Posted on 12/16/2024 12:08:14 PM PST by SunkenCiv
It was last read by a human 1,800 years ago, when Christianity was regarded a burgeoning cult.
Now, scientists have finally deciphered the 'Frankfurt silver inscription' – an 18-line engraving on a thin piece of foil, housed in a protective amulet.
Measuring 1.4 inches (3.5cm) long, the 1,800-year-old silver amulet was found with the skeleton of a man at a burial site on the outskirts of Frankfurt, Germany.
Researchers have used CT scans to 'digitally unroll' the 'wafer thin' foil and read the inscription within for the first time since the 3rd century AD.
Incredibly, the text represents the oldest known evidence of Christianity north of the Alps, dating back to between 230 and 270 AD, scientists say.
At the time, Christianity was still spreading over Europe from its historical origin of Judaea in the Middle East.
Described as 'purely Christian', the Latin text makes references to Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, as well as Saint Titus, an early Christian missionary and church leader.
(Excerpt) Read more at dailymail.co.uk ...
The rest of the "romangermany" keyword, sorted:
My pleasure.
The Romans thought that the Christians were atheists because they didn’t believe Caesar was a god.....almost like today where “god” is oneself....
Most of the Jews thought that Christianity was a vile group of people who followed a false dead prophet.
Coming back from the dead(with no human help) has a way of dispelling those notions... You don’t get a cult with someone who has come back from the dead in a human physical body. You get a new paradigm of the existence of the world and ones own life.
People who don’t believe life can come from dead things need to recheck the modern theories of abiogenesis.
Yup, that’s actually likely. Trier was the administrative capital for the northern/western part of the Western Roman Empire after the division by Diocletian, and during the Crisis of the Third Century the Romans appear to have added the Jutland peninsula, which suggests the area to the south of there must have been under occupation. None of this lasted spectacularly long, but there’s Roman cemetery was found during rescue dig during construction in Copenhagen, Denmark. Control of traffic / trade in and out of the Baltic made sense, and iron production along the Baltic shore kicked into gear during Roman rule in western Europe.
More seriously, the actual translated text is more genuinely Christian than what’s coming out of today’s Vatican or from most Protestant pulpits. Buried in an area that at the time was still largely pagan.
“ Or it could not, in fact I am sure it won’t”
The Daily Mail no less
Do these people have one clue about Christianity? About Jesus? About God?
They should stop.
Great idea! Likely to happen, that’s become a regular feature of ancient remains finds.
‘Researchers consider him the “first Christian north of the Alps,” ‘
I hate to nitpick an interesting story, but wouldn’t it be more accurate to claim this as the “remains of one of the *earliest* Christians north of the alps”? It seems quite a big (and pretty baseless) leap to assert this to be the “first Christian” in Germania.
He’s the first *known* one. So, no, not a leap.
Amulet originally discovered near the Roemer Platz in the center of modern Frankfurt-am-Main. In the middle of the third century AD when it dates from, this would have been very much part of the Roman empire. The limes, or limits, of the empire were several kilometers north of modern Fft, in the Taunus hills, and the border ditches can still be seen in the woods there today. By 260 AD, the Romans had retreated back to the other side of the Rhein river, ceding this territory to Barbarians until 1945 when the Americans controlled it.
Ben Shapiro, (whose current political views I mostly ascribe to, but who is an irritating little snot) when asked if Jews consider Jesus a prophet, stated, “No, he was a criminal!”.
Well, you and I will have to agree to disagree if you think there’s no leap between “first known” and “first” in this context.
Oh no, what horrible news.
“At the time, Christianity was still spreading over Europe from its historical origin of Judaea in the Middle East.”
If we consider Paul as Apostle to the heathen, then Western Christianity certainly did not have its origin in Judea.
Yes, it did.
Begging your pardon, but that idea embodies a wrong assumption.
Latin was not the language of Jesus or His disciples, nor was it the language in which any of the Bible documents were written.
The language of the Holy Spirit in which the books of the "Old Testament" were inscripturated were Hebrew and Aramaic alone, none other. The sole language in which the inspired passages of the "New Testament" wee written is the common Greek of Jesus' day. A few words of it were foreign ones (names, places, items) translated or transliterated into Greek (and in that context, inspired).
But any translation of Bible passages into another language (such as the Roman Latin), however well done, is uninspired. It, having being done by a necessarily fallible post-Apostolic human, is not by the Holy Spirit, not inspired, and thus not Holy Scripture.
Evangelizers communicating in the Koine Greek of the day did not need to transliterate nor translate, only to transcribe without copying error, were employing truly Holy Scripture.
Breaking my silence on Free Republic of several years. I miss the Golden Years.
As a resident of several years of Mainz and about 9 years of the Frankfurt regions of Hesse and Rheinland Pfalz, I was moved by this article. How wonderful that such a man was among the Romans and the Proto Germans near the Legion’s headquarters in Mainz. I was fortunate to have the opportunity to live among all of this history and to learn that the seeds of Christianity was sowed along the banks of the Rhine.
The only thing that one now can legitimately presume is that the person buried with that treasured article was almost certainly a professor of faith in the Christ of the scripture in it.
And that is all. He may have been only passing through, when he passed on, eh?
You find it too easy to use the words "ignorant" and "blathering" to impugn the person who deflates your assumption that Latin was the medium in which the sacred (inspired) documents of the early (when?) church (singular) were circulated.
Your logic there is false.
Beyond question, it was in the Koine Greek that the early Christians communicated the history of Jesus' earthly ministry and the founding facts of how the New Covenant was to be administered. These documents were translated into many other languages, one of them being Latin, and that rather poorly.
So, who is the ignorant one in this debate? The one who resorts to name-calling? The one who trusts that "church" is to be made a proper noun in English, and only applies to the one organization claiming sole ownership of The Faith and the Vatican as its headquarters?
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