Duvduv

Great to have you back and posting. I look forward to further interaction with you on what we were just discussing and other things as well.

Chili

Oops, Catholic are not Jesus worshipers, never were, never will be and must follow the rules or the Syllabus of Errors will excommunicate them.

Catholics pray to Mary who is the mediatrix between heaven and earth and actually Catholics desire to find favor with her, the most enigmatic of all, and beyond the reach of [protestant] salvation recipies for sure.

Does Pete know this? as he always calls them Chirstians too!

Chili

Nice, and I see Jobar again too.

Roger Pearse

Possibly not, according to this link.

There seems to be no specific reference, which makes this a modern example of "sayings literature"; a genre in which aphorisms by persons unknown get attributed falsely by persons unknown to famous persons. The sayings and jokes attributed to Churchill or Oscar Wilde are other modern examples.

The genre is well attested in antiquity, hidden under the modern title "gnomologia"; and appears in collections in Greek, Syriac and -- inevitably -- in Arabic. Arabic has vast shoals of the things: "as the poet said..." "the philosopher says..." and so on, dating from the 9th century.

<humour>
This was a period when there just wasn't a lot to do. The crusaders were not due for another century, and so people had to find something to talk about at those extremely dull dinner parties in Damascus in that period.
</humour>

All the best,

Roger Pearse

mountainman

Nice catch.

I have not yet read the entire series of the canonical books of Plato, so I will provisionally accept this assessment. I still find the quote instructive to the art of living.


Sounds a bit like the books of the new and strange testament, except that the so called famous people were likely fabricated.




The Coptic Gospel of Thomas in the mid 4th century NHC has Jesus (or at least a coptic nomina sacra that may be interpretted as Jesus, but also may be interpretted as "The Healer") prefacing a series of sayings.

Is this another instance of "gnomologia"?

mountainman

In Eusebius we trust for any earlier history.

Is Eusebius plausible?





The theology colleges continue to teach that he is plausible.

I have my doubts.

And I dont have any evidence aside from palaeographical attestations, the fish symbol and the Dura Europos Yale "House Church" to assuade these doubts.

On the other hand a political history of the 4th century does not yet exist. A great dark cloud of controversy erupts at the Council of Nicaea and out of it the Christians march victorious, conducting inquisitions against the pagans. What lies behind the Arian controversy is yet to be seen in a political sense and context. The victors wrote their own very much one sided church history a century after Nicaea. The so called Gnostic Gospels and Acts were burned and their preservers executed.

The history of the Christian Cross starts with Bullneck's Mother Helena.

Clivedurdle

If Constantine had access to reasonably good scholars - probable - he was an emperor - he would have known about Darius and how he got power through the technique of the one true God. Tom Holland Persian Fire discusses this.

The Roman Empire going monotheistic may be understood as a political strategy.

A back story and tying things to an existing religio gives things pedigree.

Duvduv

And then if Islam was then produced in the Baghdad caliphate from assorted ideas and writings floating around we have a scenario not unlike that of a Constantinian Christianity. Maybe Mountainman and Shesh have some thoughts about this.

mountainman

An article examining the parallels between Ardashir creating the Persian State Zoroastianism Religion c.223 CE and Constantine creating the Roman State Christian Religion c.324 CE is available here.

I think Constantine was extremely well informed on the HISTORY of the political structure of the greatest traditional enemy of the Roman Empire - the Persian empire.

I think that centralised state monotheisms in antiquity were absolutely useful to any regime which found itself with absolute power.

Religion is regarded
by the common people as true,
by the wise as false,
and by the ruler as useful"

---- Seneca the Younger

Judaism, Zoroastrianism, Christianity, Islam in one sense are monotheisms based on holy writs assembled by the regimes directly descendent from supremely victorious war commanders. They all appear to have fabricated their own historical pedigrees using the technology of the written word, and enforced their dogma by the sword.

Clivedurdle

Is a core part of the structure of a successful state the management of story and myth? Tying the emperor to a one true god feels a very successful strategy. Maybe that is where communism and fascism went wrong, they dumped the tried and tested ways.

Maybe we are truly in the age of the priesthood of all believers, with everyone having a full set of tools to create their own myths.

I propose the religious wars of this millenium will be around the god Apple and his only begotten son Job.