Replies

” this surely does sound like another conspiracy theory.”

It is. Your first clue should be Endless Wiggles appeal to “lost books”; if they are lost, then he certainly can’t know what’s in them any more than you do, and you can’t examine them to keep him honest. He can make them say whatever he wants. He pretends that these Lost Books support what he’s selling because it’s easier for him than dealing with a real text that he finds inconvenient.

It’s not hard to find copies of “suppressed texts” that aren’t included in the canon of scripture. Some, like the Didache or the Shepherd of Hermas, are considered valuable and worthy of study. They just aren’t canonical. Others are gnostic texts that were rejected as being heretical. The Gospel of Thomas would be an example.

Wiggle’s disparagement of Pauline Christianity is another clue that he’s wandering in the fever swamps of terra conspiratoria. Pauline Christianity is the major portion of the NT. His acceptance by the Apostles is documented by Luke, by the first Jerusalem council.

FF Bruce was one of the preeminent scholars of his time and his books are classics of apologetics. Wiggle’s condescension of Bruce simply marks him as a crank.

"It is. Your first clue should be Endless Wiggles appeal to “lost books”; if they are lost, then he certainly can’t know what’s in them any more than you do, and you can’t examine them to keep him honest."

LOL... that was a weak assertion for several reasons.

First, something lost can be found as in the discovery of the Nag Hammadi Library in 1945 or the Gospel of Judas in 1983.

Second, lost documents have often been preserved in memory by references to them in other surviving texts. An example would be the Gospel of Barnabas (not the fraudulent Muslim text, the one mentioned in the Decretum Gelasianum).

Third, no small number of the early variations of Christianity that did not make the cut into orthodoxy are recorded by the Pauline Christian writers themselves in their responsive attacks.

It is good to note however that you do not pretend that there actually are no "lost books" at all. Good for you.

"Wiggle’s disparagement of Pauline Christianity is another clue that he’s wandering in the fever swamps of terra conspiratoria. Pauline Christianity is the major portion of the NT. His acceptance by the Apostles is documented by Luke, by the first Jerusalem council."

I gotta say... can an argument get any more viciously circular than that? If so, I have never seen an example.

"FF Bruce was one of the preeminent scholars of his time and his books are classics of apologetics. Wiggle’s condescension of Bruce simply marks him as a crank."

Sectarian apologists always adore the books of fellow apologists that agree with them. Calling those who disagree "cranks" or insultingly riffing on their userIDs with nicknames like "Wiggles" is, well, a wonderful example of how intolerance commences. I trust that you will not advance to physical violence from verbal insult?

People wonder why the exclusive monotheisms of Christianity and Islam have earned less than stellar reputations for ecumenicism.

The difference between my measured disagreement and your intense defensiveness could not be much more stark. I merely disagree and you immediately take it as malicious "disparagement." You are projecting.

You are not being threatened here, Pelham. You guys already rule the world. Is that not good enough for you?

No need to answer. It was a rhetorical question.