Posted on 05/03/2013 10:50:36 AM PDT by marshmallow
Candida Moss, a professor of early Christianity at the University of Notre Dame and a practicing Catholic, wants to shatter what she calls the “myth” of martyrdom in the Christian faith.
Sunday school tales of early Christians being rounded up at their secret catacomb meetings and thrown to the lions by evil Romans are mere fairy tales, Moss writes in a new book. In fact, in the first 250 years of Christianity, Romans mostly regarded the religion's practitioners as meddlesome members of a superstitious cult.
The government actively persecuted Christians for only about 10 years, Moss suggests, and even then intermittently. And, she says, many of the best known early stories of brave Christian martyrs were entirely fabricated.
The controversial thesis, laid out in "The Myth of Persecution: How Early Christians Invented a Story of Martyrdom," has earned her a lot of hate mail and a few sidelong looks from fellow faculty members. But Moss maintains that the Roman Catholic Church and historians have known for centuries that most early Christian martyr stories were exaggerated or invented.
A small group of priest scholars in the 17th century began sifting through the myths, discrediting not only embellished stories about saints (including that St. George slew a dragon) but also tossing out popular stories about early Christian martyrs.
Historians, including Moss, say only a handful of martyrdom stories from the first 300 years of Christianity—which includes the reign of the cruel, Christian-loathing Nero—are verifiable. (Saint Perpetua of Carthage, pictured in the stained glass window above, is one of the six famous early Christian martyrs Moss believes was actually killed for her faith.)
(Excerpt) Read more at news.yahoo.com ...
You know, this is foolish. She is debunking the first 300 years. Otranto has nothing to do with it.
The reaction here on FR is childish. There’s plenty to criticize in the book. But the ignorance on display here is disgusting.
Yeah, Chick prof just randomly picks a chick martyr as legit.
She is not saying that that is not martyrdom. She’s saying that some stories portray that as the cause of the execution when other factors were the real cause.
And she’s right, in some cases, that did happen. The issue is whether it happened in most cases or only a few.
Stop shooting from the hip.
This gal seems clueless about the process of bringing a people to subjection. Every step along the way to the Holocaust could be minimized and excused using her rationale.
The idea of government REQUIRING that Christian organizations provide coverage of birth control and abortion but those groups simply trusting that their employees would never actually use it is sort of like government saying that companies have to provide the date-rape drug to their employees but trust that the employees will never use it.
Why make Christian groups pay for something they consider to be immoral, if they’re never going to use it?
Because even if their employees didn’t use the date-rape drug, forcing companies to pay for it ensures that date-rape drugs will still be manufactured and used by SOMEBODY. IOW, the money that Christians throw into the date-rape-drug “pool” may not be used by their own employees, but it WILL be used by SOMEBODY.
Christians are thus forced to pay for others to sacrifice their own children. They are being required to pay for Molech’s altar, on which other people’s children will be offered as sacrifices. They don’t have to do the actual kiling themselves, they just have to watch silently and pay Hitler’s salary while he gets others to do the killing.
If this gal is too stupid to understand that, then she misunderstands all of history. Why would the church hire somebody that stupid?
“Radner’s criticism was not so much that she’s wrong about the first 300 years”.
Let me guess. Southron Baptist?
Gosh, it’s like bias is difficult to find.
but its of no consequence to me....we see with our own eyes how Christians/Catholics are murdered around the world....we don't have to SUPPOSE that the very same thing didn't happen back in the days of pagan society...
Radner is a conservative Episcopalian. Your prejudice is showing.
“THere were so many prominent women martyrs, genuine women martyrs that to accuse her of randomly picking a woman is calumny.”
Right. I’m arguing that a chick prof just magically came up with a list of six, and only six martyrs that passed her mystical ‘sniff test’, they mention this chick and none of the other six. I think they call that serendipity. It’s good that we have such exceptional and insightful professors adding to our vast store of knowledge of the past.
I gathered that she was episcopalian.
They also kind of like that whole ‘sacred feminine gig’.
No, I was talking about you. Southron Baptist?
I’m very familiar with this topic and this lady is crazy but of course the reason she is doing this is because she knows this will be repeated as a preface disclaimer in the msm media when this topic comes up because we all know that one liberal prof trumps hundreds of years of scholarship to the contrary.
Article also makes sure to say that Candida is a ‘practicing’ Catholic. So now she’s fair game for us. :)
I’m interested enough by Houton’s defense to see what I can find out about her.
Well, he did get crosswise with the Roman authorities....
Radner is episcopalian. Moss is Catholic. Do you know how to read?
http://the-american-catholic.com/2013/03/12/the-myth-of-candida-moss/
I think this video of hers should be enough to discard that whole ‘practicing Catholic’ argument.
Who supports abortion and homosexuality. She’s an CINO, really an episcopalian.
Anyways, as for you - you’re a Southron Baptist?
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