Freethought & Rationalism Archive

Toto · 08-17-2011, 08:22 AM

From the wikipedia link above:

Quote:

Porphyry's parents were Phoenician, and he was born Malchus ("king")[7] in Tyre. His teacher in Athens, Cassius Longinus, gave him the name Porphyrius ("clad in purple"), a punning allusion to the color of the imperial robes.

mountainman · 08-17-2011, 04:34 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by stephan huller

Pete lives in his own parallel universe. Can you imagine a Christian world without Plato?

I have written an essay on the parallels between historical identies in the lineage of the 3rd century Platonists Ammonius, Origen and Anatolius. The Platonists had the equivalent of an Apostolic succession who preserved a textual canon of books which were originally authored by Plato. The divinity of Plato is clearly presented in the Platonic "Holy Trinity" which according to Betram Russell begins and ends his entire philosophy.

This academy was imperially sponsored in the 3rd century, and from the recent Philip of Side fragment translation at Roger's website, it appears reasonable to suspect that such philosophers were well represented at Nicaea.

Quote:

Originally Posted by The Legacy of Greece Oxford University Press 1921

RELIGION
by W. R. Inge, Dean of St.Pauls

p.29

It is quite unnecessary to look for Asiatic influences in a school
which clung close to the Attic tradition.

It should not be necessary to remind Hellenists that "Know Thyself"
passed for the supreme word of wisdom in the classical period,
or that Heraclitus revealed his method in the words "I searched myself".

"The teachings of Plato", says Justin, "are not alien to those of Christ;
and the same is true of the Stoics." "Heraclitus and Socrates lived in'
accordance to the divine Logos" and should be recognised as Christians.
Clement says that Plato wrote "by the inspiration of God".

Augustine, much later, finds that "only a few words and phrases" need
to be changed to bring Platonism into complete accord with Christianity.

The ethics of contemporary paganism, as Harnack shows,with special reference
to Porphyry,are almost identical with those of the Christians of his day.

Catholic Christianity is historically continuous with the old civilization,
which indeed continued to live in this region after its other traditions
and customs had been shattered. There are few other examples in history
of so great a difference between appearance and reality. Outwardly, the
continuity with Judaism seems to be unbroken, that with paganism to be
broken. In reality, the opposite is the case.

The Legacy of Greece - Oxford University Press (1921)

RELIGION
by W. R. Inge, Dean of St.Pauls

mountainman · 08-17-2011, 04:45 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by stephan huller

The surfer who received a message directly from God that religion was the invention of Constantine.

One version has it that an alien device was received directly from a man in a black suit during a dawn patrol - and that he did not look like any of the Ex-Presidents. Stephan perhaps you have been reading too much into Eusebius's version of the Incredible Constantine? Was Constantine really Moses in disguise?

"He was matched by none in grace and beauty of form,
or in tallness, and so surpassing his contemporaries
in personal strength that he struck terror into them."

Eusebius, "Life of Constantine", XIX

mountainman · 08-17-2011, 04:59 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by DrZoidberg

Quote:

Originally Posted by stephan huller

My God, reading that linked discussion is so dreary. Will he ever stop? Is he the Incredible Hulk of Biblical scholarship? One can at least understand the zeal of someone who is part of a tradition. But this is something wholly made up in someone's imagination and he has the intensity like his Muhammad coming down from the mountain. Scary.

Someone should write a movie about him. The surfer who received a message directly from God that religion was the invention of Constantine.

I would actually like to see that movie. Mountainman getting to meet more and more prominent biblical scholars and who each completely obliterate his theories. But he keeps being optimistic. It's filmed in a way that we're led to believe that he'll be proben right in the end. But the twist in the end is that nobody agrees with him, but he still thinks he's onto something. It could actually be quite enjoyable to watch.

At the beginning of the film we are introduced to an alien technological device which looks like a gun, but when aimed at a target and the trigger is pulled an LED readout is activated with numbers. The device is finally understood to be reading out "Terrestrial years before the present year" and is thus a mechanism for dating. The device is taken to Oxford and pointed at the collections of pre-4th century papyri fragments, but continues to indicate a date in the mid 4th century for all the so-claimed early papyri. But the twist in the end is that nobody agrees with him, but he still thinks he's onto something. It could actually be quite enjoyable to watch.

mountainman · 08-17-2011, 05:13 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Toto

Porphyry on wikipedia indicates that Porphyry's works were standard textbooks in the Christian middle ages.

The footnote doesn't tell us whether Porphyry came back into the Christian middle ages via Arabic and Islamic translations after the Christian's burnt the Greek in the 4th and subsequent centuries.

Quote:

A number of sources seem to agree that only Porphyry's anti-Christian volumes were destroyed by Theodosios in the 5th century.

Was the Christian regime was just destroying the loose ends?

Quote:

You asked the same question here in 2007

Robin Lane-Fox comments that Constantine stated, in his Oration to the Eastern provincials c.324/325 CE that "Socrates critical questioning was a menace to the state". How times change!

mountainman · 08-17-2011, 05:25 PM

Hi Philosopher Jay,

Scientific inventiveness may one day expose Eusebian inventiveness in chronology but until then the show must go on, and IN-EUSEBIUS-WE-TRUST.

Best wishes

Pete

Quote:

Originally Posted by PhilosopherJay

Hi Stephan,

I think Pete is helpful in reminding us just how little actual scientifically confirmed evidence there is for Eusebius' version of Christian history.
In a metaphorical sense one can say that Eusebius does invent Christianity (or at least a significant form of it). Pete takes it in a literal sense.
I think this is absurd, but no more absurd than those who believe that a carpenter's son from Galilee who thought he was a God and a few fishermen invented Christianity in the 1st Century.

A lot of people want to be the anti-Christ, he wants to be the anti-Eusebean. It is a little strange, but give him credit for originality.

Warmly,

Jay Raskin

Quote:

Originally Posted by stephan huller

My God, reading that linked discussion is so dreary. Will he ever stop? Is he the Incredible Hulk of Biblical scholarship? One can at least understand the zeal of someone who is part of a tradition. But this is something wholly made up in someone's imagination and he has the intensity like his Muhammad coming down from the mountain. Scary.

Someone should write a movie about him. The surfer who received a message directly from God that religion was the invention of Constantine.

mountainman · 08-17-2011, 05:33 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Doug Shaver

Quote:

Originally Posted by PhilosopherJay

A lot of people want to be the anti-Christ, he wants to be the anti-Eusebean. It is a little strange, but give him credit for originality.

That I can do.

IMO Arius of Alexander was the first historical anti-Christ.

(Apparently Constantine finally managed to have him poisoned)

The idea of a Eusebian fiction is not really original because we have Dr. R. W. Bernard's Apollonius of Tyana the Nazarene (1964) arguing that the:

Quote:

"fraudulent replacement of the original religion of Apollonius
by the "new" religion of the Church of Rome which took place
at the Council of Nicea in the year 325 CE.

And before this, we have people like this ....

Quote:

"the fourth century was the great age of literary forgery,
the extent of which has yet to be exposed"

...[and]...

"not until the mass of inventions
labelled 'Eusebius' shall be exposed,
can the pretended references to Christians
in Pagan writers of the first three centuries
be recognized for the forgeries they are."

--- Edwin Johnson, "Antiqua Mater: A Study of Christian Origins"

Quote:

I think the only one who's got him beat on that score is the fellow who claimed it was Josephus who invented Christianity.

If that's not Joseph Atwill's "Caesar's Messiah", or Francesco Carotta's "Jesus was Caesar", then who was that fellow?

mountainman · 08-17-2011, 05:59 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by stephan huller

I hate to see books destroyed, but he should of found a way to hide them. It is strange that his name means purple which was the same color Constantine wore at the Council of Nicaea in 325 A.D.

What color did you expecy Constantine to wear? Pink? A T-shirt that says “I'm with stupid”?

From elsewhere:

Quote:

Originally Posted by stephan huller

Ding dong,

If evangelical Christianity develops from Luther it has an anti-Semitic past.

315 CE Codex Theod 16.8.1

"Any Jew who stones a Jewish convert to Christianity shall be burned,
and no one is allowed to join Judaism"

Why would this law of Constantine not be anti-Semitic?

Doug Shaver · 08-18-2011, 12:56 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by mountainman

Robin Lane-Fox comments that Constantine stated, in his Oration to the Eastern provincials c.324/325 CE that "Socrates critical questioning was a menace to the state".

It is customary to spell authors' names as the authors themselves spell them. Robin Lane Fox does not hyphenate his surname.

mountainman · 08-18-2011, 11:43 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Doug Shaver

Quote:

Originally Posted by mountainman

Robin Lane-Fox comments that Constantine stated, in his Oration to the Eastern provincials c.324/325 CE that "Socrates critical questioning was a menace to the state".

It is customary to spell authors' names as the authors themselves spell them. Robin Lane Fox does not hyphenate his surname.

True. Thanks for the correction.

Why would Constantine have warned that Socrates critical questioning was a menace to the state if the state had nothing to hide from that critical questioning? Robin Lane Fox describes Constantine as presenting a number of fraudulent claims at this oration, all related to Christian origins.

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