mountainman

According to this source of The history of S. John at Ephesus there is a 6th century ms which contains the following preface:
How do we explain this?

Sheshbazzar

Figures. One cannot even trust a report on yesterday's news, if it comes through the mouth or the hand of Christians.

Thundril

But I have meaningful conversations about works of fiction all the time.
Is James Bond a mysogynist?
Is Batman an evil vigilante seeking vengence for his personal loss?
Is Dumbledore gay?

PS. Ice cream existed long before refrigerators.
And I've met some pretty hot rocks!

stephan huller

My love of ice cream is always my downfall. Yes, you certainly can make ice cream with out a refrigerator. You can also have sex with a rock, I guess. Bad examples.

stephan huller

The question of why there are so many more sources from the fourth century is easily explained by the more favorable environment that existed in that period for Christians than in previous periods. I'd like to find out how many books by Jewish authors were being printed in Nazi occupied territories during WWII and whether there was an explosion of Jewish authorship after 1945. Much the same situation existed in the second and third centuries.

avi

And, here, perhaps, my background, devoid of understanding of history, is preventing me from visualizing the parallel.

Hitler, AT BEST, controlled parts of North Africa, Europe - Britain, and parts of the western most portion of what became the Soviet Union. Lord Constantine controlled the whole of Europe, all of North Africa, and all of the "middle East", as far east as Baghdad.

Hitler was constantly under attack from enemies to the third reich. Constantine enjoyed relative peace for two decades, after killing the final member of the quartet of "emperors".

Hitler enjoyed absolute authority for five, maybe ten years, maximum. Constantine was absolute ruler for double that length of time...

Hitler was exposed to ridicule by news reports, movie cameras, still photographs, and sound recording equipment. He was indebted to a legislature, to whom he nominally reported....

Constantine answered to no one. He was the absolute monarch. Point final.

Accordingly, I deny that the "same situation" existed "in the second and third centuries"..... The book burning under Constantine was in no way similar to the desecration of texts under Hitler. We possess nothing from the first three centuries, because Constantine ordered everything burned. It was burnt.

Hitler indeed sought to burn lots of books. But, even within Europe, he failed. books in Switzerland were not damaged. Books abroad, in North and South America, were not damaged. That's a completely different scenario from the situation under Lord Constantine.

Constantine's police, unlike Hitler's, had no one above them, save the great Lord himself....They were thorough, complete, and comprehensive. Everything was burnt, unless issued by Eusebius.

Under Hitler, in Germany, France, Italy, and Spain, the local authorities defied Hitler regularly. Opponents survived fascism, thanks to local help....Others, often Jews, escaped by migrating within Germany, from the capitol, to the provinces, where the Gestapo permitted them to continue their research, in obscurity. This was especially the case for those Jews married to Germans.

Under Constantine, we have no evidence of documents surviving the great destruction by the founder of Christianity.....

avi

mountainman

The only problem with this analogy is that its back the front. We have no substantial evidence of christians in the 2rd and 3rd centuries, but when they appear with the archaeology in the 4th century, the substantial evidence that we do have is that the State Christians were the party wearing the jackboots.

And the first thing that they publically burnt were the canon of books containing the God of Plato, that had been preserved by the apostolic lineage of the Platonists until Nicaea. The first action arising from Constantine's 20th-Year-Long-Service Party at Nicaea, was an order to burn the books of Porphyry and Arius, for the damnatio memoriae on the name, political memory and books of the politically exiled Arius, and the death penalty (by immediate beheading) for anyone found not burning these books.

What a nice way to start the Christian religion.
Burn Plato ! Burn Plato! Its a Chrestian Revolution!

mountainman

Hi avi,

Thankyou very much for this great description of the difference between a supreme imperial fascist despot in modern times and a supreme imperial fascist despot in ancient times. Few appear to understand this.

The subject of absolute power has been discussed in this forum here and there, but this is the best description that I have yet seen, devoted to that specific subject. The notion of "absolute power" changes as we move back in time. The further we go back, the greater is its intensity and perversity.

While comparing Lord Constantine and Hitler is a good start its all wasted if people cannot understand that the people who first manufactured the first major Greek bible codices were co-opted by a fascist warlord with absolutely no scruples.


Best wishes,



Pete

mountainman

Contraversial ridicule, parody and satire is to be expected at that time when Jesus was raised by Constantine Caesar to the status of the Panhellenic divinity of the Roman Empire. Eusebius himself admits this - that '"the sacred matters were ridiculed in the theatres of the unbelievers.".

Here is how I disagree with mainstream "gnostic history":


We have 4th century comparanda evidence for the modus operandi of the "history rewrite"
The victors retrojected the Nicaean Controversy into a fabricated pre-Nicaean history,
by the insertion of references and mentions of popular 4th century "Gnostic Gospels and Acts"
into their special "Ecclesiastical Version" of the "Historia Augusta"


... and still assume ...



The false history rewritten by the victors declared the debate lasted "three hundred years",
but despite the fact that we'd like to believe them, and assume they told the truth, they lied.
Authorship of the "Gnostic Gospels" commenced c.324 CE in reaction to the Constantine Bible.
Constantinian damnatio memoriae, exile, and other forceful measures destroyed the books,
the name and the political memory of the Post-Nicaean gnostic author(s), with the result that
the "Greek debate" was "fascistly outlawed" inside "three hundred days", then imperially
suppressed and destroyed within "three hundred weeks".

Pachomian renegades reopened the "book debate" in Coptic. Others reopened it in Syriac.
But these, in turn, were "fascistly outlawed" inside "three hundred months".

The practice of Christian forgery certainly has a long and distinguished history,
but the evidence of the practice of Christian forgery appears with the 4th century.
The debate submerged for "three hundred leap years" while civilisation recovered.
The debate has been renewed with the recent discovery of ancient manuscript evidence.

mountainman

What if it is very humorous and comes through highly irregular circumstances?
We all know the apostles in the gnostic texts keep asking the risen Jesus thousands of questions.
Here is another very funny question. It may not be an ancient text however.
That the source here is ancient has not been determined .....

I was just reading through Literary Forgeries and Canonical Pseudepigrapha by Bruce M. Metzger. The following is all visible on the 1st page ...


He cites 1950 Catholic Biblical Quarterly which published the greek text, with an English translation ... of what the author, the late Paul R.Coleman-Norton, entitled, "An Amusing Agraphon".

Scene set in French Morocco, Mosque, 1943, where the author was shown a
Greek page, and a transcript was made.

If the source is ancient, its another great Gnostic Joke on Jesus. Even Metzger comments .... "However amusing one may regard this account"


It is a polemic against Big J.