mountainman

What makes you think he was ever christian in the first place?

There is no evidence to substantiate this claim. While his entire
family was butchered in typical supreme imperial mafia thug style
by Constantius (son of Constantine) -- who incidentally was
very much a christian ---- he was essentially isolated
from life for much of his childhood. The more appropriate term
might be "detained as a political prisoner" -- essentially he was
under guard for many years by the forces of the Constantius.

During this time he had access to the new and strange christian
literature, it it true, for Constantius, being the good christian
that he was would have seen to this important issue. On the
other hand, we know that he had access to various non-
christian literature.

There is absolutely nothing to suggest he was ever christian,
and the authorship of every single one of his books and
letters shout aloud that he would never have considered
this alternative - of becoming "christian" in the 4th century.

The christians of the fourth century are adequately summarised
by the well respected historian Ammianus Marcellinus:

"No wild beasts
are so hostile to humans
as the majority of the Christians
are to one another" - (22.5.4)

ynquirer

He was baptized, in all likelihood. This is why history knows him as “the Apostate.” Today, this data seems unimportant; yet in the mid-fourth century it was fairly unusual that a baptized person adjured the Christian faith regardless of the circumstances of his/her baptism - and I am ready to grant that baptism might have been a stipulation to spare his life at the time his family was butchered.

Looking at his figure under the best light, I’d agree that he was raised both a Christian and a well-bred man of the classical antiquity - as most of the higher-ranking class in the late Roman Empire. Quite freely, he chose to be a heathen. He started the career of a scholar and could possibly have become an excellent one if the career wasn’t truncated, as it was when he was appointed Cesar - that is, subordinate emperor under the regime established by Diocletian - by his half-cousin Constantius II, then the Augustus o first emperor. A military career in the Rhineland ensued, in which Julian shone as a brilliant leader. He was loved by his soldiers, who at least twice proclaimed him Augustus. He rejected for the first time, but for the second he was not strong enough to resist the hailing of the legions, which didn’t want to be removed from the Rhine, where their homes were, to the east to support Constantius’ efforts against the Persians. Contantius, then, returned to Europe to thwart the threat posed by the rebelling Cesar. Fortunately enough for the empire, Contantius died before the forthcoming clash, naming in his last will Julian as his successor - according to Ammianus.

In his Letter to the Athenians Julian, being unable as he was to resist the sway of the troops, argued his high treason as compliance with the gods’ will. The legions were the gods’ instruments to make up his mind, and his supreme duty was not to resist a heavenly command to restore the ancient traditions of Rome.

When he assumed the highest statesmanship, Julian attempted a systematic substitution of confessed pagans for Christian in the higher magistracies of the Empire. Yet his premature death a couple of years afterward - fighting the Persians, how else? - frustrated his planned restoration of paganism. In any case, Christianity showed itself too resilient a faith to be uprooted by a decree from above. Perhaps, he didn’t get enough time to produce an enduring restoration. Yet, in this, he miscalculated the favor of the gods. A rational analyst of historical facts would not have committed such a mistake.

JoeWallack

JW:
No one. The progression of supposed evidence for the Historical Jesus appears to be Unique. The earliest known Christian authors, Paul and "Mark", both indicate that they are significantly a Rejection of earlier witness to a Historical Jesus. "Matthew" and "Luke", considered the next best supposed witnesses for a Historical Jesus, re-write "Mark" without attribution and with a primary objective of rehabilitating the same supposed Disciples that Paul and "Mark" rejected as witnesses. This indicates that the only significant Source available to "Matthew" and "Luke" for a Historical Jesus was one that Rejected the earliest witness to a Historical Jesus.

In the progression of Christianity each significant author Rejects the Christological moment established by the predecessor:

1) Paul = Resurrection. No mention of Baptism event.

2) Mark = Baptism. Emphasis is on the Crucifixion and not the Resurrection.

3) Matthew = Birth. Baptism is Spinned as a mere formality.

4) John = Beginning. [overstatement for comedy effect]What Baptism?[/overstament for comedy effect]


So tell us Ben, where else do you see this Type of progression?
Methinks there could be some Middle Earth here between MJ and HJ. Paul and "Mark" are witnesses to an Impossible Jesus and Reject Possible Jesus. Is it fair than to take Paul and "Mark" as witness to Possible Jesus or is their Jesus really a different Jesus whose only significant connection to Historical Jesus is that it was Inspired by the Rejection of Historical Jesus?



Joseph

http://www.errancywiki.com/index.php/Main_Page

Wads4

How about the Greeks--Odysseus, Achilles , Agamemnon etc?

mountainman

Do you know who first called him 'Apostate'?

The tetrach regime established by Diocletian was replaced by the regime
established by the supreme imperial mafia thug Constantine with
effect from 324 CE. That is, a dictatorship which lasted until 337.

What happened after that, is that Constantine attempted to split
the empire between his sons.

Well, even it was established out the whole cloth by Constantine in 325
at the Council of Nicaea, the twelve years of operation until 337, at a
high profile in the empire, would see the new and strange brotherhood
very wealthy and very successful. It was not about resilience. The
christians were on the attack, until the end of the fourth century. It
was the pagans who were being systematically exterminated by the
christians, according to Demolish Them!, by
Vlasis Rassias, Published in Greek, Athens 1994.

As a rational analyst of historical facts I can perceive that Julian
charged that the new testament was "a fiction of men composed
by wickedness" in his work Against the Galilaeans.

He did not name Constantine by name in this work, but he does refer
to the "wretched Eusebius".

However, in his work The Caesares, Julian most definitely associates Constantine and the figure of Jesus;
and is quite precise in his negative assessment of the emperor Constantine.

It is notable that if Julian here was not being a rational analyst of historical
facts, then he was doing alright, having named and summarised the actions,
character, motivations and deeds of almost 40 different Roman emperors.
Constantine takes the "worst emperor", while Marcus Aurelius takes
the "best emperor" award from the assembly of the Gods.

mountainman

Here's a bit more on what Arnaldo Momigliano has to say
about the traditional (Greek) history, and the newly invented
(ie: 4th century) christian "ecclesiastical history":

People learnt a new history because they acquired a new religion. Conversion meant literally the discovery of a new history from Adam and Eve to contemporary events.

The new history could not suppress the old. Adam and Eve and what follows had in some way to be presented in a world populated by Deucalion, Cadmus, Romulus, and Alexander the Great. This created all sorts of new problems.

First, the pagans had to be introduced to the Jewish version of history.

Secondly, the Christian historians were expected to silence the objection that Christianity was new, and therefore not respectable.

Thirdly, the pagan facts of life had to get into the Jewish-Christian scheme of redemption.

It soon became imperative for the Christians to produce a chronology which would satisfy both the needs of elementary teaching and the purposes of higher historical interpretation. The Christian chronographers had to summarized the history which the converts were now supposed to consider their own; they had also to show the antiquity of the Jewish-Christian doctrine, and they had to present a model of providential history. The result was that, unlike pagan chronology, Christian chronology was also a philosophy of history. Unlike pagan elementary teaching, Christianity elementary teaching of history could not avoid touching upon the
essentials of the destiny of man. The convert, in abandoning paganism, was compelled to enlarge his historical horizon: he was likely to think for the first time in terms of universal history.

— Arnaldo Momigliano (1908-1987),
Pagan and Christian Historiography
in the Fourth Century A.D; (1960)

Gamera

Which is of course an argument for the historicity of Jesus (whatever one takes historicity to mean). It mattered to the early church whether Jesus was a physical person who made claims of divinity about himself that reside in oral history and subsequent mss. Thus, "evidence" of his historicity was a concern early on to the people better situated to determine its validity. And hence, a fictionalized Jesus was less likely to withstand the scrutiny of the early church.

Clivedurdle

Except that the invention of history is a very powerful and commonly used tool.

chapka

I don't think he's a good comparison, myself, because we have his writings. Primary writings have an author. There are a few cases where important characteristics of that author are disputed; for example, the theory that Homer's works were the work of multiple authors working in a tradition rather than a single authorial figure, or the theory that Shakespeare's works were pseudonymous and actually written by a separate known individual, but these are rare exceptions and I'm not aware of any such theory concerning Euclid. The question of whether what we know about an author is accurate is different from the question of whether someone actually authored the work or works in question.

I think Socrates is a better analogue. We have no primary writings, just second-hand accounts in the works of Plato and Xenophon. And frankly, I don't think any scholar seriously believes that they were mere stenographers, so in the absence of other contemporaneous accounts of Socrates' life, it would be plausible to consider him an invention of the two dialogists. I don't know how much other evidence there is for his historicity, though, and I agree that it's just not that important; whether Socrates or Plato came up with the ideas spoken by Socrates in the Platonic dialogues, it was their publication in the dialogues which put them in the mainstream of thought, and in the absence of a cult of Socrates, that's all that really matters except to the academic specialists.

Chris Weimer

chapka - add in Aristophanes' The Clouds and you have yet another contemporary account of Socrates. I think it's a second-hand redactor, though. The real Socrates in The Clouds was "Pocrates", and anti-Platonists changed it Socrates as a negative charge. :Cheeky: