Blog, week 3.

I’ve been working here and there to prepare the next two parts of the Social media material rolling out in the form or Archaeology and heretical later documents that attest to the existence of Christian facts in the second century. 

Archaeology, sure, but why talk about heretical documents? Well, If the New Testament documents exist in the first century as scholars generally agree on and I’ve made a case for this elsewhere, then surely later written documents, piggy-backing on their rise in popularity will try to distort their history and use it for their own gain? 

You see elsewhere I’ve made the case that the first century was of no interest to heretics or distorters (The movement was so small and inconsequential to some, to onlookers it didn’t seem like it would grow that big, obviously they were wrong they just didn’t know it yet), having the disciples around until the 90s enduring persecution meant their business wouldn’t be as effective, they need the core to die. These documents appear in the lives of the first Apostles younger disciples (Polycarp, Irenaeus, Ignatius, Clement etc.) and by then the Gospels are circulating as a four, Paul’s letters are circulating as a set with other works known and quoted by these second generation disciples.

With these known documents circulating (Irenaeus and Justin Martyr tell us this by the way), you’d expect those who disagree with them to start making their own “versions”, which is why so many of these documents contain “Greek” or Non-Jewish thought, because they wanted a different narrative that suited their worldview. 

Even though we have these different strands of information which are unsympathetic to core 1st century Christianity, like with non-christian sources, these documents attest to the 1st century details recorded in the Gospels. 

We understand that 

1. These documents want to distort the claims of the first century but 

2. In doing so for our benefit, we can glean historical details they concede. 

Since there are quite a few of these documents and most of them clash with each other, we can see they were likely familiar with the New Testament documents but had different agendas for distorting them. There is no united heretical movement in the second century onwards, just many who wanted to attack the Christian history. We can thank the faithful Church fathers for warding off additional teachings and distortions.