stephan huller

mountainman

So I think that you are acknowledging that there is no reason to doubt the assertion that Arius was indeed the presbyter of the Martyrium of St. Mark. Is that correct?

stephan huller

avi

What does 'forged' mean? Are you willing to go as far as mountainman and say 'created from scratch' in the fourth century? If you agree with that statement you acknowledge a position that is viewed as untenable by every scholar that has ever studied the material. All would regard the idea of dismissing all of the evidence from first, second, third and early fourth centuries as utterly absurd. If you think you are smarter than the collective weight of scholars who have studied ALL the textual material in its original language while you have an inferior knowledge of the same textual information I would have to say that you are holding an unreasonable position.

mountainman

Stephan, you do not seem to be aware of my skeptical and critical doubts.

As far as I am concerned at the moment, the canonical legend that "St Mark" preached and set up business in Alexandria is as fictitious as the non canonical legend that "St. Thomas" preached and set up business in India, and converted the Indians from their ascetic practices.

I will immediately acknowledge that Alexandria (and the rest of the Roman Empire) hosted a milieu of cults and religions, many of which had temples and/or churches and/or shrines. Out of this vast multitude of "pagan temples and shrines" however, I have grave doubts as to whether we will ever be able to find one which was in use by the christian cult before Bullneck turned up with his barbarian army. The lone exemplar at the moment in 2010 is the oft discussed Dura Europos "house church", a 3rd rate structure. No exemplars of the first rated "Christian Church" structures or the second rated "Christian Church House" structures have been found, either in Alexandria or over the entire Roman empire.

IMO the demograpic balance between a very large dominant pagan priesthood, and an extremely small (if at all extant) Christian priesthood, favors the case that Arius was associated with the pagan priesthood (of some kind) in Alexandria, upon which the Christian State Cult was thrust in the year 324 CE.


Satirists in Alexandria

The WIKI article on Alexandria mentions that the city had a contraversial reputation for producing satirists.

Eusebius tells us that the unbelievers were ridiculing (probably by common Greek satire) the sacred scriptures in the Greek theatres of Alexandria, during the "Arian Controversy". Constantine writes a letter to Arius and complains that Arius "wrote with a pen distilling poison". Saint Athanasius cant help himself but award the despicable Arius the "ANTICHRIST Card", and compares Arius three times to the Greek satirist Sotades. Or am I reading Athanasius wrong again? Doesn't this justify me asking the question "Was Arius a satirist"?

Arius apparently wrote very common and popular songs (about Jesus?) which were sung in the taverns. I wonder what what they were like? Unfortunately, they were very unpopular with the Lord God Caesar Constantine, and he ordered for the destruction of all the books of Arius, and for the death penalty by immediate beheading for anyone found preserving them.

Sheshbazzar

What we need is for this "Martyrium of St.Mark" to be excavated and the claimed corpus delecti to be actually produced.
That is, as mountainman points out, there is an extreme paucity of verifiable archaeological evidence for any actual widespread Christian existence prior to the 4th century CE.
All we now have are written 'documents', all of dubious origin and of questionable integrity, and one single, (and conveniently missing) Dura ''House Church"
If the 'church' of the fist 3 centuries was anywhere near as extensive, influential, and as powerful as it is presented within these writings, there should be tens of thousands of solid, unambiguous verifiable Christian archaeological evidences.
All you need do is produce unassailable archaeological evidence that this 'Martyrium' actually was employed by Christians before the 3rd century CE.
Skepticism is warranted as no such major Christian archaeological structure has as yet ever been produced. Books be true, there should be hundreds. Where are they?

stephan huller

mountainman

You always have this way of avoiding talking about the specifics of history. Almost no one outside of the Copts and a few pious believers actually accept that St. Mark visited Alexandria. This has no relevance to the topic at hand. I am interested only in establishing whether or not you have any reason to doubt the evidence from Epiphanius that Arius was the presbyter of the Martyrium of St. Mark. I have to take things one at a time because your brain likes to avoid specificity. Again do you have any reason to believe that Arius WAS NOT the presbyter of the Martyrium of St. Mark?

stephan huller

Transient

The position that Christianity was manufactured from scratch in the fourth century is absurd. There are no personal insults needed to make this manifest. One has to ignore so much literary evidence in order to 'prove' the overarching point that it is aburd to claim victory. It has been argued (or questioned) thaty there is no proof that Irenaeus ever lived, that his writings were also manufactured in the fourth century as mountainman alleges the New Testament canon was produced. I presented those who accept the absurdities of mountainman with countless examples of people who used Irenaeus's work or are counted as his disciples by ancient witnesses. No response from mountainman.

It is only because it would be downright crazy to suggest that Arius was not a real person that mountainman is forced to develop the almost equally silly theory that Arius somehow 'knew' that Christianity was all a lie, that he was somehow 'in on' the plot ('everyone was in on the plot' I was told 'everyone in the age knew it was a lie').

You have expressed a more reasonable position that Constantine might have reshaped pre-existing traditions. How then do you go along with mountainman when he says that Arius was in on an Imperial plot to manufacture a state religion out of nothingness? You can't have it both ways. Either you think that mountainman is expressing an untenable position or you don't.

I would presume that if you have thought through your position that you would identify Arius as one of those 'preexistent traditions' which Constantine reshaped. I would think then that you might hear what mountainman has to say about whether or not he accepts that Arius really was a presbyter of the Martyrium of St. Mark? That would seem to suggest that the disciple here is superior to his master (I say things in jest it just makes the effort in hitting these keys more bearable given how trivial the whole discussion really is).

As such I still ask mountainman whether or not he accepts that Arius really was the presbyter of the Martyrium of St. Mark and if he does whether he is willing to change his original position (i.e. of a creation ex nihilo) to transient's position where indeed it is acknowledged that there were pre-existent Christian tradition - like that associated with St. Mark in Alexandria - that Constantine's role in Christianity was not as a creator of a new faith but as a modifier of pre-existing traditions.

Toto

Your reading is wrong again. These facts do not make the idea that Arius was a pagan who satirized Christianity even remotely plausible.

If I call someone a "clown" as part of a polemical tirade against him, you would not be justified in concluding that this person actually made a living by wearing funny shoes and makeup, and entertaining children by making balloon animals.

stephan huller

Sheshbazzar:

I can only provide you with a link http://www.unesco.org/csi/pub/papers2/alex17.htm to the work that was carried out ten years ago at the site. We have some new and exciting information to publish on this same site from a survey done this month. We will be raising money for a much more extensive survey in April, 2011. I am actually supposed to raising money for this project. Haven't done a thing because I have been way too busy. Nevertheless I am going to have to start soon.

With regards to the Martyrium, it is impossible to argue that Arius was the first presbyter. It was the traditional seat of authority for Alexandrian Patriarchs. Before Arius there must have been Achillas, Peter and Theonas. The Passio Petri Sancti makes reference to the throne (and the Martyrium itself) as having been established as long as the oldest member of the assembly remembers. Given that it describes events from 311 CE I think it is safe to assume that it is at least as old as Dionysius. And then the question is - why stop at Dionysius?

Sheshbazzar

Your provided link tells us that;
I had already searched and found this readily available referenced site before posing my questions. I posted to see whether you could offer additional or updated evidence.

One might wonder why nothing found could be dated to any earlier than the end of the 4th century?
You are not very forthcoming with any of this 'new and exciting information'.
Any skeptic might question whether said 'new and exciting information' will include the in-situ finding of any unmistakably Christian archaeological artifacts that can be conclusively dated as having originated prior to 'the end of the 4th century AD'.
'Why stop at Dionysius?' A skeptical observation; Indeed, if a claim can be asserted without providing any actual evidence, one may just as well shove it all the way back to 'Joseph and Mary'.

stephan huller

I see, so if I am not telling what I know I can't know anything. Well if that's the case then let's leave the references at the fourth century - the Passio Petri Sancti. It still disproves the idea that Constantine established Christianity from scratch as Constantine did not have authority over Egypt in 311 CE. Why don't you read Tim Vivian's Peter of Alexandria? Why do I have to be the guy that ends up speaking for real scholarship? There was a place called the Martyrium of St. Mark. It was a pre-Nicaean center of Christianity. Arius presided there. He must have bought into the ideas associated with this cultic center. Do I have to go on and on and on? I am not saying that the Martyrium was as old as St. Mark but it is at least as old as Dionysius from internal evidence of the Passio Petri Sancti. Maybe this is why Arius and Arians made so many appeals to Dionyius, so much that Athansius had to write a special treatise to refute these arguments.

Now correct me if I am wrong but if everyone agrees that Athanasius is a real person (I am beginning to losing track of who members of academy accept and don't accept as 'real Church Fathers') and that Arius is a real person too and both seem to have made appeals to Dionysius as a witness for their side in the controversies of the fourth century how can Arius be held to have been 'in' on the Eusebian conspiracy? That's a strange thing for two conspirators in a plot to establish a fake religion to do - i.e. fight over a wholly fictitious Alexandrian Pope from the third century. Maybe they were drunk.

And what's with this whole Alexandrian Papacy thing? How did that figure in Constantine's 'plot'? Why establish the idea that the Alexandrians thought that they were the true center of the Christian world and name their bishops 'Pope' from the time of Heraclas?

Of course the idea Athanasius and Arius fighting over the legacy of Dionysius might be explained another way. Maybe he was a real person and a pagan (of course because Christianity hadn't been invented from scratch yet) but a pagan who had special prophetic powers - but they were for evil not good. Dionysius knew that Eusebius was going to set up this false religion called Christianity and so jumped on the bandwagon in the third century.

Now Origen can be connected to Eusebius through Pamphilus. But since we 'know' that Christianity was really a fiction invented in the fourth century maybe Pamphilus and Origen and Clement for that matter. Maybe Hippolytus, Irenaeus and Polycarp too all had that same prophetic gift as Dionysius and - predicting that Constantine would establish a fake religion out of scratch in the fourth century all jumped on the bandwagon 'as prophets.' Maybe Jesus and the disciples and Paul too.