Way off base. You obviously haven't bothered to read any of the scholarship I cited.



My point was never to say the first century Christians were proto-Mormons. My point was to show that the ideologies of the first century CE were quite drastically different from those of the second century on.

Then you can explain exactly what about my comment was begging the question, can't you? I wait with bated breath.

You'll have to forgive me. I had assumed you paid attention to what I wrote and so did not think you actually intended to say that one just had to append an additional criterion that is ostensibly aimed directly at excluding Mormonism. Y'see, my comment was that no definition could be produced that did not exclude early Christians, beg the question, or both. When your definition requires the addition of a specific anathema on ostensibly Mormon doctrines, you are begging the question in about the most flagrant manner I can imagine. I will not again make the mistake of assuming you could not possibly be so myopic.