mountainman

Have you researched the historicity of the neopythagorean
philosopher sage Apollonius of Tyana?

This needs to then be integrated with the Eusebian treatise
AGAINST this first century neo-Pythagorean author, sage and philosopher. It is
interesting to note that Eusebius himself provides historiological references
for the author he is in the process of calumnifying.

Astrological symbolism existed in the fourth century.

Good question.

Carbon dating may not necessarily be the only method whereby
this theory/postulate can be tested. Let me try and list a series
of different tests:

1) Carbon dating a existent (paleographically assessed) prenicene
fragment to determine its C14 dating, as you describe above.

2) Statistical distribution of future C14 results:
AFAIK there are only 2 NT C14 citations as follows:
i) gThomas binding .... c350 CE
ii) gJudas .... c280 +/- 60 years.

As the future progresses and (if we are lucky) more and more
new C14 citations start being unearthed, one would expect to
see, if any "christian texts" actually existed in the prenicene
epoch. Any ONE single citation, with corroboration will REFUTE
this theory, and Eusebian fiction postulate.

However, if the citations start piling up, and all of them are
this side of the "Nicaean Boundary Event", then the question
must at some stage become "How many citations are required,
all of them post-nicene, to support a post-nicene origination
of the writings and literature being researched.

3) Ancient Texts coming to light.
I have posted here before that if by some uncanny divine influence
certain ancient books are uncovered, which have hitherto been
considered not extant (being destroyed by fire, etc), then these
writings may indeed lend a great deal of credibility to the hypothesis.
See this thread.

4) Refutation via bona fide archeological citation
The theory/postulate can be tested and found refuted
should there exist one appropriate archeological citation
in evidence of prenicene christianity. See this thread

mountainman

Let's start with Euclid and work from there.

A sense of humour is sometime appropriate.

Well perhaps he shares it with the cadre or he doesn't.
I dont like the idea of Pamphilus writing the bible in prison.
Its suggestive of diminished shares or diminished creativity.

A barrister retained to press charges in a court of law against
a known criminal and brigand (spin, read this as "a pirate on land")
who had recently published a fabricated story, and had attempted
to pass it off, through fraudulent misrepresentation, as "true".

When the barrister discusses the characters in the fabrication,
everyone in the courtroom except you spin, would be unambiguously
aware that the barrister was referring to fiction characters.


My argument spin, in case you have forgotten the dates,
is that Constantine commenced his exercise of propaganda
with effect from the time he took Rome, 312 CE. ROme is
considered as a proto-Nicaea.

From the "christian victory" -- (Momigliano's miracle) -- in 312
there commenced the issue of "horrible pamphlets", which you
yourself have earlier admitted to be "horrible".

Who sponsored the mediocre churchman in the fourth century?
Why did he write against Apollonius, the historical author of the 1st CE?
Why is he described as "the first thoroughly dishonest historian"?
Why does Richard Carrier assess Eusebius as:

either a liar or hopelessly credulous

spin

Gosh, you don't get the idea of expansion of knowledge, do you? We simply have more knowledge available to us and we all have consistently more education than people in those times, meaning we have freer access to knowledge and more likelihood of being able to use it. They generally didn't have much learning available, so didn't get past that.

You should not project your views of knowledge onto the past.


When you find one, let me know.

??

Giving modern analogies isn't useful. You're just not reading the text.

The coins show that Constantine supported Sol Invictus for decades. Many of his coins had Victory, sometimes even winged, on them. You are simply wishful and have no evidence.

Tolerance is one thing. Your stuff is another.

You might have, but you don't seem to be able to see that he's mediocre.

When did he get the sponsorship that interests you?

You tell me.

By whom though?

He was not impressed. He probably wouldn't be impressed with the super-Eusebius you've been touting either.


spin

spamandham

No, but I've started reading the pages on your site, and might get my hands on the full set. Thanks for the info.

I have nothing else to add now unless/until I do some more homework.

mountainman

That the average education and learning has increased does not
in any way shape or form refute the possibility that there were
in fact very very intelligent and wise and educated men (and
women) around in antiquity. Certainly, they may have been far
rarer, but their non existence cannot be contemplated. That
is precisely why we started with Euclid.

But spin, you should likewise not project your views of
ignorance onto the past.

I rest my case with you on Julian.
The jury will decide without us.

The Daphne coin (326/7-330 CE) leads up to the production
of the first 50 "Constantine Bibles". What the Daphne coin
reveals is Constantine's personal statement explaining why he
gave up the laurel headress and replaced it with the diadem.
He turns from the "Hellenic tradition" to become his own "king".
Nothing at all about christianity either in this.

Aside from a few coins dated 314,315 CE, samples being rare,
there are very very few (percentage wise) christian symbology
on the coins of Constantine.

My point with the "daphne" though spin, is that it indicates
that Constantine was getting rid of "Sol Invictus" and the
traditional (Hellenic) Laurels of the emperor, for his crown.
He was a ward irresponsible for his own actions. (Victor).

Call me skeptical if you will.

spin

The way you're going on about Euclid is as though you've only got one finger on your hand. Yeah, there were some learned people, but who knew about differential calculus, irrational numbers, even zero?? Learning increases with time and good records. We have more knowlege now than they did. This is empirically irrefutable. What are you pissing on about?

Where's the projection??

You have no case.

This is fundamentally rubbish. Constantine is portrayed on coins after that date with the laurel. For example look here and search for "RIC VII Cyzicus 34 c2" and "RIC VII Siscia 214 c2".

That argues against your conclusion.

There isn't really any sign of this.

I'll call you just the opposite, credulous.


spin

mountainman

Against what appears to be your claim that the some of the
ancients could not be perceptible, clever and/or intelligent
enough to both forge, and to detect the forgery, of
documents. This is hardy general relativity terrain.

My comments related to the main Constantinople mint, and were
specific to the coin called "the Daphne". See here

However, it is clear that the diadem also appeared on other coins
from other mints in the empire, in place of the traditional laurel.

mountainman

In addition to the items I have already listed above, there
is an additional item that may be termed "referential integrity".

If we examine the prenicene authors and their respective
writings, as historians, the independent references to the
existence of christianity in the prenicene epoch can be
quantitatively listed.

For a list of these citations, see this thread

From the perspective of a student of history, this list of citations
should have a great degree of integrity, because it is the interface
between a purported new and emergent religion into the world.

Mainstream theory will hypothesise that there is indeed a great
deal of referential integrity between these citations and history.

However, we already know that every single citation on that list
from the first century is --- in all likelihood --- false and fabricated.

Moving to the second century, we have more citations being treated
as forgeries. What if each of these citations is to be doubted?
Have a look at them. Especially during the rule of Marcus Aurelius,
the emperor author, whom Eusebius seems compelled to dissemble.


The result is that we may return to the fourth century, when the basilicas
went up all across the empire, and the "holy land", with no earlier
independent citations for the existence of "christianity". IMO it is
better to investigate this possibility now, rather than waiting forever.

Look, the hypothesis may prove incorrect.
But in theory, it is just the exercise of logic.
Eusebian fiction has certain implications.

spin

You can run. You can hide.

Examples that show that knowledge expands can be parodied and you can avoid the fact that we have a vast amount of knowledge unavailable to the ancients. Why no formal or fuzzy logic in ancient times? Why no Occam's razor? Lateral thinking? No psychology? No allegory? No imagism? No linguistics? For some reason you couldn't even perceive the importance of zero which did not exist in ancient times. How could you have general relativity without Newtonian physics?

Denial of increase in knowledge is sticking your head in the sand. You respond that scientific approach to handwriting script sequencing is not rocket science, but you've given no evidence to show that such sequencing could be achieved in ancient times.

How could one go about it with the facilities of the era in order to develop a coherent sequencing of scripts -- especially of times before they used codexes? Thrill us with a methodology available to ancient society to make minute measurements of individual letters in order to compare several dozen from recognizably different periods in time? How do they do what modern palaeographers can do because of vast amounts of photography?

And the speculations about the diadem are nullified through the persistence of the traditional laurel in coins from the period or later.


spin

spamandham

Of the various methods you suggested, which by the way, seems a reasonably good list thanks, are there any beyond carbon dating that would distinguish between the theory you propose, and a couple of others:

1) The standard hypothesis; allowing for plenty of modification and redaction over time. How could we tell if a 3rd century document is a redacted earlier document, or a clever 3rd century forgery - a mixing of Judaism, Apollonian tradition, Pythagoreanism, etc. (all the most popular pre-Christian religions of the day).

2) A Christian tradition of some kind, and Eusebius/Constantine absconded it for their own purposes, inventing the parts they needed.

3) A 5th century Roman emporer did what you attribute to Constantine, making up even the Nicean council and inventing this Eusebius character from thin air

One of more of these might be trivially easy to refute. I make no claims of being any kind of expert on early Christian history, I'm just an interested layman.

A sophisticated 3rd century scam does not seem to me to be parsimonious at all, unless it was designed to fool extremely well informed intelligent people. The average Roman on the street was probably even dumber than the average dumb modern man (such as myself), and would not have required such an elaborate fraud to be duped. If Constantine himself was such a person, and was also a perfectionist, that would suffice from a plausibility perspective as well.

But, arguments from parsimony are not very compelling unless the degree of parsimony is very significant (beyond reasonable doubt, whatever that means). If the arguments all come down to marginally different forms of parsimony, then it seems to me, we would be best served searching for new hypotheses and exploring how to test the various hypotheses, and reserve judgement.

Perhaps what your position demonstrates (if it stands up), is that we do not really know much/anything about early Christian history, which would certainly be an advancement of knowledge.