As many of us have been saying for some time, the author or authors of this document were not Christians at all. They were anti-Christians, and they had a very serious ax to grind against orthodox Christians and their faith, including having a major problem with the idea that Jesus\u2019 death atoned for the sins of the world\u2026If one is \u2018Christian\u2019 the other is not, or else the law of non-contradiction must be deemed to have ceased to function in the discussion of earliest Christianity.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
It doesn\u2019t take much thought to realize that this is simply not true, and certainly not as obviously the case as Witherington seems to suppose. If the New Testament documents take us back to the earliest period for which we have written sources, as Witherington himself states (and I would concur), then a careful examination of the sources indicate the diversity of views that existed in the earliest church. The sources themselves are significantly diverse, and they also through their polemic indicate the existence of others within the Christian movement whose writings did not get included.<\/p>\n
I sympathize with Witherington. There is so much controversy and so much poor information around (for instance, CBS recently claimed that there have been Christians in Iraq \u201csince the time of Jesus<\/a>\u201c) that it can lead a scholar to dismay (and religion journalists to quit<\/a>). But trying to oversimplify in the direction of the scholarly consensus doesn\u2019t seem to be more helpful.<\/p>\n
No one examines the evidence in a vacuum. Just as for some, the idea that there has always been an obvious (probably conservative<\/a>) Christianity, departures from which were clearly heresy and\/or apostasy, can be comforting, for others the idea that their dissatisfaction with a particular form of Christianity<\/a>, even if it happens to be mainstream<\/em> Christianity, is nothing new and not necessarily a departure from Christianity itself, can also be helpful.<\/p>\n
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