Freethought & Rationalism Archive

mountainman · 08-26-2011, 04:26 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Iskander

Constantine was a tolerant emperor anxious to heal the wounds inflicted on the community by the failure of the pagan policy of the third century.

This is just propaganda. It's an age old political practice that's till with us today. The new regime bad mouths the old regime.

Doug Shaver · 08-26-2011, 06:07 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by mountainman

Quote:

Originally Posted by Doug Shaver

My opinion of the "provenance, genuineness and authenticity" of the New Testament writings is not exactly friendly to Christian orthodoxy. It's even hostile to a great deal of non-orthodox NT scholarship.

You are entitled to form your own opinions on the evidence.

Oh, my, how very tolerant of you to say so.

Doug Shaver · 08-26-2011, 07:52 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by mountainman

Quote:

Originally Posted by Doug Shaver

Fact: One man expressed an opinion. Fact: Another man expressed a contrary opinion. What is there about those two facts that needs reconciling?

One question an ancient historian might ask about these two facts is which is closer to all the available corroborrating (or non-corroborating) evidence and the ancient historical truth concerning the rule of Constantine in his final decade after Nicaea.

Yes, he might ask that. It would be better if he asked which man's opinion was more consistent with all the available evidence. The mere fact that contrary opinions were asserted would be consistent with any possible state of affairs.

mountainman · 08-26-2011, 09:34 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Doug Shaver

Quote:

Originally Posted by mountainman

Quote:

Originally Posted by Doug Shaver

My opinion of the "provenance, genuineness and authenticity" of the New Testament writings is not exactly friendly to Christian orthodoxy. It's even hostile to a great deal of non-orthodox NT scholarship.

You are entitled to form your own opinions on the evidence.

Oh, my, how very tolerant of you to say so.

You're welcome. I am a reasonably tolerant kind of person.

mountainman · 08-26-2011, 09:42 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Doug Shaver

Quote:

Originally Posted by mountainman

Quote:

Originally Posted by Doug Shaver

Fact: One man expressed an opinion. Fact: Another man expressed a contrary opinion. What is there about those two facts that needs reconciling?

One question an ancient historian might ask about these two facts is which is closer to all the available corroborrating (or non-corroborating) evidence and the ancient historical truth concerning the rule of Constantine in his final decade after Nicaea.

Yes, he might ask that. It would be better if he asked which man's opinion was more consistent with all the available evidence. The mere fact that contrary opinions were asserted would be consistent with any possible state of affairs.

Contrary opinions are particularly to be expected if the opinions concerned the comparitive evaluation of the concepts of divinity which were to be found within the books of the Constantine Bible and those to be found within the books of Plato around aboiut the years 324/325 CE.

What evidence do we have that the Platonists were converted peacefully and baptized into the centralized monotheistic state church at that time? The Philip of Side fragment recently published by Roger has a great deal to say about this specific question.

We have a certain set of evidence for Plato and Platonists and the canon of the Platonist's books.
We have another set of evidence for Jesus and the Christians and the proto-canon of the Christian's books.
How consistently do each of these two sets of evidence stackup alongside each other, each with respect to all the available other evidence?
The fact remains that Bullneck was a Book-Burner and a Book-Publisher.
His selections of which books to burn and which books to publish have had a profound effect.
If we had not rediscovered Euclid again we would not be discussing Christian origins on the internet.

Lastly I could ask you what we could or could not do in the situation when we have one person's opinion (say Constantine's) whereas another person's opinion (say Arius of Alexandria) has been subjected to "Damnatio memoriae" and a host of other hegemonic censorships, (burnings, destructions, etc, etc, etc) and we dont actually have the original opinion before us?

Iskander · 08-26-2011, 01:00 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by mountainman

Quote:

Originally Posted by Iskander

Christians did not ban the works of Porphyry and treated them on merit. Again, I am citing Russell:” Apart from The Prior Analytics, which deals with the syllogism, there are other writings of Aristotle which have considerable importance in the history of philosophy. One of these is the short work on The Categories. Porphyry the Neoplatonist wrote a commentary on this book, which had a very notable influence on medieval philosophy.”

Roger has a very informative page on this last work here.

You will see a carefully prepared table of manuscripts.
Where did they come from?

See Transmission of the Classics

Emperor Justinian c.529 CE closes the Academy of Plato down.

Justinian confiscated all the funds devoted to philosophic instruction at Athens, closed the schools, and seized the endowments of the academy of Plato, which had maintained an uninterrupted succession of teachers for nearly 900 years. According to the historian Agathias, after the closure, Damascius and several other Academy members fled to Persia where they obtained protection from the Sassanid king Chosroes I at his capital, Ctesiphon. The refugees took with them many important scrolls of philosophy and science. Unfortunately these last few Platonists found that their life remained difficult in Persia due to the hostility of the local Zoroastrian clergy.

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Scribes often recycled old books, scraping off old, philosophical texts in order to create religious books, for example.[4] After a while, only a few monasteries had Greek works, and even fewer of them copied these works (mainly the Irish).[5] Irish monks had been taught by Greek and Latin missionaries who probably had brought Greek texts with them.[6] However, Irish preservation of these ideas, though valuable, did not introduce nearly as much Greek philosophy and science, to the West, as did the work of translators of Arabic from 1100–1300 CE. Arab logicians had inherited Greek ideas after their invasion of southern portions of the Byzantine Empire. Their translations and commentaries on these ideas worked their way through the Arab West into Spain and Sicily, which became important centers for this transmission of ideas. This work of translation from Islamic culture, though largely unplanned and disorganized, constituted one of the greatest transmissions of ideas in history.[1]

Have an ice-cold beer

Doug Shaver · 08-27-2011, 07:05 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by mountainman

What evidence do we have that the Platonists were converted peacefully and baptized into the centralized monotheistic state church at that time? . . . .

Lastly I could ask you what we could or could not do in the situation when we have one person's opinion (say Constantine's) whereas another person's opinion (say Arius of Alexandria) has been subjected to "Damnatio memoriae" and a host of other hegemonic censorships, (burnings, destructions, etc, etc, etc) and we dont actually have the original opinion before us?

I don't see any relationship between those questions and the one to which I responded, or my response to it. The existence of contrary opinions about a ruler needs no explanation beyond ordinary human nature. There has never been a ruler about whom contrary opinions did not exist. It doesn't matter how they came to power or how well they exercised it. Some of their subjects adored them and some hated them. From the mere fact of such disagreements, we can infer nothing.

mountainman · 08-29-2011, 09:09 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Doug Shaver

Quote:

Originally Posted by mountainman

What evidence do we have that the Platonists were converted peacefully and baptized into the centralized monotheistic state church at that time? . . . .

Lastly I could ask you what we could or could not do in the situation when we have one person's opinion (say Constantine's) whereas another person's opinion (say Arius of Alexandria) has been subjected to "Damnatio memoriae" and a host of other hegemonic censorships, (burnings, destructions, etc, etc, etc) and we dont actually have the original opinion before us?

I don't see any relationship between those questions and the one to which I responded, or my response to it.

Sorry, maybe I was getting ahead of myself. As you know I tend to ask a few questions. Nevertheless you wnt on to say ...

Quote:

The existence of contrary opinions about a ruler needs no explanation beyond ordinary human nature. There has never been a ruler about whom contrary opinions did not exist. It doesn't matter how they came to power or how well they exercised it. Some of their subjects adored them and some hated them. From the mere fact of such disagreements, we can infer nothing.

But doesn't it strike you as strange that, aside from my seeming preoccupation with showing the Roman Emperor Constantine in a bad light, why is it a fact that, from the ancient historical sources that we have about Constantine for the period of his supreme rule from Nicaea (i.e. from c.324/325 to 337 CE) we do not get any contrary opinions.

Surely there would have been someone to express a contrary opinion to Constantine? I refuse to believe that the Greeks bent their heads in submission to the dead Jewish god at Nicaea. Do we know what the political situation was like? Well, our sources as mentioned, are one-sided and extremely biased. I think that in this circumstance, it is reasonable to infer that the hostile sources from that period have been purposefully and systematically "taken out of circulation".

Doug Shaver · 08-30-2011, 03:16 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by mountainman

Surely there would have been someone to express a contrary opinion to Constantine? I refuse to believe that the Greeks bent their heads in submission to the dead Jewish god at Nicaea. Do we know what the political situation was like? Well, our sources as mentioned, are one-sided and extremely biased. I think that in this circumstance, it is reasonable to infer that the hostile sources from that period have been purposefully and systematically "taken out of circulation".

Some active suppression of hostile commentary would not surprise me in the least. But I think we also know that almost no document from ancient times got copied unless somebody in the church thought the document's preservation was worth some investment of scribal resources. Most of the time, that strikes me as a sufficient explanation when the question arises, "Why do we have no texts saying such-and-such?"

mountainman · 08-31-2011, 08:05 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Doug Shaver

Quote:

Originally Posted by mountainman

Surely there would have been someone to express a contrary opinion to Constantine? I refuse to believe that the Greeks bent their heads in submission to the dead Jewish god at Nicaea. Do we know what the political situation was like? Well, our sources as mentioned, are one-sided and extremely biased. I think that in this circumstance, it is reasonable to infer that the hostile sources from that period have been purposefully and systematically "taken out of circulation".

Some active suppression of hostile commentary would not surprise me in the least.

Well there appears to be plenty of evidence of the burning of literature and petitions and books (and death to their preservers) which commences from the events surrounding Nicaea, and continues for centuries under the rule of Christian Emperors.

Quote:

But I think we also know that almost no document from ancient times got copied unless somebody in the church thought the document's preservation was worth some investment of scribal resources. Most of the time, that strikes me as a sufficient explanation when the question arises, "Why do we have no texts saying such-and-such?"

Most of the time over many centuries book burning is not a contagious social phenomenom, however my argument claims that there is reasonable evidence to perceive that book burning by the Christian Emperors and their Christian bishops and orthodox followers commenced at the first order of business, on the first INTER OFFICE MEMO out the door of the closed assembly of Nicaea. ( - see post #1)

My position is that the question - did the historical Jesus first appear on planet Earth at Nicaea? - should not, on account of these patterns of evidence of oppressive censorship, be necessarily trivially answered in the negative.

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