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Silver amulet is the oldest evidence of Christianity north of the Alps
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- FearNotDaniel 2y agoFascinating from both a technological and theological/ecclesiological perspective. I'll be sure to pass this on to some of my faith-filled friends who now live south of the Alps but have roots in the same region. > inhumation burials — a practice uncommon in other Roman cemeteries in Frankfurt To save others looking it up: "inhumation burial" seems to be a technical term in the field for what we simply call "burial", i.e. digging a grave and then covering the person with dirt and/or rocks. I'm not an expert, but given that this became the primary method of disposal in Christian culture (and still is, in many traditions who believe that cremation prevents the body being resurrected), one could infer that this is an indicator of Here Be Christians. If you know even a smidgeon of theology, it's not technically possible to define (mainstream) Christian faith without any reference to Jewish beliefs. Jesus was, of course, himself raised a Jew, as were both Saints Peter & Paul, although the latter was also a Roman citizen who wrote in Greek, and they famously quarrelled quite a bit about how much of Judaism should be incorporated into the new religion, well documented in the New Testament itself and plenty of extra-biblical evidence. It does seem a reasonable claim that nothing in this text contains elements of Judaism that were not already or subsequently incorporated into what became Christianity (though I'm pretty sure at this point it didn't yet have a name other than "The Way". I could be wrong there.) However, just for fun: - "Holy Holy Holy" is most definitely a reference to the (Hebrew) book of Isaiah, which was also quoted in the (Christian) book of Revelation aka Apocalypse (Greek, New Testament) - Of course they don't use the name Yahweh when talking about the God/Lord of the World, of whom Jesus is claimed to be the Son. Neither does the Septuagint (Greek translation of the Hebrew scriptures, produced for use by Greek-speaking Jews a few hundred years before Christ). But they are most definitely talking about the same God. - I'm not sure if this pre- or post- dates the Jewish tradition of replacing the Name with "Adonai" (Hebrew for "Lord") or its Greek/Latin equivalent, on the grounds that the Name itself is too holy to be spoken or to risk being destroyed if the manuscript gets damaged or, you know, buried in the ground to decay with a dead person. But that could also be a factor. Unfortunately they don't provide a transcription of the Latin text into modern characters so there's no opportunity right now to go nuts on that but it would be interesting to see what specific Latin words were used compared with translations of the Septuagint, and the original Greek and Hebrew texts themselves. Still, thanks for posting!
- mytailorisrich 2y agoSome of the latin text is on the Wikipedia page [1]. Hopefully it will be updated to include more. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frankfurt_silver_inscription https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frankfurt_silver_inscription
- vitus 2y agoOne of the references on the wikipedia page seems to have a full transcription (along with German translation): https://archaeologisches-museum-frankfurt.de/index.php/de/?view=article&id=1506 https://archaeologisches-museum-frankfurt.de/index.php/de/?v... I personally cannot make heads or tails of the script used in the various images, but it seems about right. (Note that V and U are generally used interchangeably in Latin, since they were the same character. Same with I / J.)
- bdcravens 2y agoMy wife is Messianic Jewish, where the primary intent is to restore Jewish traditions and beliefs while still believing in Jesus/Yeshua ("Jesus" being essentially a mispronunciation; the westernized version of the name would more accurately be "Joshua"). Personally my beliefs lie elsewhere, but it's still unfortunate that "denomination" is still such a tiny minority, given its desire to be a purer form of the religion.
- andrepd 2y agoEvery religion thinks they're the "purer" form of religion though, don't they? x)
- FearNotDaniel 2y agoExcept Universalist/Unitarians, perhaps, they like to mix it all up into one big melting pot.
- Cthulhu_ 2y agoNot necessarily, they consider themselves right / proper or just prefer it over other flavours though (example being the many branches of Protestantism where each branch has a slightly different take on how things should be done, but it's not like they're at odds with each other per se)
- Oarch 2y agoI'll never be able to read about us digitally unrolling fragile scrolls without it seemingly like otherworldly sci-fi technology. The translated blessing text itself seems almost modern. Funny to see how little we've changed in some ways.
- FearNotDaniel 2y agoSpeaking as a participant in a number of somewhat "modern" Christian traditions, I think one factor is that we have changed quite a lot and then some strands of the faith have decided to go back into the past and seek what we lost from the early days. One example being certain rock'n'roll churches where people stick their hands up in the air while singing and praying: I heard one pastor defend this as being "this is not a new form of prayer, this is what Jewish people were doing hundreds/thousands of years ago and now we're bringing it back". (See the rather-ancient Book of Exodus, for example. No electric guitars or drum kits there[0], but Moses is definitely described as holding his hands up in prayer, sometimes with the help of Joshua when his arms got tired). [0] though I'm afraid to admit there is at least one actual tambourine...
- wil421 2y agoWhat about the rattle snake churches?
- FearNotDaniel 2y agoWhat about them? Are you asking about the scriptural basis from ancient times that they use to justify their modern practices? (i.e. the immediate topic at hand) Or are you looking for theological and/or scientific opinions on whether the claims they make are true, for at least some meaning of the word “true”?
- markovs_gun 2y agoThey also claim to be reviving an ancient practice, although the evidence for that actually being true is very lacking
- pergadad 2y agoLooks like the project partners made a video about it, with some good visuals. But i can't find the actual paper. Press release with link to the video is here: https://frankfurt.de/de-de/aktuelle-meldung/meldungen/frankfurter-silberinschrift/ https://frankfurt.de/de-de/aktuelle-meldung/meldungen/frankf...
- FearNotDaniel 2y agoThanks for helping to flesh out the technical side of the discussion while I’m over here getting hung up on the theology :-) this is what makes HN still (occasionally) great.
- _7acn 2y ago[flagged]
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- Blemokolo 2y ago[dead]
- bjackman 2y agoI find it pretty cool how the spread of Christianity can be tracked so finely that a 50 update in earliest arrival time is exciting! I started listening to a podcast called "the history of the early church" to learn a bit more about that but unfortunately I think the target audience was Christians interested in theology rather than nerds interested in history. Recommendations for books etc are welcome!
- throw0101c 2y ago> Recommendations for books etc are welcome! See perhaps the references / (printed) sources at: * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historicity_of_Jesus https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historicity_of_Jesus
- MontagFTB 2y agoI’d recommend “2,000 Years of Christ's Power” by Nick Needham. I am not sure where it falls on your theology/history spectrum but it has some of both. I enjoyed the audiobook of Volume 1 immensely. For me it did a great job describing the context in which the church began, the major figures throughout the early church, and the spread, schisms, and events that helped shape the church in its formative years.
- kcsaba2 2y agoThe Triumph of Christianity: How the Jesus Movement Became the World's Largest Religion - Rodney Stark
- graemep 2y agoI also like Stark's God's Battalions, which is a nice debunking of the conventional view of the crusades.
- wolfhelius 2y agoI had a long drive where I listened to The Great Courses, which had a set on early Christianity. I think the professor was from Notre Dame. The early church was wrestling with polytheism (is the OT god seemed really different from the NT god) and it eventually had to get resolved by the Council at Nicaea at Constantine's behest.
- UpgradeToMan 2y ago[dead]
- thih9 2y ago> Typically, amulets from this era contained a blend of Christian, Jewish, and pagan elements. Interesting; does anyone have a link showing a typical amulet from that era, for comparison?
- snapcaster 2y agoI found that interesting too, and curious about what it implies for how people thought about religion at the time
- PittleyDunkin 2y ago> I found that interesting too, and curious about what it implies for how people thought about religion at the time Religion is an invention of the rennaisance. People at the time would have just perceived what we see as "religion" as worldview, much like people today typically believe in a fusion of economic theories.
- snapcaster 2y agoThat's fascinating but makes sense. any places to go learn more about this you recommend? googling things like invention of religion don't really lead anything on this specific topic
- PittleyDunkin 2y agoI'd probably start here: https://oxfordre.com/politics/display/10.1093/acrefore/9780190228637.001.0001/acrefore-9780190228637-e-898 https://oxfordre.com/politics/display/10.1093/acrefore/97801... Or at the wikipedia page that links to that article: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Secularism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Secularism
- bandie91 2y agoyes i second this. just a bit clarification. not as "the concept of religion" as we call it today would have been an invention. it existed since humanity. rather that religion is something besides or independent of the everyday life ← this is a modern invention. today people say "you can be of any religion" and still do the same civil life as everyone else, go to school, to the grocery, watch TV, participate in the economy system: religion is "something like a hobby", a coloring to your everyday life, like a "community flair" of some people does not eat this-or-that on this-or-that day or cutting their hair in a specific manner, etc. it just happened when common welfare got high enough that people did not need to worry about keeping "old customs" to keep the community and themself *aligned with the created order*. consequentially the rationale for "old customs" gets blurred and forgotten and mostly becomes "superstition". so people more and more trusting themself in the hands of industry and tech they themself created as a protection around themself instead of the tangible instruments of ageless wisdom gathered along the ages, which they swipe instead in the box of "religion" and move on. thus economy + industry and tech become the new religion itself.
- MrBuddyCasino 2y ago> dates back to approximately 230-270 CE The nerve to use "Common Era" when specifically talking about the spread of christianity.
- abrenuntio 2y ago"He who testifies to these things says, ``Yes, I am coming soon.'' Amen. Come, Lord Jesus."
- zen928 2y agoI can't even begin to tell you how hard I unexpectedly laughed at your comment denoting a perceived lack of respect using an extremely commonly accepted scientific dating measurement. Nothing negative noted about any other piece, just a single cherry picked highlight to allow you to demonstrate socially acceptable puritan outrage when given the chance, even on something as insignificant as following common scientific processes. Very culturally relevant. Thanks for the entertainment!
- MrBuddyCasino 2y agoI had to faintly smile at „scientific dating measurement“. God bless you.
- toolslive 2y agothere might be even older evidence lurking if the following is true: "Jesus was Julius Divius" https://www.carotta.de/eindex.html https://www.carotta.de/eindex.html
- briffid 2y agoThere is scientific consensus that Jesus was a historical figure, so the book referred here is probably fiction.
- cogman10 2y agoOne of the more interesting pieces of evidence in the Bible. The Roman census that required every family go back to their hometown did not happen (why would it?). Romans kept very good records of censuses and such an event would be well covered. So why does the Bible have this story? The best guess is that Jesus was well known to have come from Nazareth. Yet the older messianic texts say the Messiah would be from Bethlehem. The gospel author undoubtedly was trying to square that circle to make sure the prophecy was fulfilled. Something they'd not need to do if Jesus wasn't real. The author had to explain to people who had grandparents who knew him as being from Nazareth why that still jives with older prophecies.
- ordinaryradical 2y agoBefore you tie yourself in this knot it might be useful just to look and see if there was a Roman census in that time period: "When I administered my thirteenth consulate (2 B.C.E.), the senate and Equestrian order and Roman people all called me father of the country, and voted that the same be inscribed in the vestibule of my temple"[0] [0] http://classics.mit.edu/Augustus/deeds.html http://classics.mit.edu/Augustus/deeds.html
- cogman10 2y agoOh, I'm sorry I must not have been super clear. That Rome did censuses and kept detailed records of the censuses is not in dispute. The thing that never happened is people making long trips to the ancestral lands. The entire point of a census is to get an accurate population count for reasons of taxation and public spending. People uprooting to go to grandpa's home to be counted messes with that count. It's counter productive. Rome would never have required this and in fact would have tried to restrict travel during the census because they wanted an accurate population count. The much more likely explanation is the author of Luke needed Jesus to be born in Bethlehem, which was problematic because Jesus was well known to be from Nazareth. Here's a good article detailing those problems: https://bam.sites.uiowa.edu/faq/can-you-explain-problem-census-gospel-luke https://bam.sites.uiowa.edu/faq/can-you-explain-problem-cens... I should note, this is not a controversial take.
- emmelaich 2y agoRelated, for those interested in the history of religions and Christianity: https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/book-review-the-rise-of-christianity https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/book-review-the-rise-of-chr...
- mistrial9 2y ago> a lot of male cult members join because the cult has hot girls. This seems to have been a big factor in the spread of early Christianity as well. well, that explains it then </s>
- Mistletoe 2y agoAs someone that went to church for that reason as a child I can tell you some things never change.
- helf 2y ago[dead]
- Decabytes 2y agoIt's super cool to see the digital unraveling of scrolls become more accessible. It's also amazing that we can still read the text of something that is nearly 2000 years old. One thing I don't understand is the picture of the scroll though. I don't see how they were able to figure out the letters? They don't look like an alphabet to me
- eschulz 2y agoBut what language is used for the inscription on the rolled silver amulet?
- elevaet 2y agoThe article said Latin, but I don't know what script that is. It looks like it was written right-to-left so maybe it's Latin written in Hebrew script? I'm not even sure if that was a thing.
- markovs_gun 2y agoNo, it's written left to right, it's just extremely messy cursive. There are also abbreviations and special shorthand symbols.
- ilamont 2y agoThe article mentions "18-line Latin text" but I was unable to recognize any word on the scroll (took Latin in high school) even something obvious like deus. Was this some sort of Latin shorthand?
- alexjm 2y agoSome of the letter shapes look like Latin/Roman cursive, but even then I'm not sure I recognize any words either. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roman_cursive https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roman_cursive
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- adamredwoods 2y ago>> Although I realized fairly early on that the New Testament Letter to the Philippians is quoted at the end, I still spent a long time puzzling over the text, which is written in quite a crude form of Latin. I consulted specialist literature and databases and, finally, made some suggestions for how it might be interpreted. >> The inscription begins with the Trisagion, the threefold cry of “Holy” [based on Isaiah 6:3], which remains part of the liturgy of the Eucharist to this day. In this case, however, it’s written in Greek [“agios, agios, agios”] but in Latin script. https://www.uni-bonn.de/en/news/university-of-bonn-researcher-involved-in-sensational-find-in-frankfurt https://www.uni-bonn.de/en/news/university-of-bonn-researche...
- cvoss 2y agoI can spot some of the shorthand. I see "Xp" a few times, which is actually imported from the Greek christos, abbreviated to chi-rho.
- marc_abonce 2y agoAlso, each ΧΡ (Chi Rho) is preceded by another Christogram that sort of looks like IHS but I'm not sure. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christogram https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christogram Edit: Actually, here's the full transcription in Latin and German: https://archaeologisches-museum-frankfurt.de/index.php/de/?view=article&id=1506 https://archaeologisches-museum-frankfurt.de/index.php/de/?v...
- LightBug1 2y agoInteresting, but just an antiquated historical tidbit? What relevance in an age when the moral high ground is now a weakness or, at best, simply an ineffective strategy?