Transient

Go to Mountainman's site and you will soon discover that what he has collected there is certainly not all complete rubbish.
Maybe we don't agree with his extreme deduction but as I said before he does add a distinct flavor that enhances the debate.
So it's best not to use words like "utter rubbish" & "complete rubbish" - reserve those words for those who swallow the garbage fed to them by the roman catholic church and other churches that have derived their beliefs from that organization.
I would rather talk with mountainman than the pope

Just wanted to add: Trying to work out what really happened in those first few hundred years is nigh on impossible, so no-one will be able to know for sure - I don't trust people nowadays let alone those who were in control back then - I don't trust their motives or their abilities to write down the truth. Any religion that requires people to trust the writing of old and therefore the people who wrote them is stupid and ridiculous - but that includes all current religions unfortunately.

mountainman

Dear Toto,

I maintain that the focus needs to be squarely placed upon these co-called few relics of Christianity. I happened today to be browsing around looking at all the exiting news in New Testament archaeology. The first article I came across was a quote from the book A Century of Biblical Archaeology where Peter Roger Stuart Moorey writes, quite soberly mind you, that:

I moved on, closer to the source of knowledge, and I came across the following article from christianity today article entitled: Top Ten New Testament Archaeological Finds of the Past 150 Years.

At that time, I thought, well here is an index of citations you guys should have thrown at me years ago. The article started out a little weird with this remark:

The article then went on to list the top ten list for 2003.
I have taken the liberty of abbreviation and numeration.
What a sorry bunch of totally bogus citations!!
Thanks for that update on Oded btw.


Best wishes,


Pete



Hello?

J-D

I have looked at Pete's site. He has compiled a lot of documents. The way he draws conclusions from them is utter rubbish. You don't think so? Fine. Take a look at what I had to say in this post, and then tell me whether you think Pete's approach can be defended.

Transient

hehe yeh I know - it seems more like a game of cat and mouse - no wonder you get so frustrated. I guess I am not so involved so it seems more interesting to me - give me time & I will end up just as frustrated maybe.
As I said tho - we never will know what happened back then for sure - just have to make an educated guess I suppose - most make uneducated guesses.
Keep up the debating too & fro - I learn a bit here & there.

avi

In my opinion, having read your arguments, and having reflected on Toto's wisdom, I find myself more in agreement with the sentiments expressed, conversely, by Transient and Sheshbazaar.

I conclude that ARGUMENT, of any kind, whether persuasive, gentle, recriminatory, ethical, philosophical, or scholarly, IS SIMPLY INADEQUATE to resolve this issue:

Did Christianity exist prior to Constantine?

One needs DATA, not argument.

I confess that my bias is to regard Pete's hypothesis, that Lord Constantine invented Christianity, as erroneous, simply because of so many decades of my thinking, to the contrary, that OF COURSE the "bible" was written in the first century.

Pete's hypothesis may be COMPLETELY wrong, but it has the merit, as others have noted, of compelling inquiry. In this discussion, I initially believed, until reading Toto's comments, that 14 Carbon dating should provide the answer. But, then, I realized, what if there were warehouses full of papyrus, back then, huge quantities of the stuff, sitting around in Egypt, dry, waiting for the price to rise, and so, centuries passed, until Lord Constantine, his mother, and his scribe, Eusebius, decided to rewrite history, and thus ordered up a bunch of papyrus--old papyrus as it turns out. Ditto for the ink: How do we know the age of this stuff? Why couldn't it have been manufactured decades or even centuries earlier, and stored in air tight, corked and waxed bottles in Alexandria waiting for the proper moment--an imperial mandate to employ thousands of scribes? So, looking at pigments by x-ray spectroscopy, and laser imaging is all well and good, and DNA sequencing of plant fibers in papyrus may be very useful in establishing the age of the papyrus, but, I am no longer confident that knowledge of the age of the pigments and parchments alone suffices to indicate the actual age of authorship, precisely the argument astutely advanced recently by Toto.

I tend to accept Pete's argument against the Yale University archaeological excavation of the house/church at Dura, I lack confidence in that 1920's era ostensibly "scientific" exploration, with the frescos revealed in USA--home of the Mormon Gold Tablets. Yale itself, with its precious rare book library, is a wonderful institution, but, politics, and money, play an important role in all USA academic institutions, and I suppose Yale is not immune in that regard.

I haven't yet found any discussion, pro or con, regarding the prison excavation at Meggido. It seems to be a dead issue, for some reason....I certainly can not point to any discussion suggesting that the "church" existed ONLY after Constantine, i.e. post 320CE. I do find it bizarre, that, despite a century or more of intense archaeological inquiry, we seem not to have found much in the way of DATA, supporting or refuting Pete's hypothesis.

I read, recently, about the papyrus library at Herculaneum, city buried in Lava following the eruption of Mt. Vesuvius in the first century. However, while my hopes were raised that the Herculaneum papyrus collection may have included one of Josephus' texts, further inquiry revealed no such document among the list of papyrus documents analyzed thus far....It would have been useful both to refute Pete's implication that Eusebius or another Christian, had doctored the extant versions of Josephus, (inserting a few Christian sentiments) and to support the notion that Christianity, in some form, did exist during Josephus' lifetime.

I am no longer sure what kind of evidence would convince me, but, I am daily warming to the idea that Constantine created most, if not all, of the Christian myth. Thank you Pete.

J-D

Did you look at the earlier post of mine that I linked to? If so, what is your response to what I said there? If not, would you look at it if I posted it again here?

spin

The art of archaeology did not benefit from the techniques introduced say by Kathleen Kenyon, but for there time how can one impune such important European trained archaeologists as either Franz_Cumont or Michael_Rostovtzeff? And what problems would anyone have with the work of Clark Hopkins for the era?

When people have nothing better to say, they often resort to ad hominem. That in itself is not a form of argument. To preserve one conspiracy theory, one has to propose another for how archaeologists don't discover a religious edifice of the gospel tradition, but manufacture one. Surely you can see that this procedure has nothing to do with facts. When conspiracy theories are proposed to explain conspiracy theories we are in the field of psychology.

The excavations at Dura Europos are well-documented. I've looked at one volume. Have you heard from anyone else writing on the subject here who has read any of the principal literature on the subject? Of course not. Data is usually not important to conspiracy theories.

It is a further leap into the irrational to link Joseph Smith's tablets to the discoveries at Dura Europos. It is aimed purely at muddying the waters.

As I've indicated the structure at Dura Europos features four motifs that are clearly christian as per the gospels. The response to this is to ignore that the four are together both in this house and in the gospels and propose that they belonged to some earlier religion naturally without showing any reason for thinking such a thing. This is not dealing with data.

And try as one might it is hard to deny the gospel content in the brief fragment of diatessaron found there with just as precise a claim of dating. Many elements are clear from that fragment that link it to the gospel tradition, but also to lines from different gospels, so it presupposes the gospels we know. It should be plain to everyone that the gospel material was not written by Eusebius and co., because it was available before the fragment of diatessaron hit the street in Dura.

Christians don't want to go down the roads we need to look down.

When Lactantius wrote of persecutions during the reign of Diocletian and on to the time of the arrival of Constantine on the imperial throne -- persecutions that could easily have been refuted at the time by people who lived through the period --, it should be obvious that public structures were not a good idea. Christianity was deprecated by the public authorities and you seem to want public buildings. If you look in Rome, you'll find dozens of catacombs (featuring stylistically datable Roman frescoes). I suppose they were architectural structures preferred to state-sanctioned public edifices from the time of Constantine.

I opted for one set of data, the two items from Dura Europos because of the obvious gospel content and the better than C14 dating provided for them. We know the latest possible date for these items, based on the Parthian siege and destruction of the city.

(C14 is a statistical process which relies on a number of disparate sets of data including Greenland ice cores, dendrochronological sequences and externally datable samples of carbon bearing samples. Any wood found in the destruction layer of Dura Europos would fit into the third category. Dendrochronological sequences vary in dating implications from site to site, so a west-coast American sequence provides slightly different data from a European or Anatolian sequence. An extremely serious issue with C14 is contamination: one trick christian fundies have pulled is getting samples and pouring carbon-based oils on them and getting unsuspecting scientists to analyze the results.)

I'd thank Pete if he'd introduced one piece of evidence to the debate, but I can't because he hasn't.


spin

mountainman

Dear Spin,

The fragment you refer to at Dura was not found in the street. Like the majority of new testament related fragments, especially those found for example at Oxyrhychus, it was located in a rubbish tip. There is probably a good reason for this.

Best wishes,


Pete

mountainman

Dear Spin,

My thesis has it that we will not find any (canonical) christian evidence prior to the year 312-324 CE because it never existed in the first place. I have spent considerable time indexing all citations commonly and erroneous believed by people to be unambiguoius citations (as you like to claim) for the existence of prenicene christinianity, and showing why each citation actually is quite ambiguous, as readers themselves have seen with this exercise in this thread.

However the evidence in our possession after the events of 324/325 CE allows me to present a number of issues for debate, some of which we have already debated, and some of which you (and others here) are remaining very silent about.

Here is a list, not necessarily comple. Take your pick.

1) The interpetation of the words of Arius as about the Historical Jesus, not the theological jesus. (ie: Jesus was made out of nothing existing = politically inspired fiction)

2) The anathemas of fourth century christian councils as an indication of public feeling and sentiment and reaction of the public, all of which follow Arius and his simple words.

3) The interpretation of Pachomius as a non-christian. The "desert fathers" (and "desert mothers" btw) were not christian but in fact Hellenic refugees from the spread of intolerant Constantinianism, which they fled. They are made christian by the christian translators of their literature at the end of the fourth century (eg: Jerome). The Tall Brothers. The monasteries. The ascetics.

4) Explanation of Emperor Julian's invectives against the christians. (Constantinian fiction -- this is supported by his open satire against Constantine and Jesus called "The Caesars".

5) Destruction of the pagan temples/libraries by the "victors".

6) The role and the controversy over Nestorius.

7) The Arian controversy

8) The Origenist controversy

9) The political censorship of Emperor Julian's treatise by the tax-exempt Christologer Cyril.

10) The new testament apochryphal acts and gospels as pagan satire of the greek speaking academic (probably ascetic) pagans and priests of Apollo and Asclepius of the fourth centurty, after the year 324 CE, when their temple traditions were forthwith shut down by the Boss. The non canonic and pagan polemic. I do appreciate that for some people here it may be extremely difficult (I will not say the word impossible) to think of the non canonical literature as a burlesque of the canon.

ETC.


It should be getting clear to people that the thesis offers a simple and easy to understand political explanation of christian origins as a fourth century Constantinian inspired emperor cult which was prepared 312-324 CE and implemented with the assistance of total and supreme military power following the victory over Lucinius in the east, and the the followers of the snake (Asclepius). Despite a brief turnaround under Julian, the asset and power structures established 324 to 360 CE in the east perpetuated themselves by their automatic presence in the imperial court. The end-game is all about the political censorship by Cyril of the common knowledge of the fourth century greek academics, that the Constantinian Canon was fiction. That's when the library of Alexandria went up in flames, and when Julian's treatise was burnt and destroyed.

For what it is worth, I remain hopeful that a manuscript may yet turn up from either the emperor Julian, Ammianus, or some other writer who was wise enough, like Pachomius at Nag Hammadi in the burial of his codices to Asclepius and Hermes, to get rid of the seditious literature against Constantiniansim. This explains very simply the greatest heresy (Hello Arius!): the unutterables of unutterables were the fourth century words: Jesus did not exist.

Finally, I am hopeful (in the tenth item above) that clear evidence is sitting out in the open right in front of our eyes in the form of the entire corpus of christian non canonical new testament literature, which has not been adequately explained. My thesis provides the very simple explanation of when it was written, where and when and by whom. My claim is that we do not yet appear to have the capacity to identify the burlesque in the apochryphal literature against the canon. April Deconnick might represent an exception in this with her identification of the jJudas as a pagan parody.

Best wishes



Pete

J-D

You have given no reason to suppose that your interpretation is preferable to the alternative. I have suggested that the later history of Arianism makes your interpretation less likely than the alternative.An indication of what public feeling? I genuinely don't see the point you're making here.Again, you have given no reason to think that your interpretation is preferable to the alternative.Again, you have given no reason to think that your interpretation is preferable to the alternative.Again, you have given no reason to think that your interpretation is preferable to the alternative.I don't know what your point here is supposed to be.You have given no reason to think that your interpretation is preferable to the alternative.I don't know what your point here is supposed to be.I don't know what your point here is supposed to be.You have given no reason to think that your interpretation is preferable to the alternative.Your thesis is indeed simple and easy to understand. That is not what is at issue. What is at issue is whether it fits better with the evidence than the alternative does.