mountainman

Constantine legislated that the books of Porphyry were to be burned.
[Porphyry was the preserver of Plotinus and all before him (ie: Plato).]
Sopater, the head of the Acedamy of Plato, was executed by Constantine.
One should meditate upon these two facts.


So the Greeks were given the choice, and many of them apparently rejected the bullshit about Jesus and continued in their own accustomed manner. These Greeks, who were non christians, were labelled by the fourth century heresiologists as "christian heretics".


The philosophical state into which the new testament was authored was neither Italian or Roman. It was Greek. Whoever authored the new testament as an extention of the LXX was undermining the authority of the Greek philosophers in the eyes of the Greek populace by a Hebrew fiction. The introduction of christianity into the Roman empire by Constantine c.324 CE was clearly accompanied by a great deal of fascism against the Greek traditional values. Greek temples of great antiquity and reverence were utterly destroyed by the "Christian Sword".

Toto

Please provide some proof of this. The Christians knew the difference between pagans and Christian heretics.

mountainman

My suggestion is that the knowledge of the difference
between pagans and Christian heretics during the 4th
century was in fact a contraversial issue, and that the
heresiologists at the end of the century such as the
christian bishop Epiphanius of Salamis, comprised his
first seven heresies (in a compendium of eighty) out
of classifications which specifically defined what it
meant to be "Christian" by a process of exclusion:

Epiphanius' Definition of a Christian

A Christian holds allegiance to the philosophy of the
divine qualities in the new testament and does not
hold allegiance to any so-called divine qualities in any
of the following "alternative philosophies" ....

(1) Barbarism,
(2) Scythianism,
(3) Hellenism,
(4) Judaism,
(5) Stoicism,
(6) Platonism, and
(7) Pythagoreanism.

Were Hellenists christians?
Were Stoics christians?
Were Pythagoreans christians?
Were Arians christians?


IMO there is room to doubt such
fourth century heresiologists
who classify in such a manner.

Are we to believe that in the year 325 CE
the entire Roman empire "magically" became
Christians almost "overnight"? This is an
extremely outlandish hypothesis in total
disagreement with the assessment of
the ancient historical evidence.

Elijah

I meditated on it, meaning I wiki’d it and it seemed more likely that Porphyry was banned for speaking out against Christianity, more than writing/editing some philosophical material and Sopater was executed for using magic to hold a ship with grain not because of his philosophical education. Again do you have anything Rome directed at the Greek philosophy and not the pagan superstitions? Plato’s Republic was in the Nag so there should be a list out there that asked for it to be thrown in there right?
Many of the Greeks like many people today have difficulty with the salvation thru faith concept, so tried to interpret Jesus within a context they are familiar with. It gets interpreted under the impression that it’s about a Pagan god in the flesh, or a morality teacher, or a mystic trying to show connection to the spirit, or a Gnostic teaching something about the universe that is supposed to lead to salvation. All because the concept of faith and the resurrection of the dead is a concept that they aren’t familiar with and can’t wrap their heads’ around so they instead wrap Christianity around a concept they can get their heads’ around. Happened then, still happening now.
It wasn’t fascism against Greek traditional values, whatever you consider those to be, it was a battle against Greek superstition. Some of the temples were allowed to remain for events and art, it’s the sacrifice that was a problem back then. Why the roman authority decided that a superstitious Rome needed to be replaced with a more rational populace I’m unsure of but that’s what seems to be going on.
Isn’t this the basis of your argument; that a few men got together and created a whole ideology out of scratch and that it wasn’t a natural evolution of ideas over centuries? Don’t you think it was just thrown at the people who had never heard of what was being suggested but still accepted it because it was coming from a Roman emperor?

mountainman

You need to be aware the the only sources writing between 312
and 337 CE (Constantine's rule) were Constantine's Christians.
The epoch represents a "black hole" for any contrasting view
of the history of the time. I question both the above "facts".


How about Constantine's statement in his oration that
"Plato's critical questioning was a menace to the state".

My take on the fragment of Plato at NHL is here.

Such as Euclid, Philostratus, Marcus Aurelius?
I dont think so.

That's what we have been told. Barnes puts it slightly differently:


A centralised state monotheistic religion was being established,
following exactly the model of Ardashir in Sassanid Persia c.222 CE.
That appears to be the reason why "Rome" = "Constantine" replaced the
pagan priesthood with a new hierarchy of christian bishops and a new
set of architectural buildings and a "Brand New Holy Writ".


Yes I do, but I do not suggest
that all the Greeks took it lying down.

Rather that there was a greek resistance focussed around the
person of Arius of Alexandria. The utterly contraversial nature
of the words and books of Arius, which inflamed the empire for
several centuries, was subsequently downplayed and purposefully
misconstrued by the victorious imperially sponsored fourth century
christian historians whose sources represent the christian accounts
of the acceptance of christianity during the fourth and fifth centuries.

I suggest that it is reasonable to seek for a more political
explication of the Arian controversy based on the rejection
of Jesus by Arius of Alexandria as Head Honcho State God.

And in the exploration of the underlying political actions of
the rise of Christianity in the fourth century, I suggest that
it is reasonable to question whether Arius, who is presented
as a key "Christian Bishop" (albeit the most outrageous
and most villified heretic in the history of christianity),
is not in fact better perceived as one of your standard
Greeks in the streets of Alexandria, a follower of Plato,
and a non-christian.

In other words, I suspect that later christian
reporters of Nicaea and beyond fictionalised
the role of Arius, and the conflict and the
disharmony and the controversy related to
the reception of the new testament in order
to make their later victorious history "look smooth."

dog-on

I'll help you, a bit.

Paul views the law as a curse and the flesh as sinful.

Paul says that the hidden mystery is that the son was sent to ransom us from the curse of the law of the creator.

Paul says that we should shed our sinful flesh (the provenance of the creator) to be justified solely by faith, ie. born again.

As a result of later confusion or outright forgery, the message turns into the incoherency which is now the foundation of Christianity, that being that God sacrifices himself to himself to save us from himself.

Now, to return to my initial assertion.

The Romans simply layered their story onto the back of an ancient collection of writings to give their new religion authority.

Christianity is and always has been a Roman religion.

mountainman

This sounds like you accept Paul as an historical figure.
I could be wrong - is this your position? And if so, do
you happen to have a date and a name for the person
who was the author of the recognised Pauline forgeries?

Elijah

Helped a little bit. What would help a lot would be for you to support the above with citing the specific scripture that you are basing it off of.

And what’s the Roman story that you think they Jewified? What’s the Roman Christ story? Or is the influence just that Paul was a dualist and you believe that should be attributed solely to Rome and what makes it Roman?

dog-on

Someone wrote the original epistles.

I call that individual Paul, though I have read a good argument for Simon Magus, or even, perhaps, the shipbuilder from Pontus, himself.

I suppose that, based on the works of some early church apologists, the original writings predate 140CE.

As far as the forgeries, both complete and partial, my money is on associates of Ireneaus of Lyons, if not by his own hand and was probably accomplished at the same time that the Luke/Acts boxed set was released.

dog-on

Gal 3:10 -14, Romans 7, etc...

It's Roman because Romans invented it. Jews had nothing to do with it, other then provide the eventual back story via the LXX.