Freethought & Rationalism Archive

mountainman · 08-20-2013, 05:34 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Grog

Quote:

Originally Posted by mountainman

I am taking the liberty of discussing DCH's response to Duvduv here rather than in the thread about whether Cassius Dio makes reference to the Christians in his "Roman History" books 1 to 80.

This business about Constantine "conspired to nefariously pull the wool over the eyes of his subjects" is trivial because Constantine was the incoming warlord in a barbaric depraved and savage antiquity. The stories and histories of monotheistic religions include mention of warlords such as some of the Egyptian Pharaohs, Moses, (maybe even Ashoka), Ardashir, Constantine, Muhammad. Did these people all "conspired to nefariously pull the wool over the eyes of their subjects"?

Could it be said that they thought they had the divine right to do so?

What do people think?

But the major response is to this (extracted from below):

At might be possible BUT .....

Quote:

Originally Posted by DCH

Sure it might be possible in theory, but the degree of collusion between parties that the theory would require (e.g., Eusebius could probably not have written all of the Christian literature alone) is staggering.

1) "Eusebius" may have been the supervisor of many professional scribes

2) "Eusebius"s writings may have been corrected after his death by the regime.

There did arise a massive controversy. We know this.

But precisely what was it in a political sense?

The Christians of the 4th century burned a lot of books.

They had the army at their disposal.

Does this make a difference?

DCH the years between 325 and 350 odd represent a "black hole" of evidence with a Christian veneer.

Out of this epoch have suddenly emerged the Nag Hammadi Codices.

What do we know about the NHC?

A generation was fleeing ..... to the desert.

εὐδαιμονία | eudaimonia

Quote:

Originally Posted by Duvduv

Why is the idea that Christianity emerged in the fourth century under the sponsorship of the new regime a "conspiracy"? Was the establishment of the United States with its official constitution in 1789 a "conspiracy"?

Was the very possible emergence of Islam under the Abbasid caliphate to unify the Arabs in the 9th century a "conspiracy"?

Does every cooperative activity to establish a system have to be a "conspiracy" with everything negative that it entails?

Was an alleged pre-4th century canonization of the NT a "conspiracy" from such a perspective?

It looks to me as if the term is abused and misused.
Heck, these days the idea of an "inside job" for 9/11 is called a "conspiracy," but the idea that 19 kids and their handlers got together an pulled off the whole shebang is NOT a conspiracy?

I am not endorsing Pete's view but I do think it is a mistake to underestimate the ability of authority to erase evidence of unwanted cultures.

This is an extremely valid point that needs to be stressed. In the 9th century (and after) when the Pseudo-Isidore forgery was being undertaken, those involved were associated with the church which, at that time, was subject to the state. The purpose of these forgeries was to bolster papal and bishop authority. The material forged included material from the pre-Nicaean epoch and material from the era of Damasus (late 4th CE) for a number of centuries. The form of the forgery was to gather "old sentences" and cobble them together into new works which supported the agenda of the forgery mill.

However in the 4th century, if we are to consider a forgery mill to have been commissioned and "fired up" then this agenda had imperial support and with it the support of the Roman Army. Evidence suggests that the army was deployed to perform search and destroy operations for "prohibited books". The owners who preserved these books in their bookcase were to be immediately beheaded. Throughout the 4th and 5th centuries the Christians burned books. They had imperial support (except for a brief respite under Julian). Not only did the Christian regime burn knowledge, they destroyed the Greek architecture - tearing down the pagan temples to their foundations and rebuilding Christian basilicas.

So therefore the 9th century forgery mill that is now known as "Pseudo-Isidore" has a completely different political context than the proposed 4th century forgery mill under the imperial sponsorship of the emperor Constantine. One report of the council of Nicaea states that Constantine even burnt material during the council - petitions that he had earlier requested from the attendees were burnt in their presence.

Quote:

For example, the Spanish managed to utterly eradicate Mayan literary culture, with only a literal handful of codices escaping the flames.

The Romans burning the Punic and the Sassanid Persians (Ardashir) burning the writings of the Parthian empire are similar patterns of large-scale destruction of literature.

As one moves back from the 21st century to the forgery mill of Pseudo-Isidore the context becomes more and more barbaric. By the 4th century the depravity of war, power struggles and racketeering become far more intense.

And then we sometime arrive at the obvious parallel between "Pseudo-Isidore" and "Eusebius", the very first person who thought that the emerging Christian church needed a history written for it. He is first to embark on writing "Real History" about Jesus and the Apostles and the Apostolic Church and only about 300 years after the events had supposedly transpired.

Some Comments on "Pseudo-Isidore" "Eusebius"

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

…..[…] …

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."

And elsewhere ....

"This unknown monk pretends to be a man of research
into very scanty records of the past

... [...] ...

He is not a man of research at all,
except in the sense in which many novelists and romancers
are men of research for the purposes of their construction.
This writer is, in fact, simply a theological romancer,
and only in that sense can he be called an historian at all".

- Edwin Johnson's "Antiqua Mater: A Study of Christian Origins" (1890)

"Perhaps, on some future occasion, I may examine
the historical character of Eusebius;
perhaps I may enquire, how far it appears
from his words and actions,
that the learned Bishop of Caesarea
was averse to the use of fraud,
when it was employed in the service of Religion."

--- Gibbon

"[Eusebius was] the first thoroughly dishonest historian of antiquity."

--- Jakob Burckhardt, Swiss historian (1818-1897) [via Drews]

Ever since Jacob Burckhardt dismissed him as "the first thoroughly dishonest historian of antiquity,"
Eusebius has been an inviting target for students of the Constantinian era.
At one time or another they have characterized him as:

◾ a political propagandist [1],
◾ a good courtier [2],
◾ the shrewd and worldly adviser of the Emperor Constantine [3],
◾ the great publicist of the first Christian emperor,[4]
◾ the first in a long succession of ecclesiastical politicians, [5]
◾ the herald of Byzantinism, [6]
◾ a political theologian, [7]
◾ a political metaphysician [8], and
◾ a caesaropapist. [9]

. Religion and Politics in the Writings of Eusebius:
Reassessing the First "Court Theologian"

--- MICHAEL J. HOLLERICH

εὐδαιμονία | eudaimonia

mountainman · 08-21-2013, 11:54 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Grog

......

I do think it is a mistake to underestimate the ability of authority to erase evidence of unwanted cultures.

The Green in the following diagram is the (pagan) Greek Intellectual tradition.

The thesis of Charles Freeman suggests the Greek Intellectual tradition was suppressed by the Christian culture and "history" (Yellow, and it is proposed mainly pseudo-historical). It took more than a thousand years to resurface.

The process is a little like the splicing of a (history) tape and is mimicked and bolstered in part by the 9th century CE Pseudo-Isidore forgery of even more pre-Nicaean documents.

εὐδαιμονία | eudaimonia

mountainman · 09-06-2013, 10:38 PM

Considering this .....

http://pseudoisidore.blogspot.com.au/

Quote:

About ten years ago, Klaus Zechiel-Eckes discovered that our forgers likely did their work at the monastery of Corbie. He found two Corbie manuscripts -- St. Petersburg, National Library of Russia, Ms. F. v. I. 11, and Paris, BNF, Ms. lat. 11611 -- with curious marks and letters in the margins. Both manuscripts contain texts that Pseudo-Isidore used as sources -- The Petersburg codex has the Historia Tripartita of Cassiodorus; the Paris book has the acts of the Council of Chalcedon. In both cases, the marginal notes mark off passages that later on appear as part of that mosiac of sources constituting Pseudo-Isidore's forged decretals, and also the forged capitulary collection of Benedictus Levita.

So it looks like a secretarial team was going through manuscripts of key works in the Corbie library (one of the best appointed in all of Carolingian Europe), highlighting relevant passages. Later on, somebody else took all of these highlighted excerpts and stitched them together, yielding the forgeries as we have them today. So far we only know of several manuscripts with the source marks. If this was how Pseudo-Isidore did all of his research, though, poking about should yield some more.

Zechiel-Eckes argues that the forgery team was likely headed by Paschasius Radbertus, abbot of Corbie at the time.

What sort of trust are we to invest in any manuscripts sourced from the Corbie Library during the time of Paschasius Radbertus?

The 'Corbie' Collection

Quote:

This collection of texts is attested in the catalogues of Cologne (9th century) and Corbie (12th century). The latter manuscript had already been used by Paschasius Radbert, Abbot of Corbie in the middle of the 9th century, who cited De pudicitia and De ieiunio -- works found in no other collection -- in his works 4

MSS of Tertullian at Corbie

Quote:

The Benedictine Monastery of St.Peter at Corbie in Northern France is an important nexus in the transmission of texts from antiquity. It was founded in Merovingian times between 659 and 661 as a Royal foundation by Balthild and her son Chlothar III. Its monks came from Luxeuil, itself founded by St. Columbanus in 590. The rule of the founders was a regula mixta based on that of Benedict as modified by Columbanus, although no copy of that rule now exists5.

From an early date, the library contained some important manuscripts of the works of Tertullian; an Apologeticum, now in St. Petersburg, although another copy written at Corbie does exist, Paris, B.N.Lat.1623; a copy of the so-called Corbie collection of Tertullian's Montanist works, together with some of Novatian; and a copy of Novatian's De cibis Judaicis under Tertullian's name.

mountainman · 09-13-2013, 07:40 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by DCH

What I want to do is challenge the proponents of Constantinian fabrication of Church history to deconstruct the NT and early Church documents with the same thoroughness ... as the researchers who investigated the matter of the Pseudo-Isidorean Decretals, and then provide a coherent explanation of the sources and motivations of the author(s).

QUOTE MINING of the LXX and early Platonists in the NT Forgery Mill

The modus operandi of 9th century Pseudo-Isidore forgery mill was shown to be associated with taking hundreds and hundreds of phrases from older writings (so as to appear old) and then recombining them PLUS adding a few more, or twisting the phrases about, etc. This has already been discussed above.

At the atomic level of both the Pseudo-Isidore and the 4th (5th/6th/7th/8th/9th ???) Pseudo-Eusebian forgery mills a process may be hypothecised whereby the appropriation of phrases, which are then recombined with other sets of phrases, creates the (false) impression of a 1st and 2nd and 3rd century Platonist-Christian literary source.

There may have been at least major sources for the new testament and early church father documents. The first was the Greek LXX and the second was the entant literature of 1st, 2nd and 3rd century pagan philosophers and particularly the Platonists.

The method at the atomic level of the cut and paste forgery were identifying phrases that would be appropriated and then stitched together in various ways. I hope I do not need to argue the case how the Greek New testament may be seen to be largely a cut and paste exercise from the Greek LXX.

The forgery of the Church Fathers in part also relied on identifying phrases that would be appropriated from Platonist writers of the early centuries, and then stitched together in various ways with the addition of both New Testament and LXX copy paste thereby creating some of the early church fathers, such as for example, Philo and Clement.

For a discussion of Clement and Plato have a look at:
Clement of Alexandria and the Beginnings of Christian Platonism

For the appropriation of Platonic terms and phrases about the soul that was about to be "saved" have a look through
Plotinus on the Seat of the Soul: Reverberations of Galen and Alexander in "Enn." IV, 3 [27], 23

For a healthy suspicion that Platonist/Pythagorean sources may have been manipulated,
Also see Atticizing Moses? Numenius, the Fathers and the Jews
Author(s): M. J. Edwards Source: Vigiliae Christianae, Vol. 44, No. 1 (Mar., 1990), pp. 64-75 Published by: BRILL.

Quote:

Originally Posted by EDWARDS

Numenius, the second-century disciple of Pythagoras, was the boast of Christian authors and is the friend of all modern scholars who wish to find testimonies to Jewish influences on the pagans of the later Roman world. He has been said to have known the Septuagint, to have built upon the philosophy of Philo, to have been a Jew himself: few at least have doubted the judgment of Stern, that his knowledge of Jewish Scriptures exceeded that which was displayed by any pagan of his time.

////

If he was not at least an adept critic of the Old Testament, then how are we to explain his exegesis of the prophets, his celebration of Moses and his acquaintance with expressions which could only have been borrowed from Holy Writ? I have not found any passage in Numenius which convinces me that his knowledge of this nation was as great as modern scholars have sup- posed, and it seems to me that the Fathers have made claims for him which go far beyond any proofs that they can supply.

These articles may assist to test out and discuss the hypothesis.

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