mountainman

Equations of Identity for the "Most Notorius Heretic of the 4th century"?

Q1: Who gets the vote (by their name and reputation) as the most notorious heretic of the fourth century? Surely that would be Arius of Alexandria hands down. He wrote terrible and perverted things against the most pure church according to Constantine, and for that reason his works and memory were damned by the Boss. When we look around for the surviving "Songs of Arius" nothing appears. Were the writings of Arius destroyed or were they renamed? Arius was renamed as a "Porphyrian" by Constantine. The heresy named after him (the so-called Arian controversy) raged across the empire for centuries after his death. Constantine described Arius as follows ...

He - within - wass full of countless evils and plots.
He was made by the desire of the Devil
He was made as a manufactory of iniquity for us.
He possessed a perverted mouth



Q2: Who gets the vote (by their actual surviving writings and tractates) as the most notorious heretic of the fourth century? When we examine the extant documents which comprise the non canonical corpus of new testament literature we are met, just like the canon, with authors who by mainstream are unknown, and who wrote from unknown locations in an unknown century. Mainstream's explanation is very wanting. The earliest and chief apocrypha were identified (in the fourth century) as the five core "Leucian Acts", and the name of Leucius Charinus is associated from the later fourth century. Who was the author of the core of the apocrypha? Who was Leucius Charinus? Surely whoever Leucius was he is to be regarded as the "father of the apocryphal [heretical] acts". He is the most heretical author who is described as "the disciple of the devil" and the "source and mother of all heresy".

Q3: We appear to be looking at two mountain peaks.
Are they the same mountain viewed from different valleys?
Like Gaurisankar and Everest. (See Schrodinger's "What is Life")

The traditional christian "document tradition" reminds me of an authodoxy. It is a self-authored authority which became orthodox due to the political and military intervention of the Roman emperor Constantine.

J-D

Your evidence is still inadequate to support your conclusion.

If Arius of Alexandria was denounced as heretical more vehemently than anybody else, but Leucius Charinus was responsible for the largest volume of surviving writings denounced as heretical, that is not enough grounds to conclude that they were the same person.All orthodoxy depends on authority, by definition. That's a silly reason for spelling it 'authodoxy'. Why did I have to ask you five times before you explained?

mountainman

Your statement does not express the full facts. On the one hand we have an historical person Arius of Alexandria who was most vehemently denounced over a series of tractates in the early part of the fourth century. Where are these tractates? We do not appear to have any examples of the "Songs of Arius" - the most popular heretical stories which he is said to have authored.

On the other hand we have a whole catalogue of new testament apocryphal acts of the apostles which was supposedly written by a person who was called, from the mid-fourth century and beyond, by the name of Leucius Charinus. We have no other mention of the person Leucius Charinus outside of "church fathers" scatterfed references, and we have no place, or date, or birth or death, or anything in any historical sense for the person who supposedly had the name Leucius Charinus. It is as if the name were added to the books. The books - the Acts of Paul, Acts of Thomas, Acts of Peter, and Andrew and Matthias, etc - were reported to be authored by the person Leucius. The only link to history appears to be the books themselves.

So examining both hands concurrently we have the situation where the heretical books of the historical Arius do not exist, but the heretical books of an ahistorical Leucius Charinus are extant in in our faces. This in my book represents grounds for the suspicion that Arius of Alexandria may have authored the apocrypha, that the authority of the church banished and utterly damned his memory, and provided a new euphemistic name of Leucius Charinus, taken from the two scribes Karinus and Leucius who make their appearance in the fourth century "pagan" "Acts of Pilate".

Let's look at what "mainstream thinks". Who wrote the "Leucian Acts"? Opinion and conjecture is scattered across the first three centuries, nobody has any clue whatsoever who wrote these apocrypha or why.

The why is an important issue. When they were written were they written to be heretical? Were they authored in order to be heretical with respect to the canon? And if they were, when were they authored? When the canon was undergound at Dura Europos? Were they authored in the obscurity of archaeological history before the canon was raised to state supremacy by Constantine? Or were they written at that time when the canon was widely published to the Roman empire in the fourth century? Certainly, if we have no great attestation to the existence of the texts prior to Nicaea, the simplest political explanation is that the heretical writings commenced when there was something to be heretical about, and not before.

Between 325 and 336 CE - the council of Nicaea and when he was poisoned - Arius of Alexandria was literally a bane in the side of authority and the orthodox. He was sought out to be executed. The heretical books must be preserved undergound in Coptic and Syriac and Arabic, or stockpiled in the vatican archives out of a morbid curiousity of wonderfully written Hellenistic narrative romances weaving popular additions, combinations and permuations to the canonical stores of Jesus and the apostles. When we look at the corpus of tractates we see them being reported with an author whose name "Leucius Charinus" whom we know nothing about whatsoever (other than "Acts of Pilate").

I am suspicious that the name and memory of Arius was damned, and within a generation another name Leucius Charinus is associated with the most heretical works ever known to have been written against the very pure christian religion in earlier times. The evidence at present appears to be circumstantial, with the exception that the same unreserved invectives are hurled equally against both names by "church fathers".

mountainman

How many cases attracted edicts of Damnatio memoriae?

J-D

I have no idea and fail to see any relevance in the question.

J-D

There are plenty of cases from ancient history where it is well-attested that people existed, it is also well-attested that they wrote fictional or non-fictional works which were well-known to contemporaries, but no copies of the works in question are known to survive.

There are also plenty of cases from ancient history where copies of written works have survived, but nothing is known about the author, or nothing is known except for a name which may or may not be genuine.

Cases like these would be unusual in the modern age of the printed book, but in the times before printing they are not and need not be the occasion for surprise. There is nothing suspicious about no written works of Arius of Alexandria being known to survive, and there is nothing suspicious about nothing being known about the 'Leucius Charinus' to whom some written works are attributed. You are transferring a suspicious attitude appropriate to the modern age of printed books to a historical period in which it is not appropriate. There is no basis here to conclude that Arius of Alexandria and Leucius Charinus were the same person.

The fact that Arius of Alexandria and Leucius Charinus were violently denounced as heretical does not strengthen your case. Lots of people have been violently denounced as heretical.

Finally, it is true that it is not possible for there to be such a thing as heresy until there is such a thing as orthodoxy, and nothing can be extra-canonical before there is a canon. However, that tells us nothing about the age of any extra-canonical (or any canonical) work as a work. The process of canonisation takes existing works and makes them canonical and also, by necessary implication, makes other existing works extra-canonical. There is no limit on the amount of time before canonisation for which the works which subsequently became either canonical or extra-canonical might have existed. Canonisation does not create the works, it only creates the canonical and extra-canonical statuses.

mountainman

Well then you do not understand the question.
The question of the identity of Arius of Alexandria
involves an imperially invoked Damnatio memoriae.
Do you have any idea what that implies?

J-D

I know what damnatio memoriae means, but I don't see how that's relevant to this discussion.

mountainman

Allow me to outline the relevance.

1) Constantine invoked the damnatio memoriae of Arius of Alexandria.

2) As a consequence of this the name of Arius could not be legally mentioned so long as the will and laws established by Constantine were held in force. It was thus forbidden by law to make mention of the name of Arius, perhaps as early as 325 CE.

Do you follow these first 2 points so far?

J-D

I understand the meaning of your statements. I don't know whether they're true.