mountainman

Dear Spin,

Are you unaware that it is well known that Lactantius was employed by Constantine, and that he lived out most of his life in Trier, Constantine's original headquarters prior to him moving temporarily into Rome, and hence, to a more imperially appointed city further towards the east. We have no historical evidence for the persecutions of christians, as we do, for example, for the known persecutions in the Roman empire under Diocletion, of the followers of Mani and the Manichaeans, with effect from the later third century.

Just as the thesis regards Constantine's canon as fiction, so too does it regard the Eusebian output of the fables concerning the earlier christian martyrs and persecutions. The new religion was implemented with this false persecution complex, and it has inherited this attitude to this very day.

Best wishes,


Pete

jeffevnz

The identification of themes in the frescoes, and their association with Christianity in particular, to the exclusion of other cults, both strike me as fuzzy pieces of evidence. I'd have to know more about iconography to trust that. One thing I will say is that if the presence of any of these frescoes makes it more likely that the place is a church, then the combination of them gets pretty compelling.

The fragment is another story. Its identification with parallel text in the Gospels is pretty unassailable. Even if you leave out the words that were interpolated, you still have mentions of "Salome," some women who had followed someone, preparation, the sabbath, a councilman or council, and a likely cognate of Arimathea, all in the space of about 100 words. Just as in the parallel Gospel text, and in nearly the same order (council and Arimathea are swapped). I don't have enough info to calculate the odds of this happening by sheer coincidence, but they must be negligible. The texts are clearly related. And if the fragment contains a pretty significant part of the Gospel narrative, or at least something textually related to it, then it's essentially a Christian document

Furthermore, the dating of the fragment looks very reliable. Three independent lines of evidence all point to it having been written in the early 3rd century: paleography (written < 250 AD), archaeology of the embankment where it was found (buried between 254-257 AD), and archaeology of the 'church' with which it seems to be associated (written 222-257 AD and buried by 257 AD). Its connection with the church is likely judging from proximity (2 blocks), obvious religious nature of both, and the burial of the document at the same time as the church's destruction (both related to construction of embarkment). The dating is solid.

We've got a clearly Christian document very likely written and buried before 257 AD. Case closed.

mountainman

Dear J-D,

The year 324/325 CE in the eastern academic greek speaking Roman (TAXABLE) empire.


I present that year on planet Earth as a boundary event in ancient history: characterised by the massive destruction of the extant (then) ancient traditional civilisation via Constantine's military supremacy. (For a precedent have a long hard look at what Ardashir did to the ancient and well educated Parthian civilisation almost exactly one century earlier.)

Best wishes,


Pete

mountainman

Dear jeffevnz,

As you might read somewhere above in this discussion I have asked the question as to whether the name Jesus is actually written in full on this fragment of greek text. Or, as is usually the case, we are dealing with an abbreviated name (for example, the equivalent of just JS.

I suggest that we determine the answer to this question because if the answer is the latter option, an abbreviation, then that abbreviation does not necessarily resolve to Jesus. For example, throughout the LXX (ie: since somewhere around the year 250 BCE in the greek) the same JS is written by the scribes to be resolved as Joshua.

I hope you can see the predicament here. If we are dealing with the abbreviated form (and I think that we may be - but I am prepared to be shown wrong on this specific fact) then it is far more likely that the fragment is non christian, that the name of the subject is not Jesus but Joshua, and that this is related to the Hebrew Bible, or rather the greek preservation of the Hebrew bible, and thus, arguably, nothing to do with canonical christianity as such.



Best wishes,


Pete

Toto

Pete - the word Jesus is not in the fragment, nor is the nomina sacra. It is identified as Christian because of the themes.

jeffevnz

Pete, as you re-read my post, you'll see that my argument does not require the word "Jesus" to appear in the text. Rather I rely on a highly unlikely combination of textual coincidences involving other words. The dependence between the two documents is virtually certain, regardless of whether the fragment mentions Jesus.

spin

If we are referring to the Dura fragment, this is not correct. Standard contractions are to be seen on the fragment as found in other christian religious texts. IH (iota eta) is for Jesus (IHSOUS). QU (theta upsilon -- QEOU) for god (in the genitive, as grammar dictated). There is also an interesting contraction for cross (=stauros) STA. So Jesus in the standard contracted form is present in the text. It is unmistakable. One should not ignore this scribal practice.


spin

mountainman

Dear Toto,

Ben's translation provides at line 10:
.

On what basis? Are (Eusebian) Christian themes are more reliable than C14?


Best wishes,


Pete

Toto

My mistake, I see Jesus is referred to in line 10.

mountainman

Dear Spin,

What shall we do with the greek LXX scribal practice of denoting the name of Joshua with this very same IH (iota eta)? Do we find any stories in greek about a person called Joshua? Are these stories in any way "christian"? I thought they were originally Hebrew stories about this Joshua. I would like someone to step forward and refute the possibility that the subject at that reference in question (the IH (iota eta) abbreviated name) of the fragment was not in fact one person known as Jesus, but rather another person known as Joshua.


Best wishes,


Pete