Biff the unclean

(Bede ) The 'fire wall' was the great persecution of Domitian around 300AD. He ordered all Christian scriptures destroyed and you know what they say about Roman efficiency.
A few problems with this.
If I remember my Gibbons correctly there were at the time six Caesars. Three in the east and three in the west. The Christian persecution by Domitian is only reported by Bishop Eusebius. Eusebius was a member of the royal court (and it's been suggested, the royal family) and he survived this persecution without a hair on his head being mussed. This is the same Eusebius who wrote that Constantine saw the magic sign in the sky and heard Jesus' voice. Correct me if I'm wrong, there were several Bishop Eusebiuss (Eusebiui ??) running around at the time and I might have them confused, but this is also the fellow credited with adding the Jesus reference to Josephus. And the same fellow who wrote in his book The Preparation of the Gospel "It will sometimes be necessary to use falsehood for the benefit of those who need such a mode of treatment."

The persecution was particularly fierce in Egypt where nearly all early papyrus we have were found.
Except Domitian was Caesar at Byzantium, not Egypt.

Thus what would have survived is most likely to have been lost in the persecution.
Which leaves us with the problem of if it was all destroyed in 300 CE where did the people in 325 CE get their copies from?

Perhaps another Nag Hammadi awaits discovery, though.
True, absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.
But you have to admit that it is very suspicious.

Also, papyrus is delicate and cannot stand up to repeated use.
You are mistaken. Papyrus is anything but delicate. In fact it is more resistant to wear than any modern paper except the synthetic ones. They sell papyrus at Sam Flax art stores, you can test it for yourself.
The papyrus that has survived was ironically stuff thrown out before it wore out - it has nearly all been discovered on rubbish dumps in Egypt where the dry climate preserved it.
You've just proved my assertion. The stuff has been known to survive thousands of years in a garbage dump. That's tough stuff.

If you are asking, did Constantine destroy all existing scriptures to write new ones, the answer is no. There is no evidence for this.
He would have had to destroy more than just all the bibles. There aren't any Christian artifacts that date before 325 CE. No churches, no art. The catacombs of Rome are said to have been constructed by Christians yet before 325 there are only Pagan paintings on the walls, Hercules, Mithra as the good shepherd, Apollonius of Tyana resurrecting a dead person with his magic wand. There are inscriptions to Christna, a similar spelling to Christos, but that's the God that Apollonius honored not Jesus.

We know that Constantine used Christianity for his political ends. He was able to make himself the sole Emperor of the Roman Empire. We know that he didn't find himself with a single Christianity but a whole bunch of contradictory Christianitys that he had to choose from.
I can't help but notice how much this situation resembles Madison Ave. A client gives competing advertising agencies the basic guide lines for what he needs and they all submit their own takes on the ad campaign.

If Constantine didn't destroy all the Christians "stuff" how do we know there was Christian stuff to begin with?

Also, there is a lot on the NT on papyrus before 300AD.
All dated by looking at the style of script. This can only tell you the earliest possible date it could have been written. It can't tell you when it was written. So it's fairly useless as a dating method.

Here's an example. We have very firm dates for the creation of the Book of Kells. Admittedly much, much newer than what we are talking about, but please bear with me.
Kells was written by three major (and a few touch-up artists) scribes. They all used exactly the same ink so there is a good chance that they were working at the same time, even in the same room.
Hand "A" does the beginning of the book and most of the Gospel of Saint John. He uses a very modern (for the day) style. A lot of majuscule forms and only a few conceits like superscribed letters.
But Hand "C" uses a style that's at least five hundred years older than that used by "A." It's thought that he wanted to lend more of an air of importance to his sections and so chose the classic hand.
Now, had the Books of Kells not survived in such good condition but was only fragments… And if the fragment we had was written by Hand "C"… And if; as in all the examples you URLed; we dated it by the style of the script, then we would date it as five hundred years older than Hand "A"'s time. Even though the two scribes shared the same inkwell.

NOGO

Biff

What Bede has not said is that Christians probably destroyed a good many "heretical" Christian documents themselves.

The question now is how old are the official documents?

300 years, 200, or a few weeks?

I do not believe that the whole NT was written in 325 CE but will we ever know what they started with?

Bede

Biff,

My apologies for wasting your time. A quick review of your posts reveals you to be a headbanger with no real interest in history. I won't get in the way of you constructing myths from your ignorance.

And it should have been Diocletian not Domitian, but then you don't even know enough to spot my mistake.

B

Jackalope

I see one very large error somewhere in this discussion. Domitian was emperor of Rome from 81-96AD. This is clearly not the correct time period. On the other hand, Diocletian was emperor from 235-305AD. Diocletian formed the Tetrarchy, which is where we started to see multiple ceasars.
In 286AD, he appointed a second Agustus (senior ceasar), one Maximianus. In 293, he appointed two junior ceasars, Constantius (father of Constantine I) and Galerius. In 303, Diocletian issued four decrees, each harsher than the one before. These later were called the "Great Persecution" by christians. The main aim of the decrees was to force christians to publically take part in the imperial cult (remember, ceasars were deified).

This seems to me to be what Bede and others intended to refer to, not Domitian who built the enormous baths in Rome.

Useful URLs for everyone on this thread:
<a href="http://www.roman-emperors.org/" target="_blank">http://www.roman-emperors.org/</a>
<a href="http://www.dalton.org/groups/Rome/" target="_blank">http://www.dalton.org/groups/Rome/</a>

[edited to add URLs]

[ November 29, 2002: Message edited by: Jackalope ]

[ November 29, 2002: Message edited by: Jackalope ]</p>

Jackalope

Uncalled for. Especially since you made the first mistake. And I don't agree with your reading of events either.

Biff the unclean

Thank you Bede for not wasting my time anymore.
I see that with typical English charm (I happen to be from Ireland myself) you don't want to entertain any idea that might fall outside your holy truths. Pardon me for being so stupid as to repeat the mistake you made in Emperors name. I should have known enough not to trust your shaky scholarship. (Jack Diocletian's reign didn't start until 284 CE) Excuse me for not just accepting your self-contradictory tap dance of a church generated story to align the facts we have with the history we are told.

You seem to be ill equipped to accuse anyone of constructing myths from ignorance, when your entire ideology is a myth based squarely on ignorance.

Jackalope

Whoops, you're right. I'm on my fourth browser crash of the evening, so I admit I may not have done a good job of proof reading. It appears to be time to reboot the machine and start over...

offa

offa; snipping NOGO

NOGO
IIDB Regular
User # 5093 Offa
Offa; the great tribulation was the Roman incursion upon Jesus' holy temple in 33 CE. The one where there were six hours of extra darkness and the bodies of the saints were rolling around. Caiaphas' temple was another location and the Romans were allowed access whereas Jesus' temple at was spoiled by the very prescence of the Romans.
The "Little Apocalypses" are a part of the fundie imagination.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

In Mt24 Jesus is asked by the disciples when the temple will be destroyed. Jesus talks about the tribulations in answer to this question


Offa;
You brought up the date 70 CE. My point is that Jesus was referring to 33 CE. Please explain to me where you got 70 CE from? I mean, which temple?

BTW, This thread is quite interesting and thank you very much Biff. I have always wondered where they got 280 b.c.e. for the dating of the Old Testament. Josephus? Eusebius was a liar. He would get himself into trouble editing Josephus, I mean, Josephus told the Truth. The only reason Josephus has survived in a majority sense is because Eusebius did not understand his sleuth.

doodad

The year 325 CE, which I assume is synonomous with 325 AD (a little rusty on dating conventions)
occurred during the reign of Constantine the Great, who was the emperor of the Roman empire at that time. There's a web site, possibly a Catholic site, that gives some interesting insight on your dilemma.

Let me present this as food for thought since it's been a while since I read about the issue.
Constantine was tired of multi-theism (gods on every street corner!) and wanted unity in his empire. He chose Christianity as the official religion of the Roman Empire at about that time because it was essentially monotheistic. Constantine probably did more enhance the welfare of the early Christian church than any other early ruler. It was probably do to his decision that signs of Christianity started showing up in abundance.

CX

Easy there, Venerable B, let us not let frustration turn into ad hominem missives which do not make any substantive point.

Thanks,

CX - BC&A Moderator

P.S. has anyone mentioned ante-nicene fathers yet?