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Nero Became Demon Possessed After Paul's Testimony?

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  • #46
    Originally posted by Mountain Man View Post
    There are any number of things that can explain that as well. To me, demon possession is such an "out there" hypothesis that it's not even worth considering.
    Yes, but you have to consider that this is what Mike Licona would call a "religiously charged context".
    "I am not angered that the Moral Majority boys campaign against abortion. I am angry when the same men who say, "Save OUR children" bellow "Build more and bigger bombers." That's right! Blast the children in other nations into eternity, or limbless misery as they lay crippled from "OUR" bombers! This does not jell." - Leonard Ravenhill

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    • #47
      Having said that I agree there is no firm evidence this is what happened. This is nothing more than speculation.
      "I am not angered that the Moral Majority boys campaign against abortion. I am angry when the same men who say, "Save OUR children" bellow "Build more and bigger bombers." That's right! Blast the children in other nations into eternity, or limbless misery as they lay crippled from "OUR" bombers! This does not jell." - Leonard Ravenhill

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      • #48
        Originally posted by Mountain Man View Post
        There are any number of things that can explain that as well. To me, demon possession is such an "out there" hypothesis that it's not even worth considering.
        That would be the difference. I don't consider demon possession to be an out there hypothesis.
        Be watchful, stand firm in the faith, act like men, be strong.
        1 Corinthians 16:13

        "...he [Doherty] is no historian and he is not even conversant with the historical discussions of the very matters he wants to pontificate on."
        -Ben Witherington III

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        • #49
          Originally posted by Christianbookworm View Post
          Humans are stupid. Why does God care about us? We act so dumb! And I bet some fundy atheist will complain that God did not baby proof the Universe for us. Human proof? Is that even possible?
          Originally posted by rogue06 View Post
          More of a problem is that they would have private taps into the water coming into the city through the aqueducts which were often lead pipes.
          To be fair, they did not know lead was poisonous - it's just one heck of a lot easier to work with, plentiful and tastes sweet.

          Remember Marie Curie - no one's idea of dumb - carried radium around in glass vials all the time. She simply had no way to know until it was too late.


          Sure, humans come mostly in size stupid (sometimes extra stupid ) but simply not knowing something isn't stupidity.
          "He is no fool who gives what he cannot keep to gain that which he cannot lose." - Jim Elliot

          "Forgiveness is the way of love." Gary Chapman

          My Personal Blog

          My Novella blog (Current Novella Begins on 7/25/14)

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          • #50
            Originally posted by Raphael View Post
            That would be the difference. I don't consider demon possession to be an out there hypothesis.
            Yeah - I'm unsure that we can point to an exact diagnosis this late in history, but demon possession isn't off the table. If we had evidence about how the Gospel affected him - if he really did hear it - then this might well be.

            I just think Satan is lazy so lead would be my first guess - IF he really had some intervening factor and wasn't just a nut with the reins off.
            "He is no fool who gives what he cannot keep to gain that which he cannot lose." - Jim Elliot

            "Forgiveness is the way of love." Gary Chapman

            My Personal Blog

            My Novella blog (Current Novella Begins on 7/25/14)

            Quill Sword

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            • #51
              I'll put it this way. It's more likely that Satan intervened here than that Satan intervened in changing the spelling of Mark McGwire or the Berenstein Bears (as was suggested in the Mandela effect thread).
              "I am not angered that the Moral Majority boys campaign against abortion. I am angry when the same men who say, "Save OUR children" bellow "Build more and bigger bombers." That's right! Blast the children in other nations into eternity, or limbless misery as they lay crippled from "OUR" bombers! This does not jell." - Leonard Ravenhill

              Comment


              • #52
                Originally posted by Teallaura View Post
                To be fair, they did not know lead was poisonous - it's just one heck of a lot easier to work with, plentiful and tastes sweet.

                Remember Marie Curie - no one's idea of dumb - carried radium around in glass vials all the time. She simply had no way to know until it was too late.


                Sure, humans come mostly in size stupid (sometimes extra stupid ) but simply not knowing something isn't stupidity.
                Big difference between ignorance and stupidity. The former can be remedied. And even until recently lead solder was used to join copper water pipes.

                I'm always still in trouble again

                "You're by far the worst poster on TWeb" and "TWeb's biggest liar" --starlight (the guy who says Stalin was a right-winger)
                "Overall I would rate the withdrawal from Afghanistan as by far the best thing Biden's done" --Starlight
                "Of course, human life begins at fertilization that’s not the argument." --Tassman

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                • #53
                  Mortality stinks. But living forever in a fallen world would stink even more.
                  If it weren't for the Resurrection of Jesus, we'd all be in DEEP TROUBLE!

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                  • #54
                    Originally posted by Teallaura View Post
                    Yeah - I'm unsure that we can point to an exact diagnosis this late in history, but demon possession isn't off the table.
                    I never said it wasn't possible, only that (in my opinion) it's not probable.
                    Some may call me foolish, and some may call me odd
                    But I'd rather be a fool in the eyes of man
                    Than a fool in the eyes of God


                    From "Fools Gold" by Petra

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                    • #55
                      Originally posted by Cow Poke View Post
                      I'm listening to a commentary by Chuck Smith on Philippians 1.

                      Chuck makes a comment about Paul's first appearance before Nero, in which Paul was set free, then a subsequent appearance 2 years later, where Paul was martyred.

                      He didn't say it exactly like that, but that's not the point....

                      He suggests that, following Paul's presentation of the Gospel in his defense before Nero, Nero became a "mad man". That PRIOR to this, Nero was a fairly decent ruler.

                      I've just googled some sources that tend to agree that there was a drastic change in Nero, but they attribute it more to the death of his mother, or the death of Agrippa, or some other event.

                      Comments?
                      The people blamed Nero for the disastrous fire of Rome. Nero had plans for Rome’s reconstruction and, according to Tacitus, the people of Rome blamed Nero for burning the old city to this end.

                      Nero responded by deflecting blame onto the Christians.

                      In terms of Church History, the persecution of the Christians under Nero reveals that 20 years after the reign of his predecessor Claudius , who died 54 CE, the Christians in Rome were becoming recognized as a distinct group, separate from the Jews.
                      “He felt that his whole life was a kind of dream and he sometimes wondered whose it was and whether they were enjoying it.” - Douglas Adams.

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                      • #56
                        Candida Moss has this, on Daily Beast:

                        On the evening of July 18, in the scorching summer of 64 CE, a fire started in a shop under the Circus Maximus in Rome. The fire quickly spread to nearby homes and businesses and the Circus itself. The fire burned for six days, ravaging the city. It left only four of Rome’s fourteen quarters untouched.

                        The reigning emperor, Nero, a man known for his cruelty and love of theater, scapegoated the Christians for the disaster. According to tradition and later historians, as a punishment, Nero devised grotesque executions for the Christians: he covered them in animal skins and had them torn apart by dogs, and he doused them in tar and used them as human torches to light the night sky for his dinner parties. It was in the wake of the fire, Christian tradition maintains, that the most important Apostles–St Peter and St Paul–were arrested and executed. But while the fire of Rome was a devastating historical reality, did Nero actually target Christians as a result?

                        Most of the historical evidence for Nero persecuting Christians comes to us from the writings of the Roman historian Tacitus, who wrote between 115-120 CE, at least fifty years after the events he was describing. According to Tacitus, the people of Rome blamed Nero for the fire and Nero responded by deflecting blame onto the Christians. He writes, “Nero fastened guilt and inflicted the most exquisite tortures on [the Christians who] were hated for their abominations.” Christians were rounded up, arrested, and interrogated for information about others in the city and, in the end, “an immense multitude” was convicted and executed.

                        In Roman biographies, Nero is known for murdering his own mother; he is certainly capable of this kind of cruelty, but this does not mean that Tacitus’s story is correct. In his recent Journal of Roman Studies article “The Myth of the Neronian Persecution,” distinguished Princeton classicist Brent Shaw has argued that Tacitus’s story is a later fabrication (full disclosure: I’m inclined to agree with Shaw because I argued something similar in my book Myth of Persecution).

                        Shaw points out that there are no references to Christians in the writings of any Roman historians prior to Tacitus. Cassius Dio, another Roman historian who discusses the Great Fire, never mentions the Christians at all, and other later Roman sources that do mention the fire are entirely dependent on Tacitus. Suetonius, the only other second-century Roman writer to mention the mistreatment of Christians by Nero, does not connect these punishments with the Great Fire. He says that they were punished for being a “new and evil superstition.”

                        Perhaps the most devastating piece of evidence is the use of the term “Christian.” The first followers of Jesus were Jews. By the time Tacitus was writing in Asia Minor (modern Turkey) in the second century they had adopted the name Christian and caught the attention of Roman authorities, but it’s not at all clear that Christians thought of themselves or were known as Christians in the 60s. Paul, for example, never uses the word.

                        As University of Exeter professor David Horrell has shown, the earliest use of the name “Christian” in writing seems to be the biblical book 1 Peter, which was written at the very end of the first century. Some have argued against Shaw that the Acts of the Apostles (the book of the Bible that tells the story of the actions of the apostles after the death of Jesus) states that Christians were first called Christians in Antioch in the 50s. But how accurate is Acts? Clare K. Rothschild, a professor in the Department of Theology at Lewis University, told the The Daily Beast that while “scholars typically date Acts anywhere from 56 to 140 CE… a comprehensive study by the late Richard I. Pervo … has persuaded many that Acts was composed closer to the year 115.” What all of this means, then, is that Christians weren’t Christians in 64 CE. They were Jews. Nero could not possibly have targeted a group that didn’t yet exist.

                        So what actually happened? Shaw argues that after the fire there were rumors of Nero’s involvement. Nero responded by punishing some arsonists, but these people were not actually Christians, even if they were likely innocent of the charges. In the fifty years that elapsed between the events of 64 CE and the time of Tacitus, those individuals punished by Nero came to be associated with the Christians, because, by the time of Tacitus and Suetonius, Christians were known as trouble makers.

                        What does this mean, then, for the deaths of Peter and Paul? Well, as I pointed out in Myth of Persecution, the earliest versions of the deaths of Peter and Paul don’t mention the Great Fire at all. In fact it takes centuries to connect the two Apostles to those events. The earliest reference to their deaths (a Christian document called 1 Clement) says that they were executed because of “jealousy.” Several scholars have argued that the word “jealousy” here refers to intra-Christian disputes, meaning that it was because of other church members that Peter and Paul ended up being arrested and killed. Shaw concludes his article by saying that neither the death of Peter nor that of Paul have anything to do with the Great Fire, adding that in both cases their executions had nothing to do with being Christian. He hypothesizes that they were in fact charged with disturbing the peace.

                        This doesn’t mean of course, that the Great Fire of Rome wasn’t historically significant even beyond the devastating effects of the fire. This is, as Sarah Bond of the University of Iowa has written, an important moment in the history of fire fighting. But much of what we think we know about the fire is the product of legends associated with a tyrannical emperor. To this day people use the expression “fiddled while Rome burned” to refer to Nero’s conduct – but violins wouldn’t be invented until the 11th century, and when the fire broke out he was 35 miles away at his villa. It’s a great turn of phrase, but it’s pretty shoddy history.
                        https://www.thedailybeast.com/nero-t...istian-history
                        “I think God, in creating man, somewhat overestimated his ability.” ― Oscar Wilde
                        “And if there were a God, I think it very unlikely that He would have such an uneasy vanity as to be offended by those who doubt His existence” ― Bertrand Russell
                        “not all there” - you know who you are

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                        • #57
                          Originally posted by Christianbookworm View Post
                          Mortality stinks. But living forever in a fallen world would stink even more.
                          I'm pretty sure that living forever in any world would get quite boring after a while, particularly if living meant kissing your free will goodbye.

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                          • #58
                            Originally posted by JimL View Post
                            I'm pretty sure that living forever in any world would get quite boring after a while, particularly if living meant kissing your free will goodbye.
                            God doesn't think it would be boring. And I could talk with and praise Him for eternity. Not like an eternal hymn sing. More like an utopia where every need is met and that includes the need for "enrichment". Or did you think the omnipotent Creator of all things actually needs servants?
                            If it weren't for the Resurrection of Jesus, we'd all be in DEEP TROUBLE!

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                            • #59
                              Originally posted by Christianbookworm View Post
                              God doesn't think it would be boring. And I could talk with and praise Him for eternity. Not like an eternal hymn sing. More like an utopia where every need is met and that includes the need for "enrichment". Or did you think the omnipotent Creator of all things actually needs servants?
                              A deity with the “omni” attributes actually "needs" nothing or wants anything at all, including you.
                              “He felt that his whole life was a kind of dream and he sometimes wondered whose it was and whether they were enjoying it.” - Douglas Adams.

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                              • #60
                                Desires are not needs. God does not need us, but He does want us. And why do people keep thinking God is somehow boring?
                                If it weren't for the Resurrection of Jesus, we'd all be in DEEP TROUBLE!

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