Craig B said:
As I've pointed out to dejudge, the earliest extant ms of Caesar's Gallic War is mediaeval; and Tacitus and Lucretius survived in single copies if I remember correctly. Many or most ancient writers have been entirely lost.
And, add Justin Martyr's three extant works to that list of single manuscripts emerging from an Italian monastery in the middle ages.
Craig B said:
I missed this post of yours. I have seen errors in your posts before, but I can't let this one go. It wasn't Catholics who murdered Servetus. It was John Calvin. But Catholics did their fair share of murdering, including of course Jan Hus. And they would have murdered Servetus too, if Calvin hadn't got him first.
Yes, Craig, You are correct, Calvin and Luther agreed to burn, the scientist and Christian scholar, Michael Servetus, (former instructor of medicine at University of Paris, first person in the west at least, to publish an account of the pulmonary circulation), at the stake, in Geneva, where he had fled from persecution by the Catholics in France. He had sought refuge in Switzerland, to avoid being burned alive as an heretic, a result of the warrant for his execution signed by the Catholic Inquisition. Calvin and Luther beat them to it. Some master criminals just need to burn, and be done with it.
His "crime" had been inclusion in his publication, an essay criticizing the Christian practice of infant baptism, as contrary to the Greek gospels, and the notion of trinitarianism, as hostile to the ancient Hebrew texts. Servetus, a Spaniard, was fluent in both Greek and Hebrew. I have long suspected that he had also known of the famous texts of Avicenna and the other Arabic medical pioneers, and therefore knew, before traveling to University of Paris, about the pulmonary circulation, from having read the original texts in Arabic, but that is just a guess on my part.
The issue, however, is not whether the Pliny letters are genuine, or fabricated. I don't know the answer. I don't know whether or not Tertullian's reference to them, is genuine, or also fabricated? My prejudice is to view the entire lot as having been forged, but, for sake of argument, let us accept your idea, that the letters of Pliny are all, 100% legitimate.
Pliny, let us say, met some Christians, not chrestians, and then Pliny witnessed first hand their devotion to a man who had been executed by Pontius Pilate, and whose title had been "Christ". Let us say, these earliest Christians chose martyrdom, and torture, rather than abandon their "Christ".
(I don't believe it, but, for sake of discussion, let's suppose this were correct.)
That "fact", in no way, changes Jesus' parentage, nor his DNA. Pliny doesn't comment on the man, these "Christians" worship as a deity.
Philo openly proclaims that Herakles is a demigod, in his letter to Caligula. How is that any different than the parentage of this deity, worshipped by the folks Pliny describes?
The issue, here, is not genuineness or fraudulence of the extant manuscripts, because for sure, we don't have the originals, so we can only offer opinions on that point. However, in the case of Jesus, presumably the "Christ" mentioned by Pliny, we know his parentage, don't we Craig? The teenager, Mary, was "visited" by the "holy spirit", and he impregnated her, and her son was born, "according to the law", i.e. 9 months later, thus making Jesus, like Herakles, a demigod, whose paternal DNA is supernatural. That is the sole significance of the Pliny letters, attesting to the belief of people living in modern day Turkey, where he worked as Roman governor of the province, in the divinity of a man called "Christ", or, since those folks spoke Greek, Mr. oily.
