spamandham

The hypothesis still depends on Eusebius using earlier extant texts to mimic their style, even if those texts are the Jewish scriptures. This seems to be a complication to your hypothesis, in that it requires that Eusebius had ~200 year old texts available to him (plausible), and that he knew they were ~200 years old (less plausible).

The reason for this is that modern paleography dates the texts to that earlier period. Eusebius' fraud must be good enough to fool us, not just Arius.

mountainman

Let me clarify. There are two distinct possibilities:

Possibility One: There were some obscure 200 y/o texts
relating to the set of "NT texts" which were being assembled
and for the first time collated into a framework which was
to become the Ecclesiatical History of Eusebius, which
Constantine ordered to be bound to the extant Hebrew
Texts.

Possibility Two: There were no 200 y/o texts relating to
the set of "NT texts" which were being assembled
and for the first time collated into a framework which was
to become the Ecclesiatical History of Eusebius, which
Constantine ordered to be bound to the extant Hebrew
Texts. The "NT texts" were fabricated by Eusebius
under explicit orders from Constantine, 312-324 CE.

It is easier to explain the whole deal in the words of
the emperor Julian --- as a fabrication.

However the fabrication is not immediately straightforward
and is quite complex, and includes fraudulent interpolation
(eg: Josephus' interpolation may have been on display
at the time of the council of Nicaea). I have written
an article on this.


The fraud is quite simple. Constantine says to Eusebius:
"This is to be written in the Hadrian script".
Eusebius says to the boss:
"OK boss".

A plaeographer today will say "Hey, Look at that!
It's the Hadrian script. Thus the text is dated to
the time of Hadrian."

Arius was the lonely opposition to the lonely
and untrodden path of fiction perpetrated at
Nicaea upon his captive empire.

Arius did not stand much of a chance against
the boss. Noone did. Everyone understood that
the megalomaniac with the big victorious army
could do what he pleased, and when they were
asked to take sides - either for or against --
Constantine's initiative of a brand spanking new
(and "strange" according to Eusebius) religious
order, well, considering their position I can
understand how the voting at Nicaea went.
(But they were very rich and important men
in the empire overnight by that signature,
the personal representatives of the boss
in their own area.

But I dont think the fraud fooled Arius, who knew
what Constantine was doing, but not why. The
words of Arius. What were they?

There was time when He was not.
[Ed: He did not exist before Constantine.]

Before He was born He was not.
[Ed: He is a fabrication.]

He was made out of nothing existing.
[Ed: He is a fiction.]

He is/was from another subsistence/substance.
[Ed: He is fictitious.]

He is subject to alteration or change.
[Ed: He is fictitious, as are his gospels.]

This in 325 CE.
Then in 362 CE:

And then the fraud was called out by Julian,
who wrote "to all mankind that it was expedient
to advise the reasons by which he was convinced
that the fabrication of the galilaeans was a fiction
of men composed by wickedness".

Doug Shaver

Sure. Absent evidence that the particular document being examined is a forgery, Occam's razor demands that hypothesis.

Doug Shaver

Citations relevant to this discussion would document the fourth-century production of documents in a handwriting style clearly intended to make the document look like it was considerably older than it actually was. The simple assertion within the text that it was written by someone who had lived at an earlier time will not support your hypothesis.

spamandham

Are you arguing that all texts, religious, political, pagan, personal, from the hadriatic period are forgeries by Eusebius? Because if you are not arguing that, how do you account for the failure of paeleographers to detect a difference between extant gospel fragments and other extant texts unrelated to Christianity? I don't see how the forgery idea can reasonably pass muster without incorporating into it the complication that Eusebius intentionally copied the style of 2nd century texts.

This doesn't imply the Eusebius invented it from whole cloth. Assuming the quote is genuine, it merely implies that the author viewed the gelilaeans to have fabricated a story. It does not imply an absence of the components of the story prior to that point.

mountainman

Two points here. (1) The base hypothesis upon which the subsequent
theory is constructed is that Eusebius tendered fiction under the
inventive sponsorship of the boss, Constantine.

(2) To answer your question specifically, I refer to the evidence.
If we in fact did possess a papyrus fragment which had been both
paleographically and C14 assessed, then we would be sure. But
at the moment, although we have a series of papyrii fragments
which have been dated to the prenicene epoch via paleography,
none of which has been published as being carbon dated.

Am I permitted to be skeptical in this forum?
Over

mountainman

Only those which reference the word Copyright C. "christian"
or some primitive derivative, maybe a "chrestus", and other related
interpolations into the extant libraries of literature available.

Some texts, such as those of the "christian fathers" were entirely
fabricated, while others were altered to add reference to things
"christian" (incorporating the mention of "Jesus" and then others).
Said base texts may have been neopythagorean philosophical
literature. When interspersed with a "christian framework"
they become "gnostic" and "heretical".

I do not believe that Paleographers claim to be able
to detect fraudulent forgery. They cannot.


Clever forgeries are undertaken with a specific plan
in mind, and were commonplace in antiquity as they
are today. The boss was trying to impress the locals.
And the locals were "the smarter side of the empire",
the more antiquous, more fertile, richer, loaded with
gold and etc. So he hired a good man to do the job.


I am in the process of formulating a theory of ancient
history which for its support relies on one postulate;
that Eusebius tendered fiction, on the boss' say so.

All other theories of ancient history in the past have
selected to follow the opposite postulate, that we
are to infer, by the writings generated in the rise to
supremacy of Constantine, that "the tribe of christians"
pre-dated the malevolent despot.

I reject this mainstream hypothesis, on the basis of
manifest lack of evidence for prenicene christians,
and am framing an argument on the basis that in
fact, Eusebius wrote fiction, and the "tribe of
christians" referenced in his writings, and all writings
associated with the Eusebian treatise, are fictions,
forgeries and simple fabrications, some of which
were tendered at Nicaea, in an ancient script.

(They may have ended up
at the rubbish tip however).

Over.

spamandham

Unless you counter with an explanation for this, I'm going to take this as an admition that your hypothesis depends on the complication that Eusebius mimiced 2nd century styles with intent.

Let's explore that...

It requires that he knew those styles - which further requires that he had 2nd century extant texts available to him, knew they were from the 2nd century, and had reason to mimic that style.

This implies further that there were individuals well versed in that style already that needed fooling. The simplest explanation for the existence of such individuals, is that some kind of religious tradition that maintained such texts, already existed! I don't see how you can get away from concluding that whatever Eusebius did, he started with pre-existing religious texts of some kind.

Even an amateur could distinguish between the writings around 1900 and those around 1750. I'm going to give paleographers a bit of credit at having greater skills than amateurs. It is not plausible that they would fail to recognize 4th century writings, unless those writings were intentionally made to look like 2nd century writings - not just in content, but also in style.

mountainman

Let's say he was a familar around the library of caesarea.
We might even consider him perhaps one of the leading
acadmics acssociated with the standard pagan philosophical,
religious, and other texts of all categories, from the 2nd CE.

This pre-extant lineage of texts which Eusebius had immediate
access to were simply those, as described earlier, as those of
the neopythagorean school. These in the hands of Porphyry,
who was last seen alive in Rome, sometime in the very early
fourth century, would perhaps have been a Roman library.
Perhaps elsewhere. But this represented a huge corpus of texts,
from Plotinus' works, back to the earlier 1st and 2nd century
neoplatonic, neopythagorean and stoic philosophical schools.

Have you looked at these papyrii fragments, and slabs of text?
They are available on the internet. Pick any one of them, as
an example, dated to the epoch before the rise of Constantine
by paleographers, and then let's discuss this further, if that's OK.

Pick the oldest one if you like, or any - your choice.
Best wishes,


Pete

Doug Shaver

Have I ever hinted anything to the contrary?

Yes, I know, but I have yet to see any evidence supporting that hypothesis. I have seen plenty of speculation about how Eusebius could have done that, but nothing in the way of evidence that he did do it.
You've got some facts there, but you have no argument that logically deduces your conclusion from the facts.