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Old 03-22-2013, 05:17 PM   #1
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Default Pete and Constantine's Policies towards "paganism"

Anyone who has been here for even a little while knows that Pete has a mission to convince us of certain truths that he maintains about Constantine. One of these "truths" is that Constantine was not only hostile to "pagan religions", but that it was his intent during his reign to wipe them out and that he took active steps to do so.

In evaluating these claims, one of the things we have to ask is whether Pete is sufficiently grounded in, and master of, the sources about Constantine and his policies to be able to make any informed claims about Constantine and his policies.

Has he ignored, or is he unaware of , any evidence to the contrary of his claims? Has the evidence he's presented been good evidence? Has it been presented without bias? Has he dealt adequately, if at all, with recent scholarship on Constantine that indicates, if we accept it, that Pete's claims are under informed, if not contrary to fact?

You be the judge.

Here is an excerpt from an essay by A.D. Lee, published relatively recently in The Cambridge Companion to the Age of Constantine (or via: amazon.co.uk), on how Constantine dealt with "Traditional Religions" (an essay that, to my knowledge, Pete is unaware of and certainly has not read -- he certainly has never mentioned it or taken into account, even if only to dispute, the data there) which, in my eyes, brings the validity and sustainability (and certainly the "well informed" nature) of Pete's claims about Constantine's attitudes and actions towards "pagan religions" into serious question.


I believe that after reading this, you'll think so too.

I'll deliver it in three parts.

And if anyone wants to know why I am doing this, it's because I, along with many others here, have grown sick & tired of seeing not only how Pete ride his hobby horse almost any chance he gets, but how continuously and willfully he displays historical and linguistic ignorance, and how he rapes evidence to suit pre determined and woefully prejudiced conclusions.

Doubtless he'll say he is only following "the evidence" where it leads in an unbiased fashion. But he is selective in the evidence he follows, is unable to recognize good evidence from bad evidence, and more often than not he distorts what he deals with. It's time to show this crap for what it is.




Quote:
Traditional Religions: Terminology and Toleration
The religious profile of the Roman world, as briefly sketched in the preceding sections, presents a terminological challenge which highlights some important issues. This vast array of cults and practices has tradi*tionally been referred to as “paganism,” but this is a term that has been increasingly subjected to critical scrutiny in recent years. One prob*lem is that “paganism” implies a degree of coherence belied by the sheer diversity of the phenomena the term is supposed to encompass. A second is that it was a term not used by pagans to define themselves but rather by their critics, the Christians.25 Not surprisingly, adherents of traditional cults did not have an agreed common designation for themselves or their cults: even as late as the end of the third century, the emperor Diocletian is found using the rather vague phraseology of vetus religio and veteriores religiones, both perhaps best translated simply as “traditional practices.”26 This reflects the fact that they had no tradition of discourse about ritual or reli*gious matters (apart from philosophical debate or antiquarian treatise), no organised system of beliefs to which they were asked to commit themselves, no authority-structure peculiar to the religious area, above all no commitment to a particular group of people or set of ideas other than their family and political context.27
It was only the process of confrontation with Christianity in the third and fourth centuries which began to create a growing sense of iden*tity, reflected for example, in the apostate emperor Julian’s use of the designation “Hellenes” for his co-religionists.28<snip>
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Old 03-22-2013, 08:18 PM   #2
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Jeffrey - information wants to be free, but we still need to live by the copyright laws.

It think it would be fair use for you to email your material directly to Pete instead of making it available here, if you think that would do any good.

Or there is an extensive preview on google books, or a Kindle edition for less than $20.
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Old 03-22-2013, 08:35 PM   #3
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Jeffrey - information wants to be free, but we still need to live by the copyright laws.

It think it would be fair use for you to email your material directly to Pete instead of making it available here, if you think that would do any good.

Or there is an extensive preview on google books, or a Kindle edition for less than $20.
FWIW, what I posted was not the entire article.

Jeffrey
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Old 03-23-2013, 12:53 AM   #4
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We operate on the assumption that 20% of an article, or 3 paragraphs - whichever is less - constitutes "fair use."

You could probably add a few more paragraphs and summarize the point Lee makes.
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Old 03-23-2013, 04:34 AM   #5
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You could ..............summarize the point Lee makes.
I have PM'd Jeffrey with my email address and am happy to summarise Lee's main points for discussion, given sufficient time.
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Old 03-23-2013, 12:32 PM   #6
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You could ..............summarize the point Lee makes.
I have PM'd Jeffrey with my email address and am happy to summarise Lee's main points for discussion, given sufficient time.

But the question would be, if I sent it to you, whether you'd summarize it accurately and not ignore, misread, and misrepresent any evidence there that contradicts your claims about Constantine and his policies.

Given the way that you have previously you've dealt with and misrepresented Robin Lane Fox's discussion of the council of Nicea and the claims of Arnalodo Momigliano (who, contrary to your assertions that he supports your 4th century thesis when he speaks of the "miracle" of Christianity, recognized Christianity to have been in existence since the first century [see his discussion of the Neronian persecutions in The Cambridge Ancient History Vol. X), and how you've not understood the point or essence of what you've quoted from Rowan Williams book on Arius, and how you've misread the TDNT article on daimon, I have liitle hope that you would.

So it is probably pointless to send it to you.



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Old 03-24-2013, 06:37 AM   #7
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Given the way that you have previously you've dealt with and misrepresented ..... the claims of Arnalodo Momigliano (who, contrary to your assertions that he supports your 4th century thesis when he speaks of the "miracle" of Christianity, recognized Christianity to have been in existence since the first century [see his discussion of the Neronian persecutions in [I]The Cambridge Ancient History Vol. X

FWIW I am not claiming that Momigliano himself ever directly mooted any support for such a thesis or even hypothesis.

My claim relates to his heavy use of irony which, with my weird sense of humor, may indirectly provide support for such an hypothesis.

I am inclined to think that he, like Gibbon, sneered at the church.

Do you happen to have the relevant paragraph or two in which Momigliano discusses the Neronian persecutions from this source?





εὐδαιμονία | eudaimonia
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Old 03-24-2013, 12:17 PM   #8
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Jeffrey Gibson View Post

Given the way that you have previously you've dealt with and misrepresented ..... the claims of Arnalodo Momigliano (who, contrary to your assertions that he supports your 4th century thesis when he speaks of the "miracle" of Christianity, recognized Christianity to have been in existence since the first century [see his discussion of the Neronian persecutions in [I]The Cambridge Ancient History Vol. X

FWIW I am not claiming that Momigliano himself ever directly mooted any support for such a thesis or even hypothesis.
Short memory. See here: http://www.freeratio.org/showthread....26#post7044626

Quote:
My claim relates to his heavy use of irony which, with my weird sense of humor, may indirectly provide support for such an hypothesis.
I fail to see how.

Quote:
I am inclined to think that he, like Gibbon, sneered at the church.
He never did so in any of the lectures I heard him give on Christianity and Roman history at Oxford.

Quote:
Do you happen to have the relevant paragraph or two in which Momigliano discusses the Neronian persecutions from this source?
Good gawd, man. I am not your research assistant. Moreover, what this request shows is that your inclination to view Momigliano in certain ways is hardly well grounded in a sound knowledge of, and first hand acquaintance with, his writings about the church or in an anything but a misreading (and, it appears, a biased and filtered reading ala your reading of Lane-Fox on Nicea) of those works of his that you selectively quote.

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Old 03-24-2013, 11:48 PM   #9
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Originally Posted by Jeffrey Gibson View Post
Quote:
Originally Posted by mountainman View Post
Quote:
Originally Posted by Jeffrey Gibson View Post

Given the way that you have previously you've dealt with and misrepresented ..... the claims of Arnalodo Momigliano (who, contrary to your assertions that he supports your 4th century thesis when he speaks of the "miracle" of Christianity, recognized Christianity to have been in existence since the first century [see his discussion of the Neronian persecutions in [I]The Cambridge Ancient History Vol. X

FWIW I am not claiming that Momigliano himself ever directly mooted any support for such a thesis or even hypothesis.
Short memory. See here: http://www.freeratio.org/showthread....26#post7044626

Here's what I said ...........

Quote:
Arnaldo Momigliano follows Gibbon. I believe it is settled that Momigliano was one of the foremost ancient historians of the 20th century. Both historians use irony in service of their narrative. If we were to ask Momigliano to post on the OP [How the "Christians" Rose to the Top], I think that he would say that the Christians rose to the top by means of a MIRACLE.
I trust I do not need to cite Momigliano in The Conflict Between Paganism and Christianity in the Fourth Century, The Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1963, pp. 79—99 (1)


Quote:
Quote:
My claim relates to his heavy use of irony which, with my weird sense of humor, may indirectly provide support for such an hypothesis.
I fail to see how.

Do you for a start agree that Momigliano used irony quite heavily?



Quote:
Quote:
I am inclined to think that he, like Gibbon, sneered at the church.
He never did so in any of the lectures I heard him give on Christianity and Roman history at Oxford.

Like Gibbon IMO he used irony to sneer - it was not overt.
At least that's how I read him. But I could be wrong.
Perhaps an example might be appropriate iff you agree he used irony.




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Old 03-25-2013, 04:10 AM   #10
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I'm going to imagine that we really had to read the rest of the quote.
Doctor, can you summarise the rest?
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