mountainman

While that's true, its also true that the earliest historical accounts of the Nicaean "Oath" do not appear until the early 5th century - a century after the event. The five contraversial sophisms of Arius are preserved in this "Oath" [I would not call it a "creed"] as a sort of anathema, or disclaimer, clause.

Toto

Most people here have thought through your "postulate." It doesn't make sense, based on what we know of new religions or Roman politics. It doesn't have any evidence in favor of it, and it has evidence against it.

In short, it looks like just another conspiracy theory, not as entertaining as some. It's time to stop talking about it.

Happy surfing.

stephan huller

Before joining this board I really couldn't have managed an argument as weak as this constantly getting replayed and recycled by a single individual for no apparent purpose. I would have thought that surfers are too busy getting laid for this kind of obsessive behavior.

mountainman

The postulate is that we have no "evidence" before 312 CE. The postulate does not need to make sense of anything other than the manifest void of substantial evidence. If there is no evidence before 312 CE then it follows that when "Christianity" appears in the evidence during the rule of Constantine, that he either caused it to come into being, or he found it in an obscure and out of the way place, which has since become lost to the archaeolgists and independent ancient historical researchers.

Entertaining the hypothesis is saying to yourself, well, supposing that there is, and never was, or never will be any certain evidence that Christianity (Jesus the NT and the nation of christians) were actually in the world until the 4th century, when they appeared "miraculously" with Constantine? I wonder what this might imply? The hypothesis tries to make sense of the great silence in all evidence "Christian" prior to the year 312 CE.



The postulate that we have no evidence before 312 CE
does not formally require evidence. In fact it requires
there to be no evidence whatsoever prior to 312 CE.

An hypothesis does not require evidence. Its requirement
is that is must not be falsified by any evidence.


Evidence such as Dura-Europos, and Eusebius, and paleography has been cited as evidence against the postulate, but in all instances the evidence itself cannot be taken as unambiguously "Christian". The verdict cannot be delivered unanimously. This does not "prove the hypothesis right" - far from it. It only indicates that the hypothesis has not been securely refuted by any existing substantial evidence.


You too man.