mountainman

My response to this is that Eusebius was the editor-in-chief of the new testament publication which may have been farmed out in a variety of manners to a large team of professional scribes. My purpose in bringing in the "HA" is to demonstrate the existence of a 4th century "mockumentary", which I see as being typical of the genre of Eusebius's "Histories".



Yes there is plenty of merit to the idea that this "Eusebian History" was sponsored or commissioned by an imperial patron. Philostratus was imperially commissioned to prepare the "Life of Apollonius", which Eusebius is very eager to attack on a political and polemical basis. Even the neoplatonic author Plotinus was the recipent of imperial patronage during his lifetime. We have seen how Mani received imperial patronage and support for 30 years in Persia. Consider Galen, the physician - therapeutae of Asclepius and personal physician to Marcus Aurelius. Were the works of Galen -- of which a surprising mass survive -- sponsored in any way, directly or indirectly, by Marcus Aurelius?

What's so strange about the idea that Constantine sponsored and commissioned Eusebius to further Constantine's political and religious ambitions? Eusebius certainly sings the divine praises of the Thrice Blessed Emperor in "VC".

Toto

Scribes were stenographers, not composers. Once you start adding extra authors, your theory just becomes unduly complex.

You still have done nothing to demonstrate the existence of more than one mockumentary.

Nothing strange about Eusebius supporting Constantine. But why would Constantine dictate the creation of a new religion based on alleged events 300 years before based on Jewish themes?

stephan huller

And then there is next level of peversity. If we are to take seriously the suggestion that the four canonical gospels were created from scratch in the fourth century, is Pete suggesting that all the research regarding the interrelation between the synoptic texts is to be ignored? Is Mark still the earliest canonical gospel? What about Q? What about Mark's knowledge of Aramaic sayings of Jesus? Why is the introduction to Luke written the way it is - i.e. why admit that the text was written after other narratives had been established? Why have Peter as a central figure in the gospel with different interpretations of Jesus's reaction to the declaration that he was the Christ? Why have Peter never write a canonical gospel? Why have Paul as the author of the Apostolikon but not the gospels? Why have Paul as a figure who never saw Christ? The level of complexity to this artificial creation seems to know no boundaries and for no obvious purpose or benefit to the success of the conspiracy.

Why have Jesus never acknowledge that he was the Christ if it was the expressed position of Nicaea that he was the Christ? Why have Jesus never confess that he was the Creator? Why establish the material in such a way to support the opinions of the heresies that never existed and were invented at the very time the gospels were written? Again for what purpose was it established that the heresies often have better and more reasonable interpretations of the 'artificially' established material if it was supposedly design to succeed controlling the masses?

Why isn't the Trinity and other central Nicaean concepts reflected in the narrative of the gospel or other New Testament texts? Why establish two lengths to the ending of Mark but have Church Fathers like Irenaeus argue only for the long ending? How and why did the same Constantine conspiracy write the gospels in Greek but have Irenaeus reflect knowledge of a Syriac text, other Church Fathers familiarity with the Diatessaron and western readings and indeed have at countless variants of the same passage in Church Fathers of 'allegedly' different epochs?

This is only the start to the objections. Pete why can't you see that this is utterly stupid and unworkable?

If there was one centralized text one would expect it to ripple outward from Constantinople in relative uniformity. Certainly if the pre-Nicene witnesses were utter fictions one would expect that they too would reflect the Nicene text, you can insert any words you want into fictitious characters. Yet we see the exact opposite happening. More variation, more disagreement as we go back into 'artificial' history. More variation as we see witnesses in Syria and the Middle East (who inexplicably only used a Diatessaron) and western variant readings generally at the fringes of the Empire (which might again have to do with the use of the Diatessaron in these places).

show_no_mercy

Why even have four gospels in the first place? Why not one, or ten?

stephan huller

Exactly shownomercy:

People who haven't read Irenaeus's explanation of this innovation (it was Irenaeus who invented this concept) dont' understand how utterly complex EVEN his explanation is of this concept. It couldn't have been mandated by some ancient 'Politburo.'

Clearly Irenaeus is ultimately thinking Ezekiel chapter 1 but his argument actually develops from Revelations parallel 'vision' of the living creatures.

But the order of the same living creatures in Ezekiel and Revelations don't agree.

Why this is I have no clue but if some 'Politburo' artificially established Revelations you'd expect uniformity.

Layer on top of this that the order of the gospels conforms to some concept of the order in which the gospels were supposedly written - i.e. Matthew, Mark, Luke and John - and things get completely incomprehensible.

This is because Irenaeus doesn't follow the same order of gospels in the same book (AH 3). He begins Book 3 with Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. Then when he gets around to introducing why there should be four gospels (as an extension of his defence of the gospel of John) he cites the order of the gospels Matthew, Luke, Mark and John AND John, Matthew, Luke, Mark. He also cites the order of the living creatures which correspond with the four evangelists from Revelations AGAINST the accepted order from Ezekiel.

It's all so bizarre and seemingly impossible to disentangle that it has to be a natural development of someone's twisted imagination rather than something which came out of a fourth century factory.

mountainman

The general idea is that the new testament is a creation of imperial fantasy. Avi's example provides a thought experiment scenario, which coud be actualized, by which the first part of the fabrication of the new testament may have been approached.


A rising and ambitious super-power with plenty of gold might see it as a good investment in the technology of the future - i.e. an imperially endorsed and to-be-duly-canonized "Holy Writ" was to be prepared via the codex.

Gold speaks in all languages.
Constantine was a serious revolutionary.
His Christian laws were meant to be taken seriously.
There were severe penalties for not respecting the majesty of the Emperor.


Constantine's ambition is legendary. While he was in Briton he would have learnt the history of how the Romans conquered the tribes by executing and eliminating the religious leadership of the Celtic Druids. Instead of dragging the druids out of the forests of Briton and executing them, Constantine applied the same religious leader elimination process to the Graeco-Roman temple cults known to archaeologists in an abundance of evidence. He dragged the Graeco-Roman priesthood out of the ancient forest of temples, which literally littered the landscape of the Roman Empire, but particularly dense in the east, and around Alexandria. He shut down the temples and enforced their prohibition of use from c.324 CE, the moment he became the supreme military commander.

Constantine's ambition was to create a "Religious Holy Writ", and to present it to the elite of the empire in the form of a high technology codex, which would last and endure and be physically preservable for a "thousand years of more". In this ambition Constantine had precedent.

One hundred years earlier, the King of Constantine's Persian enemies, Ardashir created a new State monotheistic religion.


As a result of this religious revolution. the enemies of the Romans, the Persians had become strong and vigorous, and had inflicted a series of humiliating defeats on the Roman army and three Roman Emperors during the third century.

Constantine's ambition sought to emulate Ardashir and bring the Roman Empire together by force and bind its vows and allegience to a specially prepared "Holy Writ" which would be "canonized". He had the power as the Commander of the Army, and he had the necessary religious authority because of his rightful role as the "Pontifex Maximus". Who was going to argue against Constantine about chapter and verse? Which Alexandrian logician and "Porphyrian" would dare to be an Ares and ride to war against the malevolent ant-Hellenistic warlord Bullneck?

Toto

You are taking a word there out of context.

Ardashir did not invent a new religion based entirely on forged documents. He established and regulated Zoroastrianism. If you only wanted to claim that Constantine established or distorted or did something with an existing relgion known as Christianity, you would have a respectable thesis, with a lot of support and agreement.

Ardashir_I

mountainman

Constantine and Eusebius may have been well aware, along with most of the population of the ROman Empire, of the story of the history of the Indian King Ashoka, who had a dramatic "religious experience" and embraced the teachings of Buddha, establishing monuments to Buddha -- who had lived three hundred years earlier - throughout many lands and bringing his kingdom to one religion.

Fun collegiate work? See the collection of biographies of Roman emperors called Historia Augusta - consists of the lives of most rulers from Hadrian (117-138) to Carinus (283-285). It consists of hundreds of bogus sources and fake documents.


You mean the Persian Holy Man who had twelve disciples and established a widespread and flourishing religion, with many churches inside the ROman Empire, and a canon of "Holy Writings", including "The Gospel of Mani" and an explicit series of "Epistles" written to his apostles, and churches, (monasteries) etc? The same Mani, who was the Holy Man of Constantine's enemies, the Persians, who enjoyed a ministry of 30 years and was captured and crucified in the captical city of the (Persian) empire, and his Apostles and followers persecuted, not only by the Persian King, but by the Roman Emperor Diocletian, with severe penalties.

Mani was a very recent poltical and religious phenomenom in that epoch when Constantine rose to power, and Eusebius crafted his "Church History". But Constantine wanted the events transposed to the Roman Empire, and with the assistance of the Greek LXX, which he also found in ROme, he created a Jewish version of Mani, in a composite between Jesus and Paul and the Twelve Apostles. He retrojected it the 300 years -- it had taken 300 years before Buddha was officially recognised throughout the known world through the monumental effots of Ashoka.

Constantine knew the ROmans had scattered the tribes of Israel at Masada in c.70 CE and that any reconstruction of any earlier Jewish histories or "Christian histories" would necessarily be thought as "problematic". He solved the problem of eyewitnesses and "living memory" by written accounts. A very simple but lavish fraud imo.

mountainman

Why not start with Porphyry himself?

My argument is that Eusebius forged Porphyry's "Against the Christians". The anti-Christian polemical work in the name of Porphyry was forged at Constantine's sponsorship (probably by Eusebius), so that the rest of the writings of Porphyry could be then "targetted in revenge". This conjecture is not without a certain amount of support in Eunapius when he writes:

At any rate [Porphyry] left behind him many speculations
that conflict with the books that he had previously published;
with regard to which we can only suppose
that he changed his opinions as he grew older.

The following quote has been taken from WIKI on Porphyry:

Thus it is likely that Eusebius himself wrote both Philosophy of the Oracles and those only very few remaining fragments of Against the Christians, and by rank forgery, and with the backing of "Bullneck", passed off these works in the name of Porphyry.


Constantine assumed a despotic control and sought a monopoly in the preservation of "important and pious literature". Every reader must understand that by burning the writings of Porphyry, Constantine is perceived as a malevolent despot who burns the literature of the greatest academic of his (4th century) age.

Question: What type of people burn the literature of great academics?
Answer: Bible publishers

stephan huller

Pete

Your arguments are so bizarre. The fact that the arguments of Porphyry haven't survived in a pristine form IS NOT the same thing as saying that Eusebius MUST HAVE forged the fucking original text.

Come on! This is crazy. Your arguments always sound like:

a) most people have received a speeding ticket
b) speeding is a criminal offense
c) rape and murder are also criminal offenses
THEREFORE
most people have committed rape and murder

I am tired of these idiotic arguments. As I suggested in my last post concentrate your effort on finding THREE proofs from some ancient witness that all this nonsense you spend so much time writing about actually happened.