mountainman

Clive - the DNA of ancient history is an anacronym for DatingC14 'n Archaeology.
Its lineage has been in the hands of the imperial church for almost 17 centuries.
Has it got anything to do with the partial interpolation of the CELEBATE into the CELEBRATE?


Ashoka (and even Mani/Shapur) saw to it that Buddhism and many derivatives were well represented in celebate sects and Apollonius of Tyana and other Greek philosoper/sages/enlightened souls (eg: Ammonias Saccas and Plotinus) were also running around and contributing to the wealth of Greek literature, with which the new testament obviously competed for a foothold.

Celebacy is a specific form of asceticism. The Buddhist idea of asceticism is no different from the Greek idea. Both concepts were a "full series of precepts" in sharp contradistinction over and against the same parallel precepts found in the new testament, which promotes "partial asceticism".


I agree entirely avi. Of course it is. That is precisely what Emperor Julian called it.

stephan huller

Again as I noted at another post, I don't know what people that post here mean by 'fiction,' 'fairy tale' or 'romance.' Surely there were people who thought that SOMETHING HAPPENED in Palestine on March 25th in the latter part of the reign of Tiberius. The Alexandrian tradition is certain that Mark who is also called John witness the events of the Passion (Passio Petri Sancti). The Catholic tradition belittles and outright denies that this is true, so this SEPARATE tradition is not part of any grand myth-making on the part of some 'organized Roman conspiracy.'

I am not one of these people that believes the official story of what happened in Christianity ON ANY LEVEL. But then at the same time I can't accept the idea that a group of people COLLECTIVELY HALLUCINATED a story which became the basis for a messianic sect of Judaism.

I think that you have to emphasize the pagan roots of Christianity to create this notion of stupid people being duped into believing something. The existence of an Alexandrian tradition which held fast to these opinions effectively debunks these rather simple-minded assertions. Clement, Origen, Heraclas, Dionysius and the rest of the Patriarchs of Alexandria were incredibly bright people who maintained what I see as a SEPARATE tradition from whatever 'fictions' you argue were being created at Rome.

You mention Ammonius Sacca. Let's face it - one of the reasons he got so smart was his apprenticeship in the Christian religion. Yes, he eventually fell away to something else. But let's not forget the persecutions of the age.

I don't know how strongly I would believe in anything if my interrogators were going to stick hot iron in my privates.

I don't understand how you can argue that ALL these smart people somehow became mentally incapacitated when it came to the question of whether or not there was some kind of a historical basis to the Passion. They had better evidence than we now have and these very learned individuals came to the conclusion there was historical truth to the tradition.

I wonder how many Scientologists would die defending L Ron Hubbard.

mountainman

The production of the 50 Constantine Bibles (ahem "Religious history"), the "Historia Ecclesiastica" ("Church History") and the "Historia Augusta" (a totally bogus "Political History")were sponsored and lavishly published in the high technology of the codex and cannot be described as collective hallucinations, although the subject matter might well be.

"the fourth century was] the great age of literary forgery,
the extent of which has yet to be exposed"

...[and]...

"not until the mass of inventions
labelled 'Eusebius' shall be exposed,
can the pretended references to Christians
in Pagan writers of the first three centuries
be recognized for the forgeries they are."


--- Edwin Johnson, "Antiqua Mater: A Study of Christian Origins"

Analdo Momigliano once remarked that (Hans) Eusebius (Anderson) may have been of Jewish descent.

The most high profile political passion at that time in antiquity --- the talking point of the town and cities of the empire --- was the political passion of JC, and I am not talking about Jesus Henry but Julius Caesar. It is a fact, for example, that Arius of Alexandria compares the passion of JC to the passion of JC. Everyone, from the slaves to the common people in the street to the senatorial class knew exactly who JC was of course in antiquity, and it was not Jesus Henry but Julius Caesar, also known as "The Lord God Caesar".

stephan huller

Why do people always cite Constantine as the 'inventor' of Christianity? If Constantine made up the whole tradition out of thin why did he and Hosius of Cordoba have to work so hard to subvert Arius and all that was ALREADY ESTABLISHED at Alexandria? Anyone who cites Constantine as the inventor of Christianity doesn't understand the history of the religion. Anyone who posits the idea that Christianity WASN'T related to Judaism demonstrates only that he has no real working knowledge of either tradition.

Toto

What "people?" mountainman has been on a quest here for years to try to establish his thesis that Constantine had Eusebius forge the entire New Testament from scratch as a tool of empire. Most of the posters here ignore him.

Thanks for the handy summary of why he is wrong.

mountainman

Also see this post

Because Arius and the religion that was already established at Alexandria was the traditional Graeco-Roman religious mileu that the successive Roman emperors had patronised and sponsored on their coinage as "Pontifex Maximus" since BCE, and that the Arian controversy was concerned with the historicity (not the theology) of Constantine's Jesus. The accounts of the Arian controversy are interrelated with the accounts of the preservation of the "uncanonical books" (ie: Gnostic Gospels and Acts, etc) and this literature is seen as unauthorised and (given the political context of c.325 CE) politically seditious extra stories about the new God Jesus, by the anti-Christian Greek Alexandrian resistance. Constantine spread Christianity by the sword and by Draconian Laws c.324 CE. He prohibited the books of that "Porphyrian" Arius, and pronounced memoriae damnatio upon Arius' name and memory.



Without consulting the Jewish people, the Roman emperor simply hijacked the (Hebew sourced) LXX to form the basis of a new imperial Cut-And-Pastianity which was not Graeco-Roman. This implied that Constantine was no longer obliged to kow-tow to the Graeco-Roman priesthood or to sponsor the Graeco-Roman religions, and he freely plundered them for gold and silver and treasure and artworks and statues -- but in the first instance -- to usurp their authority, and the temple foundations upon which he built his basilicas.

Anyone who posits Constantine could not have ordered and sponsored this wholesale invention of his own imperial cult demonstrates firstly that they have not examined the integrity of the archaeological evidence of the church before Constantine (eg: Ante pacem) and secondly that they are incapable of understanding what Lord Acton describes as "the mentality of a gangster" and the supreme power of the "Lord God Caesar".

“Where you have a concentration of power in a few hands,
all too frequently men with the mentality of gangsters get control.
History has proven that. All power corrupts;
Absolute power corrupts absolutely”

[Lord Acton]

stephan huller

Wow mountainman! Some of this stuff is beyond my intellectual capabilities like:

What does that mean? Seriously, I haven't a clue. How can I respond?

And then this:

I kind of get where you are starting out with this. There was a battle over the nature of Jesus during the rule of Constantine. Okay, that much is true but then I lose sight of the argument that follows. The most jarring statement is the business about 'politically seditious extra stories about the new God Jesus, by the anti-Christian Greek Alexandrian resistance.' Wowsy wow wow.

You should know that while we have very little direct information about the Arians one of the hostile treatises that survives is Athanasius's De Sententia Dionysii where the spokesperson for the new orthodox compromise established at Nicaea - Athanasius - attacks the way Arians pointed to Dionysius as one of the witnesses for their tradition. The Arians are also accused of being Origenists and moreover 'Judaizers' (just as Origen was). So even though this debate between so-called 'Arians' and orthodox was occurring in the fourth century it was very much a debate rooted in the third century.

I am the last person to deny Imperial involvement in the reshaping of Christianity. Nevertheless the idea that Christianity was invented at the time of Constantine is a non-starter. You've taken a reasonable observation that Constantine had a hand in RESHAPING Christianity in the fourth century but ended up losing all perspective.

History is a very complicated thing to come to terms with. The complexity involved in explaining how Christianity developed from the first century to fourth century is so complex and requires such attention to detail that most laypeople will lose interest within an hour of coming into contact with it.

Nevertheless if you are going to have your theory about Constantine taken seriously you are going to have to actually spend the time explaining away the Arians (and their related counterparts the so-called 'Martyr Church' associated with Melitius of Lycopolis). I don't know if you are up for that challenge. I think that Tm Vivian (Peter of Alexandria) has done a good job of showing that the Alexandrian Patriarchs from Heraclas to Peter were all Origenists and thus represented a continuous tradition CRUSHED BY CONSTANTINE'S REFORMS.

But good luck anyway ...

mountainman

I mention that there appear to be two Ammonias Sacca's, two Origen's and two Anatolius of Laodicea's and that it appears that the lineage of the Academy of Plato has been targetted for the purpose of introducing "respectable christians" into the Eusebian account of Pre-Nicaean 'history'. That Ammonias and Origen of the Neoplatonic philosophers were 'christians" can no longer be maintained to the extent that the classicists have to postulate that we are physically dealing with a number of sets of two different people --- christians and neoplatonists.

Let's not forget the literary forgeries of the age which must include the "HISTORIA AUGUSTA. I reject the traditional assumption/conjecture/(Church) DOGMA that there were any Christians, including the Eusebian derived stories of the 'christian martyrs, before they appear in the archaeology.

So the dogma tells us. The evidence however is silent on refuting the simple hypothesis that Christianity first appeared in the 4th century, and if you have a conviction that any element of evidence in our possession can refute that hypothesis, then I would like you to cite it, and be prepared to defend your position on the basis of this evidence. C14 dating is highly regarded by me, as are dated documents and the context of political history. Inscriptions are particularly welcome, but I draw the line at accepting a paleographer's certified opinion as primary evidence for "Early Christianity".

Huon

On his own site, mountainman quotes a page of Phil Norfleet :
http://plato2051.tripod.com/ammonius_saccas.htm

where we can read some infos about the so-called "neo-platonism", which was the platonism of the 3rd century.

This philosophy began at a time (c. ~ 230) when the traditional polytheistic graeco-roman religion was severely declining. It could not absorb the egyptian gods, nor the phoenician gods. The fact that any emperor would become a god after his death "demonetized" the "true gods", such as Jupiter and co.

Ammonios Saccas offered the concept of the One and the Infinite, as opposed to the many and the finite. A Christian understands that as the concept of the Old Bearded. The universe has an immaterial soul, and so have the humans. A Christian understands that easily.

The difference is that Platonism (neo- if you insist) has a much better image than Christianity. It is not a belief originating among the Jews. Their philosophers are well known. It is possible to make a takeover bid on their good reputation, keeping what suits best the Christian religion, and dropping what could look too gnostic.

mountainman

I have been in email correspondence with Phil Norfleet. The key issue on his page from my perspective is that he is arguing that there must have been two separate Ammonias Saccas's in history, one referred to by Eusebius as a Christian, and the other the father of Neoplatonism.

The same situation again appears when we examine history for a 3rd century Origen --- we find that they must have been two distinct people called Origen. One was the Neoplatonic disciple of the Neoplatonic Ammonias, and the other was the Christian disciple of the Christian origen, or so Eusebius infers from his treatment of these figures.

These doppelgangers are not going to go away.
We are looking at a duplication.



This conjecture is actually remote from the historical evidence is we examine the Greek literary phenomenom known as the The Second Sophistic. The traditional polytheistic and henotheistic graeco-roman religious milieu was also nevertheless uniterruptedly sponsored by all the Roman Emperors up until Diocletian on their coinage and temple inscriptions.

Here is my citation to demonstrate that the traditional polytheistic graeco-roman religion were not severely declining up until Diocletian, but then, as we all must surely know, Constantine and his Christian soldiers enforced the prohibition of all traditional polytheistic graeco-roman religious practices empire-wide, and physically destroyed the "Tall Poppies".

Cambridge Ancient History Volume 12
OFFICIAL RELIGION

p.412

Religion in the Roman Empire was governed by the princeps, as "Pontifex Maximus" a member of all priestly colleges and responsible for all public morals and well being.

The following is evidenced by coins and temple foundations:

Claudius: magnified the cult of Cybele.
Gauis: in Rome introduced Osiris (and other Egyptian deities accepted in Italy)
Vespasian: favored Isis and Sarapis.
Domitian: was a benefactor of Isis, Minerva and Jupiter
Hadrian: built the temple of Venus and restored many temples in Rome.
Severan Dynasty: sponsored Bacchus, Hercules and Sarapis.
Illyrian Dynasty: were devoted to Vesta.
Aurelian: built the temple of Sol Invictus, celebrated 25th December and established priestly colleges.
Diocletian: supported Sol Invictus, Isis, Sarapis, Jupiter and Hercules.

See above. Whoever won the battle for "Lord God Caesar" also won the role of "Pontifex Maximus", the chief presiding over all the "Sacred College of the Pontifices" [ie: the Graeco-Roman pristhoods]. The "Boss" got to select which Deity they were going to run with, and they backed that on their coinds and on their temples since Julius Caesar bribed his way into the role in Rome.


See the above, and the reasons provided by Phil Norfleet by which we cannot maintain the identity between Ammonias the Christian and the indentity of Ammonias the father of Neoplatonism. A Christian by the name of Ammonias Saccas is far less likely to exist. Eusebius declares that the Eusebian Ammonias left many books, but the Neoplatonic tradition maintains that he wrote none.


But dont you see the message on the wall? The Christian take-over bid by Eusebius was to fraudulently assert that some of the key lineage of the "Academy of Plato" were in fact Christians. This bald face lie by Eusebius has led some Christians since the 4th century to think that they were highly intellectually pedigreed. The fact of the matter is that their most thoroughly dishonest historian of the church simply fabricated a "Christianisation" of these prior century Platonic Philosophers and Sages in order to dress up the religion of Constantine with some very respectable clothes.