cross (crux immissa), a T-shaped cross (crux commissa), an upright pole (crux simplex) or any form of suspension using wood. We simply don’t know. Any display of certainty about this is just a display of ignorance.
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How can I view / know how long I have been a member ?
by smiddy3 inhi,simon -mods is there any way i can find out when i joined this forum ?
i believe i have been here about 10 -15 years under the name of smiddy ,smiddy 1 ,or smiddy 2 and as i am now smiddy 3 .. all due to my changing pc`s or forgetting my password or whatever .. i would like to know when i actually first joined up if you can help .. thanks in advance ..
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In the UK it is legal to abort a Down's Syndrome baby up until the moment of birth
by LoveUniHateExams inthere was a recent legal challenge, brought about by a woman who herself has down's, which sought to overturn this sad state of affairs.. and a few days ago, a judge upheld the original law and denied her legal challenge.
this is pretty sick, don't you think?.
pro-abortion people love to ridicule religious people who claim that life begins at conception, so the obvious question is, when does life actually begin?.
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Earnest
LUHE, that is not what the law says. It says that "any person ... who causes a child to die before it has an existence independent of its mother [which child at that point in time is capable of being born alive], shall be guilty of ... child destruction [except if it is done in good faith to preserve the life of the mother]".
There is no distinction between healthy or unhealthy children in the Infant Life (Preservation) Act of 1929.
There are only two exceptions. If the child is not capable of being born alive at the time of the abortion then an abortion is legal. Likewise, if it is necessary to save the life of the mother. However, any abortion of a living foetus performed after the twenty-fourth week of pregnancy but before the twenty-eighth week [i.e. before it is capable of being born alive] can only be done if the pregnancy would cause grave permanent injury to the woman, if the life of the woman is at risk, or if the child were born it would be seriously handicapped.
If a child is aborted after the twenty-seventh week that is the crime of child destruction. The only exceptions are if the woman's life is at risk due to the pregnancy, or if the child is not capable of being born alive.
If a child is intentionally killed once it is independent of its mother that is the crime of murder. There are no exceptions.
If a child is intentionally killed while a birth is in progress then the lawyers will have a field day deciding whether it is child destruction or murder, but my reading of the 1929 Act makes me think it would be child destruction.
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In the UK it is legal to abort a Down's Syndrome baby up until the moment of birth
by LoveUniHateExams inthere was a recent legal challenge, brought about by a woman who herself has down's, which sought to overturn this sad state of affairs.. and a few days ago, a judge upheld the original law and denied her legal challenge.
this is pretty sick, don't you think?.
pro-abortion people love to ridicule religious people who claim that life begins at conception, so the obvious question is, when does life actually begin?.
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Earnest
LoveUniHateExams : this was just my way of saying that Down Syndrome babies can be legally killed at birth.
For your benefit I will repeat the UK law. Killing any child (whether seriously handicapped or not) at birth is murder.
What about carrying out an abortion when the pregnancy is at full term but the child hasn't yet been born, say at 37 weeks. The Infant Life (Preservation) Act of 1929 states
any person who, with intent to destroy the life of a child capable of being born alive [i.e. a gestation of twenty-eight weeks or more], by any wilful act causes a child to die before it has an existence independent of its mother, shall be guilty of felony, to wit, of child destruction, and shall be liable on conviction thereof on indictment to penal servitude for life [except if it is done in good faith to preserve the life of the mother]
So, quite frankly, LUHE, your sensational heading to this thread is simply nonsense.
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In the UK it is legal to abort a Down's Syndrome baby up until the moment of birth
by LoveUniHateExams inthere was a recent legal challenge, brought about by a woman who herself has down's, which sought to overturn this sad state of affairs.. and a few days ago, a judge upheld the original law and denied her legal challenge.
this is pretty sick, don't you think?.
pro-abortion people love to ridicule religious people who claim that life begins at conception, so the obvious question is, when does life actually begin?.
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Earnest
LoveUniHateExams : But it's still better than strangling them at birth, which is what our current law allows.
In UK law strangling a child at birth is murder. On the NHS website it explains that an abortion can be performed in two ways, either by taking medicine to end the pregnancy or by a surgical procedure to remove the pregnancy. In the unlikely but not impossible event that the aborted child is living it then becomes murder if that child is killed.
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In the UK it is legal to abort a Down's Syndrome baby up until the moment of birth
by LoveUniHateExams inthere was a recent legal challenge, brought about by a woman who herself has down's, which sought to overturn this sad state of affairs.. and a few days ago, a judge upheld the original law and denied her legal challenge.
this is pretty sick, don't you think?.
pro-abortion people love to ridicule religious people who claim that life begins at conception, so the obvious question is, when does life actually begin?.
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Earnest
This association of the Abortion Act of 1967 with "murder", "eugenics" and "the left" is so ridiculous and small-minded it is worth highlighting what the position was prior to the Abortion Act being passed.
Between 1861 and 1929 if a woman attempted to have an abortion by poison or any other means, and anyone who assisted her, would be liable to prosecution with a penalty of between two years and life imprisonment under the Offences Against the Person Act.
In 1929 the Infant Life (Preservation) Act allowed abortion only if it was done to preserve the life of the mother.
Then in 1967 the Abortion Act was passed which also allowed abortion for other reasons including the probability that the child would be seriously handicapped, either mentally or physically, when born.
Prior to this a woman who had been raped (and became pregnant), or was a victim of incest (and became pregnant), or who believed her unborn child would be seriously handicapped ... and did not want the child ... would get an illegal abortion with all the medical risks that went with that. A National Poll at the time of the 1967 Abortion Act estimated that there were 31,000 illegal abortions a year, and a total of 600,000 abortions from 1946-66, mostly illegal.
Which was the better scenario when a pregnant woman was determined to get an abortion? That it be performed in a hospital by a qualified doctor, or in some backstreet under cover of darkness which often resulted in infection or worse.
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Annual Meeting
by sove inis it the annual meeting this weekend?
any insights on "new light" or new releases?.
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Earnest
After relating that some "old-timers" had told his son forty years ago, when he was still at school, that he would never graduate in this system, Anthony Morris said :
"If any of you [in the audience] are guilty [of having said this], God loves you, he forgives you. If you did that back then you didn't help anybody."
How patronising, how revisionist.
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Theocratic Schedule Insert (KM)
by Iamallcool ini remember some years ago like around 2005 the kingdom ministry insert that talks about what theocratic schedule should be for the dubs.
if you remember that, i would like to see it again.
thank you!
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