Of all the lost texts, the one I’d like to read most is Porphyry's "Against the Christians". It was a massive 15 volume work refuting every aspect of Christianity from both a historical and philosophical perspective. Porphyry had access to sources we don't have anymore like histories of the Phoenicians (he was from Tyre himself). It's arguments were so searing that multiple Christian emperors had it banned and every copy burned. Even mentioning his arguments was banned, so stuff Christians wrote in an attempt to "refute" it didn't survive either. We only have a few fragments via quotations, and even from what little we know, he prefigured a lot of what was later independently discovered by academic Biblical study, e.g. the Book of Daniel NOT being written during the Babylonian exile but rather, being written in the 180s BC under the reign of Seleucid king Antiochus IV Epiphanes.

>>17820397

Of all the lost texts, the one I’d like to read most is Porphyry's "Against the Christians". It was a massive 15 volume work refuting every aspect of Christianity from both a historical and philosophical perspective. Porphyry had access to sources we don't have anymore like histories of the Phoenicians (he was from Tyre himself). It's arguments were so searing that multiple Christian emperors had it banned and every copy burned. Even mentioning his arguments was banned, so stuff Christians wrote in an attempt to "refute" it didn't survive either. We only have a few fragments via quotations, and even from what little we know, he prefigured a lot of what was later independently discovered by academic Biblical study, e.g. the Book of Daniel NOT being written during the Babylonian exile but rather, being written in the 180s BC under the reign of Seleucid king Antiochus IV Epiphanes.

So, I’ve been looking at ancient Roman pagan arguments against Christianity to see their perspective and one argument I find interesting is their response to Jesus’s miracles.

Instead of trying to deny or disprove them, they just insisted that Jesus’s miracles were nothing special by bringing up other figures who supposedly did similar things like Apollonius, Apuleius, and Vespasian and said “are these people too the son of god because they also did these things”? They also claimed that Jesus learned how to do these things during his youth in Egypt because supposedly Egyptians knew how to do them.

So, I’ve been looking at ancient Roman pagan arguments against Christianity to see their perspective and one argument I find interesting is their response to Jesus’s miracles.

Instead of trying to deny or disprove them, they instead insisted that Jesus’s miracles were nothing special by bringing up other figures who supposedly did similar things and said “are these people too the son of god because they also did these things”? They also claim that Jesus learned how to do these things during his youth in Egypt because supposedly Egyptians knew how to do them.

A lot of lost texts would be awesome if they were found. Like Porphyry's "Against the Christians", it was a colossal 15 volume work taking attacking every aspect of Christianity from a philosophical and historical perspective. Porphyry had access to sources that we don't have, like histories of the Phoenecians (he was from Tyre himself). It was considered so searing that multiple Christian emperors had it banned and every copy burned, even mentioning his arguments was banned so books Christians wrote to rebut it didn't survive either. We've only got a few fragments via quotations, and even from those we know he prefigured a lot of what was later independently discovered by academic Biblical study, e.g. the book of Daniel being written during the reign of Antiochus Epiphanes (160s BC), not during the Babylonian exile.