mountainman

The deliberate perversion of Josephus, an act assessed to have
been perpetrated in the 4th century, is an act of wickedness and
fraudulence with respect to the natural progression of patristic
literature.

The package of christianity was purportedly "found" by Constantine
who embraced it, and then thrust this embracement upon the entire
empire. But did this "new and strange religion" (as described by its
first cataloger-historian Eusebius, under Constantine) have an earlier
existence?

We have been told by the historian Eusebius under Constantine, that
the very well respected, and authoritative historian Josephus, actually
makes mention of "the tribe of christians". However the implication that
the TF is a fraudulent interpolation, suggests that Eusebius made up
the TF for some other design, or purpose.

For what purpose would Eusebius have fraudulently perverted the record
of history of the first century CE, by inserting a paragraph by which a
reader of the work might be erroneously left to believe that Josephus
made reference to such a tribe of mankind?

What plots were afoot at this particularly shameful hour in history?

Does the fiction embedded in the transmission of the TF also provide
evidence that Julian's invectives against the Galilaeans, as being a
"fiction of men composed by wickedness", reveal the whole package
of christianity to be a fourth century literary fiction, supported by a
massive perversion of the chronology (and substance) of the first
three centuries CE of our common antiquity?



Pete Brown

Toto

Hi Pete,

I hope you will forgive me if I am a bit blunt. It doesn't look like you are making any progress in your quest to show that Christianity was invented in the 4th century. You keep bringing up the same scraps of evidence or lack of evidence and asking the same questions.

It seems reasonable to conclude that Eusebius added the passage about the tribe of Jesus to the Testamonium, based on the analysis by Ken Olsen. But a little bit of historical forgery hardly seems like the crime of the millenium that you make it out to be, and it does nothing to prove that Eusebius or Constantine invented Christianity, as opposed to taking over an existing Christian movement and using it for Roman purposes.

There are many examples of people rewriting or inventing their national history for political convenience (see George Washington's Prayer Book, for example, or that cherry tree invented by Parson Weems.) People live by myths and stories, and those myths and stories form an essential part of a national society, with all the advantages that that has. Sometimes reality doesn't give the nation-builder a good enough story, so someone like Eusebius will "improve" the narrative, or supply historical "evidence" of how history should have been.

For example, Josephus, whom you term "well respected, and authoritative" was a Jewish nationalist turncoat. A few of his passages are complete mythology - as when he has Alexander dropping by Jerusalem to sacrifice at the Temple on his way to conquering the world. It is easy to see why someone would see little harm in adding a bit more propaganda to what was there.

So I don't think you have to look far for a motive. Constantine was trying to rule an empire, and needed some legitimacy in the eyes of his subjects. Eusebius was trying to establish the legitimacy of the Christian Church. Given these motives, it seems more efficient for them to use an existing movement and bolster its credibility, as opposed to inventing and propagating a completely new institution, with all the effort it takes to write the material and spread it about.

Roger Pearse

Although Ken has not convinced any one else, as far as I know? (I found his argument unconvincing, myself).

All the best,

Roger Pearse

mountainman

Hi Toto,

Thanks for your moderated patience through all this. Your comments
are taken with with a great degree of reflection, comensurate with
the thoughtful nature of all your posts (that I have seen) here.

Scraps of evidence is really all anyone would appear to have in any
issue related to Biblical Criticism & History. The mainstream position
on the actual historicity of the earliest so-called christians is fraught
with massive integrity issues, the TF being but the self-identified
pinacle of these issues which stem from the 4th century.

Yes, and others before him.


It does nothing to diminish the possibility that Constantine
invented christianity, rather than embellishing an existent
religious order. Neither do Julian's invectives.

These "many examples of people rewriting or inventing" do not
diminish the possibility of invention out of the whole cloth.

Josephus was targetted because his "Antiquity" covered the period
selected to host the fiction. As I mention above, I see this issue as
an integrity problem.

That the TF represents an enactment of a "legitimising motive"
is probably accepted by a huge diversity of opinion about the
TF. I dont think that is the question here.

The question I put to mainstream BC&H is this:

We are presented with two options:

a) the package of christianity evolved in the first 3 centuries, and
was then gathered together by Constantine's historian Eusebius,
at his desk at the library of Caesarea in the early 4th CE.

b) the package of christianity was entirely created in the 4th century

You say "Given these motives, it seems more efficient for them to use
an existing movement", but this does not diminish the possibility that
they did not use an existing movement, but instead fabricated the
monstrous tale out of the whole cloth, and bound the tale together
for the prosperity of the empire.

To return to where we started, the evidence for any theories related
to the first 300 years of antiquity (0 - 300) is known to be very slim.

The mainstream theory asserts that the Eusebian literature (and its
reporting of the early "church fathers") is essentially somehow to
provide an historical framework or backbone to the period, such
that this TF "tribe of christians" are made existent.

I am offering an alternative theory for the history of christianity
which does not have this 300 year period of highly suspect
historical integrity regarding this "tribe of christians" simply
because of the fact that they were not then present until
Constantine invented them in the 4th century.

I have asked for scientific and/or archeological citations by
which the theory of 4th century christianity might be falsified.
I think I have been reasonable in my responses.

I have made certain progress in that I have found that others
before me have entertained the same hypothesis, or theory,
or in the case of Julian (c.362 CE), a conviction. Other posters
here, such as Jay Raskin, have contributed to the need to see
the key church father Eusebius, not as an historian, but as a
master forger, as it outlined in the first chapter of his recent
book Evolution of Christs and Christianities located here:
http://evocc.com/

Best wishes for now,



Pete Brown
www.mountainman.com.au/essenes

mountainman

Writes Doherty (The Jesus Puzzle, p75):


This is taken from another thread, but is quite relevant.
I am aware Earl Doherty may not be directly making
reference to Julian's use of the term "fabrication", as
in "a fiction of men composed by wickedness", yet the
argument stands.

Constantine was quite capable of doing the job from
out of the whole cloth, and we know for a fact that
the very first bible containing the greek Origen old
testament bound to the Eusebian greek new testament
was ordered to be cloned fifty times by Constantine
shortly after the Council of Nicaea.



Pete Brown

Gamera

I suspect Pete's just going to keep on doing this.

The only interesting thing about his posts is that they highlight how modernity privileges certain texts as historical and others as nonhistorical, depending on the particular agenda of the person making the categorization.

When in reality all we have is a series of texts, which are more or less meaningful to us in the narrative of the past we wish to construct. History isn't what happened; it's what is written down and is ultimately just a text.

The idea that some texts are the result of an agenda, and others are pristine history, is naive to the utmost.

Roger Pearse

So do I, until someone bans him.

Well, such things were done in the 19th century, but today it looks very much as if those doing it had themselves an agenda. See N. Holzberg, ‘Lucian and the Germans’, in The Uses of Greek and Latin: Historical Essays, eds AC Dionisotti et al, London, 1988, pp. 199–209. This discusses the change in attitudes in German scholarship in the late 1800's towards the works of Lucian, who may have been Jewish. All the scholarship dismissing the works as derivative can be shown to derive from a single seminal article (which is fair enough). But that article has passages verbally identical to an article in a non-scholarly anti-semitic rag written by Houston Stewart Chamberlain, a few months earlier. The academic consensus continued on this until 1945.

It makes me wonder about German enthusiasm for Marcion, in the same period.

All the best,

Roger Pearse

mountainman

I think you have it wrong Gamera.

The purported writing of any text at any time is certainly
the subject matter of history, but history is far broader
than the textual field, such that the literature of the period
forms a part of the subject matter of the history.


Read the opening paragraph carefully ...

The deliberate perversion of Josephus, an act assessed
to have been perpetrated in the 4th century,
is an act of wickedness and fraudulence with respect
to the natural progression of patristic literature.

History clearly witnesses that certain texts are the result
of an agenda, whereas others follow traditional channels
of expression, which I have described as a "natural progression".

Examples of literature arising as a result of an agenda are:

1) The rise of the appearance of pseudo-pythagorean literature
in the period c.150 BCE - 100 CE due to the commercial value
of this literature to avid collectors, such as Juba.

2) The appearance of propaganda under dictatorships, especially
those which set out to break the traditional ancient belief systems
of the people of the land, in the control of the dictator.

Naivity is reserved for those who refuse to submit their
consideration to the repeated historical occurrence of
such politically or commercially motivated generation
of literature, as distinct from the "natural progression".





Pete Brown

mountainman

1. Dont make assumptions
2. Be impeccable to your word.
3. Dont take anything personally
4. Always do your best

-- A Toltec Guide to Personal Freedom
http://www.mountainman.com.au/four_agreements.htm



Gather together all the authors of antiquity in accordance
to their purportedly perceived agendas, and you end up
with something like this:

http://www.mountainman.com.au/essenes/article_029.htm

In the end it all needs to be placed into a relational database
within which the literature can be analysed on a category by
category basis and compared for its historical integrity.

These categories ...

* Neo-pythagorean and/or neo-platonic philosophers, historians, authors
* Christian writer, author, apologist (via the Eusebian theory of history)
* Christian Bishop (via the Eusebian theory of history)
* H/W Historian, philosopher, writer, poet (considered "neutral")
* Roman Emperor (elevated to the purple)


It will be this specific research program that will provide support
for the hypothesis that the literature of the period 0-300 purported
to be the literature of christianity, was in fact written in the 4th
century, under Constantine.



Pete Brown