Amaleq13

I doubt the obscurity and relatively lateness of that usage will prevent Pete from pretending it supports his claim.

Jeffrey Gibson

But his claim was that his "knowledge" of episkopos meaning "spy" was based on something said by the author of the book on Constantine that he referred us to. And he has yet to show that the author said any such thing.

In any case, to support his claim, Pete will need to show that episkopos bore this meaning in the 4th century by producing 4th century instances of the term being used with the meaning "spy". And we both know that this is something he is incapable of doing -- and not only because he doesn't know Greek.

Jeffrey

spin

Not only must he show that episkopos bore that meaning at that time, but he also has to show, because of its common range of meaning, why the usage of the term in the literature he desires does not conform to its common meaning.

Consider the sentence

He got on the bus.

One gets a nice simple understanding of a guy using public transport. No context is needed for that understanding.

However, if the person was a computer hardware manufacturer, who had been slow with regard to the computer architecture he made, one may start to get a different understanding. You see a computer has a data transfer structure called a "bus" -- it allows data to move from storage devices such as hard drives to hardware sub-systems such as graphics processors. Recently a more sophisticated bus structure called PCI Express was introduced into computer hardware, but our man thought that it was only a fad, so he resisted it until he saw is market share start to dwindle. Eventually, he had to do what was necessary to survive: he got on the bus.

You can see how much effort I had to go through to get a reasonable alternative meaning out of the initial sentence I supplied. The common understanding of "bus" dictates how we understand the simple sentence and without strong contextual clues there is no reason to think otherwise.

As one can see from the lexicon entry for episkopos it has a common understanding dealing with a position of oversight and referring to an office-holder. To derive an uncommon meaning of the term one needs contextual clues, otherwise one would see the term in the light of its common understanding, so if one wants to advocate an uncommon meaning for a term one has to supply those contextual clues. If one can't, there is no reason to think that the term was used to convey the uncommon meaning.

Of course it would be easier to supply those contextual clues in a foreign language if one understood that language. Too many theory-mongers lack the required prerequisites to do the job their theories require. Rather than remain linguistically challenged, they need to get on the bus and learn about linguistic issues.


spin

mountainman

My Dear Detractors,

As I do not have a copy of H.Pohlsander book Emperor Constantine (since I borrowed it from a library), I will quote from my notes of that book in the expectation that if I get something wrong I will be corrected

Thankyou, and best wishes,


Pete

Jeffrey Gibson

Is this supposed to be an exact quote from Pohlsander's book? Or is it your summary of what you "read"? Do your notes include the page of his book at which this "quote" of Pohlsander appears?

Jeffrey

mountainman

Dear Jeffrey,

No, yes and no.

Best wishes,


Pete

Toto

I have searched Pohlsander's book on Amazon and at google books. It does not contain the word spy.

Jeffrey Gibson

Nor, so far as I can tell, does it contain the expression "Bishop of Bishops", let alone a statement about how Constantine applied this title to himself.

But it does contain numerous assertions that Christianity existed before Constantine and that the office of bishop was a religious one.

So ... we seem to have yet another example of Pete misreading/misrepresenting the authorities he appeals to and of seeing what he wants to see in the sources he consults.

I'm beginning to wonder if he isn't just having us on.

Jeffrey

mountainman

Dear Toto,

I came across the association between bishop and spy when researching some years back the life of Constantine. At that time I collected material from one of Pohlsander's books on Constantine in order to form a summary of the Constantine - a highly intellligent supreme imperial mafia thug.

The specific quote:It is likely therefore that I have mistakenly cited the wrong Pohlsander Constantine book, and I am sorry if that's the case. When I am next at the library I will get the correct citation details. From memory it was an introductory book written by Pohlsander, not necessarily designed for ancient historians, but for the general reader as an introduction to the life of Constantine.

For what its worth, at that time many years ago, I did not bother to meticulously note my sources because I was under the expectation that the idea that Constantine invented the new state Roman Universal (within the Hubble Limit) religion by binding together a little bit of old with a little bit of new would be refuted by some unambiguous evidence, either by way of the documentary evidence (excluding Eusebius) and/or the monumental evidence (and specifically the epigraphy and papyri which have been studied and written about for perhaps centuries).

Best wishes,


Pete

mountainman

Dear Jeffrey,

We do not need to be reminded that the entire world supports the mainstream view of the sedimentary layers of scholarly comments upon scholarly comments which have always followed the authority of Constantine. At no stage was the evidence submitted by Constantine ever disputed and/or questioned and/or revised. Eusebius and Eusebius alone has defined the prenicene epoch of christian history, and his history was accepted as gospel, since he also delivered the gospels to Constantine.

It has not yet dawned on modern scholarship that here we have a circular argument from authority which stops and starts with the emperor Constantine and his sponsored literary rhetoricians.


Cite any unambiguous evidence with which my hypothesis (that Eusebius tendered fiction) is inconsistent to the extent of refuting the hypothesis, and I will thank you Jeffrey Gibson, and I will walk away a free man, happy to grow cabbages once again, happy to go surfing every day, and happy to know that I gave the world my best shot in the field of ancient history, and that my best shot fell short of the mark.

Best wishes,


Pete