Posted on 07/23/2019 9:37:41 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
A 1700-year-old letter that was recently discovered is said to reveal the way Christians actually lived centuries ago.
The Papyrus P.Bas. 2.43 was written by a man named Arrianus to his brother Paulus, who was believed to be named after the apostle Paul. The letter has been dated to 230s AD and is thus older than all previously known Christian documentary evidence from Roman Egypt.
It describes day-to-day family matters and provides insight into the world of the first Christians in the Roman Empire.
“The earliest Christians in the Roman Empire are usually portrayed as eccentrics who withdrew from the world and were threatened by persecution. This is countered by the contents of the Basel papyrus letter,” said Sabine Huebner, professor of ancient history at the University of Basel in Switzerland.
The letter was concluded by the phrase: “I pray that you farewell ‘in the Lord.” This statement is their proof that the writer was actually a Christian.
“The use of this abbreviation – known as a nomen sacrum in this context – leaves no doubt about the Christian beliefs of the letter writer,” Sabine added. “It is an exclusively Christian formula that we are familiar with from New Testament manuscripts.”
The University of Basel has been holding onto the 1700-year-old letter for the past 100 years. It originated in the village of Theadelphia in central Egypt and belongs to the Heronius archive. The Heronius archive is the largest papyrus archive from the Roman Times.
Arrianus and Paulus were the sons of the local elite, landowners and public official. The letter discusses politics, food, and faith during those times.
“Greetings, my lord, my incomparable brother Paulus. I, Arrianus, salute you, praying that all is as well as possible in your life.
“[Since] Menibios was going to you, I thought it necessary to salute you as well as our lord father. Now, I remind you about the gymnasiarch, so that we are not troubled here. Heracleides would be unable to take care of it: he has been named to the city council. Find thus an opportunity that you buy the two [–] arouras.
“But send me the fish liver sauce too, whichever you think is good. Our lady mother is well and salutes you as well as your wives and sweetest children and our brothers and all our people. Salute our brothers [-]genes and Xydes. All our people salute you.
“I pray that you fare well in the Lord.”
What a miracle that we are still digging up more and more artifacts dating back to the time of Christ!
“Pope” or papa or father is a human invention, but the office of “Pope” while perhaps called by a different name was given personally by Christ Himself to Peter. I’m not Catholic and have very little respect for the current Pope but i do have respect for what the office is.
“Pope” or papa or father is a human invention, but the office of “Pope” while perhaps called by a different name was given personally by Christ Himself to Peter. I’m not Catholic and have very little respect for the current Pope but i do have respect for what the office is.
I’ve never seen fish liver sauce in the Asian market.
It would be odd if it did, since that was the common and unquestioned understanding of scriptures in the first few centuries. Why state the obvious?
I am afraid that you are projecting 16th century Protestant ideas onto the early church. First, writings of the early Church Fathers show a fully developed hierarchical and authoritative church (see St. Ignatius of Antioch). Second, the Arian controversy clearly demonstrates that the early Christians relied on the constant teaching of the Church, and were not dependent on Sola Scriptura. It was the Arians who rejected church Tradition and claimed Sola Scriptura as the authority for their heresy. Finally, the definitive canon of the Bible was not determined until the 4th century (and this by the bishops and the pope), making even a theoretical Sola Scriptura impossible.
Might have been a situation he was in before he got saved...so what does he do, he can’t get rid of all of them, he is responsible for all of them and that it would be unjust to dump all but “one wife”. So as a Christian he has to stay in the situation he got saved in(if he was legally wedded to them) as his family (with possible kids) would need him.
It might be, because of situations like this that the Bible cites as part of the desirable traits of a church leader that he be the husband of “only one wife”!
Thanks Red Badger.
LOLOLOLOL.You must have eaten your fish on Fridays to be so smart. Lol. A friend of mine said Catholics are the smartest because they had to eat Fish on Fridays. Most Catholics on the Supreme Court lay waste to that unscientific fact, but plays well with picky kids.
Because, of course, no Catholic has ever written a personal letter to a family member without "paying homage" to the Pope. /s /s /s
Stop and think a bit about the silliness of what you're writing.
That assertion is not supported by evidence: the rule of Sola Scriptura is not taught in Scripture. The phrase --- an innovation in itself -- only became widespread (and "widespread" only in several countries in the northwestern corner of Europe) in the 16th-17th centuries.
Most of the Christian community in the rest of the world did not then, and does not now, accept it. We love "Scriptura" --- but the "Sola" part is a tradition of men.
So, can you back it up with evidence??
i should tell you right now that the references to the authority of Scripture are plentiful. Every Christian accepts that. Got it. For the sake of avoiding redundancy, there's no need to supply us with pages of cut-and-paste asserting that Scripture is authoritative. We know that.
But nobody has a problem with the "Scriptura" part. It's the "Sola" part.
That's the part I'm interested in.
Philip: "Thinkest thou that thou understandest what thou readest?"
The Ethiopian royal official: : "And how can I, unless some man show me?" (Acts 8:26-40)
Gee, here’s a recipe.
Not an Egyptian-Roman recipe. Tomatoes are a Western Hemisphere vegetable/fruit.
The history of The Faith is interesting. Bad times lead to good times lead to complacency and persecution. But that persecution seems to always end up like fire tempering steel. The Faith comes out stronger in the end.
I attribute my intelligence (however little there may be) to the testimony of the Lord, who gives wisdom to the simple.
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
And to think it got to where it was going without a ZIP code.
The Pope in 243 A.D. would have been more like the lead elder in a big megachurch. Not the crowned head of European royalty he would become later.
LOL
And yet when Rome formalized its canon at the Council of Trent in the 1500s not one of the myriad of writings Roman Catholics selectively cite as "tradition" were included.
That is very telling.
If one just had the Bible, and if one just had the book of John from the Bible, one would have all they need to know how to have salvation.
That cannot be said about "tradition".
It's the "alone" part which is inserted from outside: it's an erroneous addition.
Even the word "complete" does not mean exhaustive or "sola." It means it's one of the things you need to make yourself complete.
By way of analogy, if I have a fully-provisioned backpack of supplies for a hike, and I have a canteen of water too, the water may be "profitable" and may make me "complete" but I still don't proceed on water ALONE: I believe in "aqua" but not in "Aqua Sola."
You missed the joke.
I guess I did.
I can’t be awesome all the time.
:)
That has to be about one of the worst analogies I’ve read on these threads.
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