Duvduv

Of course I know thst. I was referring to the view of others that the texts originated in the second century. And I am not concerned about the satire. I am simply referring to the notion of Protius finding Christians in Palestine. That's it.

Toto

Which they do not support by quoting Eusebius. :huh:

What's your problem with that?

And please don't post another short reply. Explain what your point is.

spin

You don't seem to have paid enough attention to the dictionary. You find that anaskolopizw is used "convertibly" with anastaurow, ie they can be functionally equivalent.

mountainman

If you were also to read carefully the catalogue of books under the name of Lucian, you will find that it contains a great many manifest forgeries under the name of Lician during the (early) 4th century.

Therefore immediately there is no real guarantee that these two books of Lucian that menion christians, were not corrupted by the 4th century christian regime for the purpose of sewing interpolated references to the "tribe of christians" in the centuries prior to Nicaea. Books were preserved by scriptoria. The scriptoria were officially "Christian" from Nicaea onwards.

la70119

All the way back to Herodotus, who described impalements and placement of heads on pikes by the Persians and others. Even in the 3rd century CE, anastaurow was employed to describe the action of putting heads-on-pikes. Which shows that what ever the Romans did in crucifixion had an element of impalement to it. And I don't mean the nails, I mean the transgressive projecting seat of the fucking cross. :angry: I've already gone over that in the Xylon versus Stauros thread.

I'll give you three descriptions of heads on pikes using anastaurow:

Cassius Dio (150-235 CE) Roman History 75.8

Cassius Dio Roman History 76.7

Herodian of Antiooch (170-240 CE) History of the Roman Empire 3.8.1

So as i have shown, anastaurow and anaskolopizw would still have that impalement aspect to it, even toward the end of the time Koine Greek was spoken (300 BCE - 300 CE).

la70119

Except here he's not referring to Christians as a tribe or nation, he's referring to Christians as a sect, superstition or cult (modern definition). There's no mention of popes, archbishops, or even bishops. Just a president of the local community. And the community itself is described as a synagogue, not an ekklesia. Furthermore, the christians in Asia (southwest Asia Minor) regarded them as fellow-Christians, not as heretics, as Bullneck's reinvented Catholic Church would.

Does Eusebius' "Church History" agree with this? last time I checked, he had Bishops going back to before the time Lucian wrote, which along with Popes went back all the way to Peter! I would think that if this work of Lucian's were cranked out in one of Bullneck's scriptoria, it would at least agree with Eusebius on the structure of the Church.

Besides, look at the verb he uses to describe "crucified" in my posts #19 and #25 above. Christians hardly ever used that -- the only one I can think of who used that verb for 'crucify', and the noun from whence the verb was derived for 'cross', is Origen.

spin

You've shown that people or their heads could be attached to a stake and that either verb could be used for the act.

arnoldo

Roger Pearse cites additional sources which provide information on Peregrinus Proteus (Aulus Gellius, book 12, ch. 11).

spin

That's a good find. Here's a direct link to the passage.

PhilosopherJay

Hi arnoldo,

Interesting. Thanks for this.

Aulus Gellius is 120-180. We have to assume that Gellius met Peregrinus in the 150's or 160's when he was at Athens. This was possibly before he became a Christian. It is interesting that Gellius is impressed by Peregrinus' argument. Socrates, in talking about the Helmet of invisibility argues that a man would be a fool if he did not commit a crime if he could get away with it without the Gods or man knowing about it. Peregrinus seems to be more Aristotelian, arguing that virtue is the most important thing for a man. This seems more Aristotelian than Christian. Christians would not sin from fear of an all-knowing, ubiquitous God.

The other thing of note is Lucian's saying that "The Christians, you know, worship a man to this day,--the distinguished personage who introduced their novel rites, and was crucified/impaled on that account."

The phrase "to this day" is similar to Eusebius' TF. It is possible that Eusebius got the phrase from Lucian. Coming 140 years earlier, Lucian certainly did not take the phrase from him. In the TF, it makes sense because the time between the crucifixion to Josephus' writing is about 60 years. It suggests something that could have been expected to stop after the man's death, but not something that has become a custom.

The phrase "to this day" suggests something not very long in the past. For example, one might say, candles are still brought to the site where John Lennon died "to this day." John Lennon was shot in 1980. In reference to customs that have become part of a culture, we don't say "to this day." We don't say Mormons wear "temple Garments" (AKA "Magic Underwear") "to this day". We simply say some Mormons have a custom of wearing Temple Garments.

It seems that Lucian, writing circa 180, is under the impression that the founder of the Christian faith was a man who died quite recently, possibly circa 130 or so. He is also under the impression that the founder was a man who promised his followers they would not die if they cursed the Greek Gods and worshipped him instead.

Either Lucian knows very little about what we call Christianity or the Christianity of his day was nothing like the orthodox Christianity of later times.

Warmly,

Jay Raskin