Roger Pearse

In their translation and commentary on Eusebius "Vita Constantini", Cameron and Hall remark on that all the edicts of later emperors are couched in very violent language. But the introduction to the English translation of the Theodosian code points to various edicts which suggest that these same emperors found it increasingly hard to get anything through the imperial bureaucracy unless they more or less stood over them at sword-point. C&H suggest that the language conceals an increasing impotence.

All the best,

Roger Pearse

Clivedurdle

Which raises an interesting question.

Has xianity been looked at from a psychological perspective as a change from real blood sacrifices on tombs, in the games and in temples, to an intellectual emotional internal rite of eating and drinking the body and blood of a god and a man? Have the games been seen as a precursor of xianity?

mountainman

As early as 1912 (DREWS) showed that the Neronian persecutions were fiction. I am amazed that discussions on IIDB and in general 21st century scholarship are ignorant of his arguments.


Best wishes


Pete Brown

Minimalist

The whole christians being fed to the lions myth seems to be deliberately created by your christians, Roger. To cover up their own later crimes perhaps?

I believe little of what Hollywood puts out, you know.

Minimalist

I've had a chance to digest some of this, Pete. How do you account for the appearance of "Jesus" or "Christ" references in the gnostic gospels themselves? Granted the few that I've read don't seem to get unnecessarily involved with any of this "Nazareth" or "Pilate" or "miracle" stuff, but, if you accept the notion that a "christian" is someone who professes to believe in "Christ" then clearly these gnostic gospels have some legitimate claim to the word "christian."

Are you suggesting that Constantine created all of christianity from scratch; or, that he took what was already there and molded it to suit his needs?
Or, am I missing what you are suggesting completely?

mountainman

My accounting is dead simple - the gnostic gospels were written around the time, and after the Constantine Canon was published 325-331 CE. Scholarship presently conjectures that the chronology of the gnostic gospels to be in the 2nd and 3rd centuries, despite their overt Manichaean overtones suggestive of a date later than 272 CE, when Mani became famous for his execution, and his followers for their persecution.

FOr example "The Gospel of Thomas" was an attempted preservation of pagan knowledge and wisdom literature, along the lines of the Sentences of Sextus and the Teachings of Silvanius and shares their presence in the Nag Hammadi Codices. These are all carbon dated 348 CE. I do not need to conjecture about my chronology as do the mainstream pundits.

Eusebius mentions Greek gnostics, in his fiction, to try and dissemble the opposition into a fragmentary history of various herecies against your man Jesus H. Yet the NHC is written in Coptic (Egyptian!) -- and some of it is clearly non christian and others distinctly pagan.

All the apocyphal gospels and acts were IMO written as a polemical reaction to the totally inadequate fictive plot of the COnstantine Canonical bible. The pagans had no sword, they took up the pen. Jesus H was a slave master, Jesus H was a little child, the apostles are war-chiefs, the apostles defeat armies, and divide the nations between them as did the ROman soldiers divide the clothes of the fictive Constantinian god Jesus H.


There has been nobody to date to make out a case that they were written by pagans using the name of your man Jesus H and the happy troupe of the Apostles in vain. The polemic is different between the canon and the apocypha. It has not yet been analysed with the bigger questions, neither is there any preferred theory of their chronology, rather a mass of conjectures to an early date to suit the mainstream quagmire of Eusebius.

The "CHRESTIANS" may already have existed as ascetic priests of Isis. The name appears in the epigraphy and the papyri and in Eusebius. The name "CHRISTOS" may have been related to a certain degree in this priesthood. (NB: I am providing the Latin equivalents for the coresponding Greek terms here).

I am suggesting that COnstantine ordered the writing of the new testament and the Eusebian christian ecclesiastical history, and all his other works including the fathers (via scriptoriums and the raw materials available in the libraries of the western empire 312-324 CE) --- from scratch.

His starting place was the Hebrew Bible Greek of Origen, perhaps in some of the ROman libraries 312 CE, and from this he concocted in greek, various extentions upon the themes outlined in the Hebrew Bible, now known as the canonical NT literature which, with the exception of the Shepherd of Hermes, may as well be called the Constantinian Canon, since he published our bible 331 CE.

The mixture of non canonical literature was in many cases written by pagans as a reaction to these monstrous canonical tales, in the period from 325 CE through to perhaps the end of the fourth century, where scholarship agrees for example, that The Acts of Philip were written.

In many cases, of course, these works were classified as heretical.
And so we go on. So yes, before Constantine set foot in Rome in
the year 312 CE, there was not one representative of the mighty
nation of Christians on this planet. COnstantine was the first, and
he never truly believed in it himself, as we known, It was simply
a means to an end for him..

Subequent generations of the Niceaan business arrangements were perpetuated from the emperor court --- it became big business overnight.
And still is.


Best wishes,


Pete Brown

Minimalist

Um....he's not "my man." I'm firmly in the 'jesus was a myth' camp.


We don't have contemporary copies of any of the other NT documents, either. If memory serves, the earliest "Paul" writing we have is from the late second century and, like all the others, is a copy of a copy of a copy.

What little I've read of the gnostic gospels has suggested that they were copied into Coptic. You seem to be suggesting that there were no original Greek/Latin/Aramaic texts and that these were original Coptic creations, if I read your meaning correctly.

It's an interesting idea but how the hell do you prove it? Ehrman can show changes from one manuscript to another over time to prove his hypothesis but you have only one set of documents to work with.

andrewcriddle

Tertullain Apology chapter 40 http://www.tertullian.org/articles/c...er_apology.htm

Andrew Criddle

Roger Pearse

I'm sure that all of us would be interested to see the ancient data that supports this assertion, if any.

All the best,

Roger Pearse

Clivedurdle

I agree with you Roger!

A league table listing who the Romans killed and persecuted and tortured in any way over what shall we agree 700 BCE to 1400 CE?

Methinks xians will hardly appear in that list!

:devil1: