Toto

Are you claiming that Eusebius, in forging the gospels, stole the story of Joseph of Arimathea from a previous pagan who was buried in a tomb that was visited by women, and whose name could be abbreviated as IH?

Is there any conceivable detail that you could not explain away?

Toto

Joshua from the Hebrew Scriptures IS Jesus.

mountainman

Dear Toto,

The LXX was prepared in greek from the hebrew bible as early as c.250 BCE. Joshua may have existed at this time, but it is a little early for Jesus.

Best wishes


Pete

patcleaver

Is this a joke? How could you not know anything about pagan art and be claiming that the art found at Dura-Europos is not pagan.

You have not shown that walking on water was a common Christian trope around 250 in Dura-Europos. Sorry, but if you want to claim that the theme of this art falsifies MM's hypotheses, then you have to show that it can not be pagan or Jewish art.

You have not shown that women visiting a tomb was a common Christian trope around 250 in Dura-Europos. Sorry, but if you want to claim that the theme of this art falsifies MM's hypotheses, then you have to show that it can not be pagan or Jewish art.

If you wanted to know if the baptismal font falsified MM's hypotheses then you should have included it in your OP.

If you could prove that there were a large number of Christians living in 250 at Dura-Europos then you could apply Ockham and reason that these are Christian images. However, all your doing is fantasizing with circular reasoning.

No I missed Ben's link when I read the thread. Ben posts good stuff and I would have followed it if I had seen it.

Can't you see that I posted before Andrew posted the transcription?

It is very unlikely that a fragment would be buried by someone who visited Dura-Europos after 257. It is also very unlikely that someone would bury a fragment of a religious document in the wall when it was being fortified. It is also improbable that it is a forgery if it was recovered in a modern archeological dig by reputable archeologists (I do not know if this is true). The issue is how unlikely is each improbability.

Even if you can show that this fragment was about Jesus of Nazareth, you would also have to show that there was a substantial group of people (not just a couple of cranks) who believed that it was true. A fragment of the story of Snow White and the Seven Dwarves buried in a trash pile in NY would not be evidence for future archeologists to prove that people in NY in the 21st century worshiped Snow White.

I would like to hear MM's response to this.

Thanks for your ignorant comment - makes me laugh my ass off when I consider your total inability to overcome your biases or honestly consider the evidence or reach valid conclusions.

You obviously did not read or were incapable of understanding the material that I posted about the C14 dating of gJudas. If you do not understand something then please just ask a polite question and I will try to help you.

There are dozens of non-canonical gospels and dozens of non-cononical cannons, and I do not have time to read them. The fact that you have not pointed out that I am wrong about gJudas shows that you have not read it either.

All hypotheses attempting to explain the historical data have holes in them. MM's hypotheses is improbable, but so are all the other secular hypotheses.

The consensus of so called Bible Scholars is that Jesus, the magical son of God, really existed which is the most insane, crackpot, superstitious, mega-stupid idea anyone could ever have had. The cannibals of Borneo were more scholarly then so called Bible Scholars. An ignorant savage who paints his face white and worships a rock has more intellectual integrity and is more scholarly then the so called Christian Bible Scholars. Most Bible Scholars are simply insane quacks.

Forgery was common in ancient times. Forgery was rampant in early Christianity - the church claimed that all the non-canonical works are fictions or forgeries - the church admitted that forgery (interpolation) of the canonical works was a problem. Forgery is rampant in modern antiquities trade. Almost all the fragments we have from before 325 were purchased from unknown antiquities dealers. So-called Bible archeology is utterly discredited. So-called Bible scholarship is utterly discredited. The paleographical dates of early Christian writing assumes that the documents were not forged. I do not know of any paleographers who claim that the documents could not have been forged.

If you believe the dates for documents that the consensus of so called Bible scholarship claim, then you are just a crackpot.

These things have nothing to do with the issue of this thread that you articulated in the OP, which is:
Has mountainman's theory re Constantine's invention of christianity been falsified by the specific things that you list as being found in Dura Europos.

I do not believe MM's theory for various reasons including some of what you hint at above, and the C14 dating of gJudas, and that there are several other likely secular hypotheses, but still the answer to your question is:

The things that you listed in the OP as being found at Dura-Europos fail to falsify MM's theory.

This is obviously not true because Christianity is just pagan messianism.

Either you do not know what a conspiracy theory is or your just using it as a dishonest smear against MM.

The belief that tyrannical governments engage in propaganda is not a "conspiracy theory" - it is an indisputable fact.

The belief that the early Church suppressed evidence and manufactured false evidence including censorship, burning books, forgery, torture and murder is not a "conspiracy theory" - it is an indisputable fact.

Yes, there are problems with MM's theory. He still has a lot of work to do on it.

MM is on a search for the truth in which he has generated an hypotheses and is gathering evidence and modifying his hypotheses. That is how all searches for the truth proceed.

I do not know of anyone pursuing some of the research that MM is doing, and I think a lot of his research is worthwhile.

Yes, I agree, and I find this really annoying.

I think its been a very valuable exorcise to attempt to falsify MM's hypotheses and I really appreciate all the work that MM and spin have put into this.

MM's theory is not "ready for prime time", but I have seen a lot of progress in the last few years and I am expecting to see more progress. Charles Darwin worked his whole life revising and improving his theories and when he finally published them there were still lots of things that were wrong that still needed revision. The evidence of early Christian history has been suppressed and fabricated for almost 2,000 years so its going to take awhile to figure it all out.

The Christians have the burden of proving that Christianity existed since 30 CE. There is no reasonable evidence of Christianity before 325. All MM has done is to propose a secular hypotheses that explains the data that Christians claim is evidence of early Christianity. It is far more likely that MM's theory is true then that Christianity is true. Of course that is not saying much - if MM's theory proposed that elephants could fly like birds and some geese lay solid gold eggs it would still be far more likely than Christianity.

mountainman

Dear Toto,

Yes. His name was Joshua.

I am prepared to be refuted by C14 or by any other appropriate evidentiary material admissable to the field of ancient history. Please do not forget that I have also been prepared to provide an explanation for all the known contraversial issues surrounding christian origins, and the ecclesiatical histories of the fourth and fifth centuries, including:

1) the non canonical new testament literature as the satirical polemic of the (oppressed) academic greeks
2) the Arian controversy as related to the fiction of the Constantinian Canon.
3) the Origenist controversy as related to Eusebius' forgery of Origen's NT output (and subsequent surfacing of Origen's original works from all over the empire).
4) the invectives of emperor Julian against the Galilaeans.
5) the controversy of Nestorius (and Cyril's involvement).

Best wishes,


Pete

Toto

What I meant was that the name Joshua was translated to Greek as Jesus.

mountainman

Dear Toto,

Yes, I agree that this happened, but I dont think this actually happened until the fourth century under Constantine. Before that time, I do not find that the Jesus as despicted in the Eusebian canon actually existed with respect to the field of ancient history.


Best wishes,


Pete

mountainman

Dear Pat,

This additional issue of the --- put on the christian eye-glasses -- the (ahem), what do we call this again, .... a baptismal font .... needs to be addressed properly. We find the following reference from the internet site that spin used for the wonderful reconstructed murals:

Has anyone yet argued that we are looking not at a baptismal font, but in fact at a common-as-your-average-house-brick impluvium?

Best wishes,


Pete

spin

Still no evidence up your sleeve. Why not find some rather than being barrenly repetitive?

The theme is not noted in either. It is noted in christian motifs. End of story.

You remind me of the argument scene from Monty Python -- saying nothing but negating everything.

Would you try to put things in perspective? Isolating evidence from other evidence merely in order to say that it could be anything is useless manipulation of the evidence to hide the obvious relationships between the items of evidence.

The pot looking for a kettle.

We have christian architecture and imagery from the period immediately afterwards to compare with. We have documents dated by palaeography to the period and they contain the motifs visually represented on the walls of the house in Dura. Evidence.

When I linked to Kraeling's book on the fragment, there was a transcription available. You cannot argue based on your own lack of knowledge of the data.

He is never backward in coming forward.

Projection is a noteworthy argument style.

You had nothing tangible to say.

It is irrelevant to the issue.

Can you try to deal with the topic?

And this is totally irrelevant to the topic. Can you try a little harder to be on target?

If you just want to harangue someone, try ~elsewhere~.

I don't see how you get to this other than to ignore the implications of the evidence.

What a meaningful response! Either you accept that we have a Jesus messianic religion stemming from the time when messianism was meaningful or you have to explain where Jesus messianism could have come from otherwise. The former is easier.

Are you questioning my honest patcleaver?

The notion that Constantine conspired with Eusebius to create a false history to con the empire is plainly a conspiracy theory.

Some conspiracy theories are based on fact. Watergate is a prime example.

And irrelevant.

He hasn't said anything new about it in the last two years, so I guess he'd better get to it.

How would you know?

There is a good reason why no-one else is where he is. He's going to get his hands dirty through lack of a paddle.

While to some degree I agree with the last sentence, I find it a little overblown to compare Charles Darwin with mountainman.

Our job is to understand what happened, whether it favours christian interpretations of the past or not. We don't do it to favour anyone, but to understand. We attempt to unfetter ourselves from the shackles of post hoc constraints to interpretation It doesn't help to forge new shackles.


spin

patcleaver

Pete, your missing Toto's point. It is very confusing to talk about translation.

Jesus is an English name - it is not Hebrew, or Aramaic or Greek or Latin.

Joshua and Jesus have exactly the same first name (יְהוֹשׁוּעַ or יְהוֹשֻׁעַ) in Hebrew.

Joshua and Jesus have exactly the same first name (יֵשׁוּעַ) in Aremaic

The Hebrew (יְהוֹשׁוּעַ) is usually translated into English as Yehoshua.

The shortened Hebrew (יְהוֹשֻׁעַ) and the Aramaic (יֵשׁוּעַ) are both translated into English as Yeshua.

Joshua's real name was Yeshua ben Nun
Jesus's real name was Yeshua ben Yoseph

Joshua and Jesus (Yeshua) could be translated in several ways into Greek - they might be transliterated into something that sounds like Yashua or they might be translated according to the meaning of their name "Theos saves" or they might be translated into (IhsouV) because that is how Joshua was translated in the Septuagint (Greek version of the Jewish Scriptures).

The Greek (IhsouV) is written in English as Iosus or Iesous.

Greek texts use the same name (uaually (IhsouV)) for both Jesus and Joshua.

When Jerome translated the Bible from Greek into the Latin Vulgate, he just happened to always use Ioshua in the OT and Iesous in the NT for both Jesus and Joshua. That is the first time that the names were different.

The original 1611 King James Bible followed the Vulgate and translated both Jesus and Joshua in the NT as Iesus, but translated Joshua in the OT as Ioshua.

J came from the French and it was rarely used in English until the beginning of the 17th century and it was not used in English Bibles until the mid 17th century.

Later English bibles translated Jesus and Joshua from the same name in the Latin Vulgate NT into different names in the English NT.