mountainman

The evidence has two sides: canonical (orthodox heresiologists) and noncanonical (Gnostic heretics). Gospel stories mentioning Mary, Pilate and Jesus may have been circulating in 341 CE that were both canonical and non canonical. (eg: "Acts of Pilate", "Acts of Philip" [Jesus kisses Mary many times]). As far as manuscript evidence goes, the oldest C14 dating is for the non canonical Gospel of Judas - 3rd or 4th century (280 +/- 60 years). Therefore something must have been happening at least by then. The Nag Hammadi codices are dated to c.348 CE. These dates provide upper bounds in chronology.




You might want to look at "Chrest" ("The Good" as used by the Platonist theologians) as well. "Chrest" and "Christ" cannot be disambiguated in the greek sources because they exist only in the encrypted "nomina sacra" form (e.g. "C_T")


I agree to the extent that it is IMHO quite reasonable to take the thesis of Charles Freeman about the year 381 CE, and apply it to the year 325 CE with many great and startling correspondences. Credal statements were subsequent inventions designed to conceal imperial legislation, such as that by Constantine c.326 CE "Religious privileges are reserved for Christians (or Chrestians even)" - [from Codex Theodosianus].

Duvduv

What precious difference did it make to the average Joe on the street in the 3rd century whether Christianity followed the ideas of the Arians or of Athanasius, especially since the obscure details of their dispute had no source in the gospels or epistles? Unless at the height of the dispute the gospels and epistles were neither sacred writ nor even disseminated? Or perhaps even written yet?!
In which case interpretation of beliefs in the Christ were based on philosophy and not texts.

mountainman

That seems the logical conclusion.
Plato was robbed.

Duvduv

Supposedly in the year 324 the Bishop of Alexandria wrote to Alexander of Constantinople mentioning elements that are not even found in the Creeds, i.e. the name of Paul several times quoting from unnamed epistles (that had surely acquired their obvious names by 324 if they have been written 150 years earlier) and the word "gospel" (unnamed but apparently from GMark) a SINGLE TIME, whereas the word "gospels" is used generically in the plural one time.

Interestingly enough, letters supposedly written by Arius, one to Alexander of Alexandria and one to Constantine in the same decade of the 320s make no mention at all of any of this, not citations from Paul, not from gospel(s) at all, merely a mystical/philosophical understanding of the Christ, as is the "Catholic Epistle" from Alexander of Alexandria, who mentions Paul ("having learned these things from the Savior") only once or twice and the gospels not at all.

Now, the question is WHY as late as 320s and thereafter were the important 4-directional gospels of Irenaeus supposedly in the mid 2nd century of so little importance? And Paul earns FIVE (unidentified) citations compared to only ONE direct citation from the "gospels". Why unnamed and yet more citations than from the sacred gospel stories? "Paul" is called "blessed" here with no similar attribution to Peter or any other disciple.

Why NOT A SINGLE historical reference to the earthly life of Jesus EVEN in this text supposedly from 324, whereby "the gospel" is directly described referring to Paul's statement warning his followers not to accept any gospel but his.

Almost 200 YEARS after Justin and Ireneaeus, and almost 300 HUNDRED YEARS after Jesus himself and Paul supposedly lived!

Looks like things were STILL in real flux and contradictory, EVEN in the mid 4th century, still trying to determine where the (unnamed) gospel(s) and (unnamed) epistles fit into the ideology of the religion. Indeed, even if they believed in a historical Jesus, that fact, and all the events of his life, are of no importance whatsoever to these people. It is VERY CLEAR that there was a trend as late as the 4th century where a historical Jesus was not the important issue, only the celestial risen Jesus was of importance, until certain little historical elements were forced into the ideology, i.e. Mary, Pilate, Judas from a difference direction, a different camp.

So WHO were the camp emphasizing the historical Jesus, and who were the camp uninterested in the historical Jesus before the two merged together by the end of the 4th century EVEN if the texts were late productions??

mountainman

The camp that emphasized the 50 Constantine Bibles and their basilicas were the imperial orthodox heresiologists who formulated and collected signatures for against the anathema against Arius of Alexandria which appears in the earliest Nicaean "Oath".

The opposing side were obviously those to whom the imperial orthodox heresiologists in their "historical narratives" attributed the term "Arians" - the followers of the opinion (HERESY) of Arius of Alexandria.

Arius is described as the antichrist by Athanasius and others, and appears to have attracted the wrath of Constantine on account of the books Arius wrote. These books are the subject of orders for destruction and burning immediately after Nicaea. Arius had been politically exiled from the empire, and his books were to be destroyed (like Porphyry's). Constantine describes him as a "Porphyrian". Anyone found preserving a book of Arius was to suffer immediate execution by beheading. The name and the memory of Arius of Alexandria was ordered to be erased from the public records according to this c.325 CE imperial order of 'damnatio memoriae'.



What did Arius really write?

Duvduv

The heresiologist sect seemed to try to argue that their sect went back to early in the second century but that the played no part in the emergence of either the Pauline teachings or the gospels which they merely "received." Yet even by the early 4th century these texts held so dear by the heresiologists were still not definitively used as the basis of their religion.

It seems that this emerged as the basis of their religion only by the end of the 4th century under the influence of Theodosius or his predecessors in Rome and those commissioned by the regime to fashion what would seem to have been a more acceptable and appealing formulation of the Christ idea based less on the texts of the gospels and epistles than on teachings such as Irenaeus" and "Tertullian" that were backdated to the 2nd century on behalf of the (as yet non-existent) "Church."
Thus it was those books and teachings of heresiology that defined Christianity far moreso than did the gospels and epistles.

Duvduv

So even in the 4th century, the "Christians" were not expressing the essential teachings of Paulism -- there was NOTHING expressed in any creeds or even letters (including a supposed letter from Arius) expressing belief in the idea of salvation through faith in the the indwelling of the Christ in the believer, period, which became a fundamental pillar of Christianity to this very day.

NOR did these creeds and letters relate anything that could be clearly identified with the stories of the gospels pertaining to the historical Jesus figure.

So the nagging question is: WHY NOT?? What was going on between the time of Justin and Nicaea (assuming of course that significant elements of Irenaeus and Tertullian and Origen were not from the early dates ascribed to them at all)??

Where were the stories of the apostles in the 4th century? Where were the teachings of Paul (who had received from Christ)??
Where were the teachings from the gospels??
And if as is clear, the gospelist tradition and the Paulist tradition were two DIFFERENT religious ideologies, when did EACH gets its start and by whom??

IF the four gospels were put together under Constantine, WHO was responsible for drafting four different ideologies? And WHO was responsible for the contrasting teachings of the EPISTLES even if they were invented in the fourth century?

WHY did the forgers not ALIGN the gospel stories with each other, and not include their storylines in the letters of the "PAUL" authors who knew NOTHING of the stories of the gospels, or for that matter INCLUDE "blessed Paul" in the gospels stories? It would seem a drafting committee of all these texts did a lousy job of making everything streamline and uniform.

mountainman

The heresiologists, clutching at the canonical books of the NT, argued that that the Apostles of an historical Jesus authored the gospels in the first century, and Paul was a well known man of important letters to their earliest "churches" and other well known historical figures, much like a Christian version of Apollonius of Tyana. The heresiologists appealed to the antiquity of the LXX Hebrew sages such as Moses, over that of the Greek civilisation and the antiquity of Plato.


Plato and Euclid were still being preserved by Porphyry in the early 4th century. Perhaps the Greek civilisation was slow to burn these other competing books, and these other books miraculously enough carried some inertia against the texts of the christian cult, despite the fact that another miracle had seen Constantine embrace the christian cult as the centralized state monotheism of his choice.

mountainman

The political ideology prefacing the rule of Constantine was the undisputed ruthless leadership of four people - the tetrarchy. Could the tetrarchy ever agree with each other? What was new at the top?



There was a large scale war going on in the Roman Empire 317-324 CE. It was not exactly business as usual in the "Sacred Assembly of the Pagan Pontifices and other high Priests" who used to report to the Pontifex Maximus, especially after the end of the war, when the victor Constantine declared himself to be an anti-Pagan crusader on behalf of Jesus the Good (or Jesus the Annointed).

It is important not to underrate the possibility that Jesus (either Good or Annointed) may not have been heard of (either widely or at all by the Alexandrian Greeks) until Hierocles of Alexandria wrote the comparison between Jesus and Apollonius in the early 4th century.

Eusebius thought this novel comparison was worth refuting.

The war effort did not suit the pagans. They lost. They appear to have resorted to ridicule and controversy until they were finally wiped out by the victorious heresiologists almost a century afterwards. Athanasius's imperial soldiers however failed to find the Nag Hammadi codices, the Tchacos codex and other Gnostic non canonical manuscripts of that epoch.

Duvduv

Do any scholars question the authenticity of the so-called Festal Letter of Athanasius where he indicates his "canon" of Christian texts in the year 367, despite the fact that nothing of these texts seems to have been included in the Nicaean Creed just 40 years earlier??

Now given the fact that supposedly Irenaeus talked about them 200 years earlier, why does Athanasius make it sound as if something new has now been established?

"Continuing, I must without hesitation mention the scriptures of the New Testament; they are the following....." and then
"These are the springs of salvation, in order that he who is thirsty may fully refresh himself with the words contained in them. In them alone is the doctrine of piety proclaimed. Let no one add anything to them or take anything away from them... "

The language sounds a bit peculiar to be authentic. Why would a major clergyman establish the canon of his faith in a mere single letter and do so as if it's something "new"........