mountainman

Johnny the chrestos - Johnny the Good.
Here a noun and otherwhere an adjective.
Was it ever abbreviated to CS?

What is the difference between "Joshua the Good "
and "Jesus Christ" using the nomina sacra?
Not much if anything?

And what about "Healer"?


So the JC nomina sacra could also mean
"The Good Healer".

Where is that cock for Asclepius Crito?

Best wishes,



Pete Brown

mountainman

Nag Hammadi implies Coptic, as do the source writings for authors such as Pachomius. It was perhaps selected in order to preserve knowledge from Greek and Latin eyes.

In fact, it is an independent assessment with the same conclusion.
My theory has not been properly outlined for the fourth century
"desert fathers", but we are not looking at closet pagans. The terms
used before were political refugees. The temple structures
all across the empire, which had been sponsored by all previous Roman emperors, and before the Romans became supreme, were shut down and their operations were effectively prohibited by "The Despot".


I dont think the desert monasteries in the beginning period from 324 CE had anything to do with christianity. They were pagans keeping clear of the Boss. These foundations (eg: Pachomius' monasteries) increased dramatically in size during the period to peak somewhere just after the mid fourth century. These guys may have been reciting holy words, but they were not from the new testament.

If we have no evidence for the existence of christianity before Constantine,
but plenty of evidence of forgery, and plenty of evidence that christianity exploded in the rule of Constantine, then the options are very limited. In fact, the most viable option is in fact that christianity appeared with the rise of Constantine, and that he therefore must have actually invented it using imperial forgery. He is described quite clearly by Victor as a brigand.


Best wishes,



Pete Brown

2-J

Sorry to jump in a bit here. I'm not sure I agree with the Eusebian Fiction Postulate, but it has provoked some interesting discussion.

My question (to those more in the know than I) is this: is it not that case that critical analysis of the Christian texts alleged to have been written before Constantine would have picked up something suspicious if they really had all been forged in the 4th century? Does a critical analysis of the texts themselves have anything to say for or against the postulate?

From my own naive point of view, it would seem a huge and possibly impossible effort to go to, to forge all these texts to such a convincing degree as to fool the vast majority of scholars even today, and even just to forge so many texts, which are rich in their own ways, on the subject.

Jeffrey Gibson

With an article.

There is no C in Greek.

There'd have to be evidence of the article for the abbreviation to be an abbreviation of "Joshua the Good".

Your "authority" has misspelled the name. The Greek is Iasios

And the only Iasios who was known as a healer was a dactly (look it up, Pete). And to my knowledge, he was never given, or known by, the epithet "the healer".

So once again, your are relying on am "authority" who shows little evidence of knowing what he's talking about, who is apparently Greekless, and who bends "evidence" to make it say what he wants it to say. You've also, once again, shown how you have no ability to sift good evidence from bad evidence, but will swallow whole bad material so long as it confirms what you want to believe.

Really sloppy, Pete. And really credulous.

Jeffrey

spamandham

Would it really be more difficult to develop these texts over ~70 years in the 4th century rather than ~70 years in the 2nd century? The texts are indeed filled with obvious achronistic frauds and fictions, so I'm not sure putting the fraud in the 2nd century is really a much simpler postulate than placing it in the 4th.

To me, the biggest holes in mountainman's postulate, are twofold:
1) The texts show the evolution of Christian theology, including divergent cults bickering with eachother and being syncretized together. This to me seems too sophisticated of a fraud by a mafia thug boss. If you're enforcing your religion with swords, having texts at all is good enough.

2) Christianity shows obvious signs of syncretism with Apollonius beliefs, Sol Invictus beliefs, Pythagoreanism (and probably others I'm neglecting) all of which preceded 325. In other words, we have evidence that he merged pre-existing cults together. The obvious implication is then, that he did the same thing with Jesus - merging some pre-existing Jesus cult into his new religion.

Ben C Smith

Acts 7.45:

And, having received it in their turn, our fathers brought it in with Joshua [μετα Ιησου] upon dispossessing the nations whom God drove out before our fathers, until the time of David.

Matthew 26.51:

And behold, one of those who were with Jesus [μετα Ιησου] stretched out his hand and drew his sword, and struck the slave of the high priest, and cut off his ear.

Exactly. They are the same name in Greek (because they are the same name in Hebrew).

Amaleq13 will probably be thankful. I know I would appreciate it. I do not think willful ignorance is contagious, but better safe than sorry, I always say.

Ben.

Amaleq13

It is difficult to believe that your persistent misunderstanding of what I have actually written is not deliberate. I have never written nor even suggested any such thing. I have simply called into question your assertion that what you describe is a common misunderstanding. I suspect it is not common at all and, if held by any, it is only by an incredibly naive and ignorant minority.

I have only denied the unsubstantiated claim that you made. Shouldn't you take your own advice and provide "facts" to back up your claim?

I disagree that it is "just" argumentative to point out that your claim appears to be bogus and without merit but I'm sure everyone reading this thread realizes the real reason you refuse to provide any support for your assertion.

You have none except your imagination.

mountainman

This is of course a good question, yet to be assessed by those who perform a critical analysis of the texts with this postulate in mind. To date however, all critical analysis has been essentially performed with another postulate in mind -- namely the HJ (Historical Jesus) postulate -- by which the chronological backbone of all the data follows Eusebius.

The Nazareth problem would probably appear here. However, the textual criticism issue of the CANON is only one side of the christian coin. The other side of the coin is the non canonical NT texts, which has been described as a textual critics minefield. WTF are these apocryphal writings? Who were these things actually written by, and where and when? Mainstream has much of this entire category of NT lit in the too-hard basket. Who is

On the other hand, the Eusebian fiction postulate and the Constantinian invention theory in the field of ancient history attempts to explain the apocrypha as the pagan sedition and political paradic writings, many by ascetic priests (those surviving execution by Constantine) who had been forced to flee their traditions and their ancient heritage. Readers who have an initial problem with the revised chronology (and yes, I appreciate it is a little difficulot to contemplate at times) are recommended to start with a known fourth century NT apocryphal writing, such as "The Acts of Philip".

As a second step, then move to the "Leucian Acts of the Apostles": a comparitive review of scholarship for the core of the apocrypha, and the very very shadowy historical figure that the "fathers" and Eusebius' puppet Tertullian mumble under than name of Leucius.



No matter how good a scholar is, that scholar will generally always have some form of operating postulates, that he or she were told to accept by authority. Generally, these postulates are never questions, but in this instance, the Eusebian fiction postulate is making people not only question the postulate of the HJ, but in fact attempt to momentarily suspend conditioned "disbelief", and to attempt to consider an alternative postulate.

It is not a matter of being fooled by forgery. If forgery happens at the bottom of the societal ladder it is generally identified from above. On the other hand if forgery happens from the top, at an imperial level, what can people do about it? There would be opposition of course. There would be attempted exposure and anti-authoritarian reaction. But we know that Constantine was a military supremacist. A malevolent despot who tied the empire up very tightly with his absolute and supreme military influence, who actively recruited for a new top-down emperor cult, personally appointing all his new tax-exempt Bishops in their own dioceses (a political unit under Diocletian) and creating the "CHURCH AS WE KNOW IT".



Some interesting questions. It would be good to see them followed through. Thanks for your comments, and best wishes


Pete Brown

mountainman

Constantine invented his Canonical texts. The pagan ascetic opposition who had been oppressed and dispossessed (robbed) of their heritage by the might of the Boss and his army invented the non canonical texts. This totally pissed Constantine off. He was furious! People were making fun at his very own christianity cult! In a letter of 333 CE, Constantine reveals that the bitterly twisted ascetic priest Arius was "reproaching, grieving, wounding and inflicting great pains upon the Church". And the Boss could not find Arius. He wanted to find Arius, just to talk a little, but he could not find Arius. Arius had gone underground in the deserts of Syria. He had support.

So Constantine had the power and the canon, but he had no control over the reactionary fiction written by pagan ascetic polemicists in parodies and in other forms, in which Jesus became a slave master, or left no footprints, or appeared and disappeared as a little child, and apostles who were inept and who were heavily parodied in the NT apocryphal texts.

It required further history (actions by those in and out of power) for the systemetisation of heresy/sedition by means of the "Church councils" - their "CREEDS" and their "ANATHEMAS" - of the fourth and fifth centuries to attempt to get all this in order, and to classify the apocrypha. See my website for some details on this process.

The knowledge of the ultimate Constantiine fictional history over the generations may have been difficult to preserve against the authodox, but we have Nestorius writing in the mid fifth century that there were still those about who though that the NT was based on fiction, and that this idea had beenaround for a while, and had been respected. We need only be reminded that the emperor Julian himself wrote about his conviction of fiction.

The Eusebian fiction postulate examines the implications that the fiction was imperial and very real, but it was buried for good reason, and that's why we have Cyril writing CONTRA JULIAN and the burning of the library of Alexandria in the same epoch - it was an apex to a pyramid of intolerance and destruction which was established at its base in the days of the warlord Constantine, and which had grown through the fourth century Roman empire and the intrigues of the christian bishops in service to the christian emperors. (Constantine was pagan)


Constantine was a pagan soldier, a very good soldier. When he became commander of the armies of the north he dreamed of becoming commander of the armies of the west and the south. And when he in 312 CE actually became the Pontifex Maximus, and began to dream about being the commander of the armies of the East, he envisaged a new testament.

Did the canonical NT literature exist before Constantine's becoming Pontifex Maximus in 312 CE? This is the question that the Eusebian fiction postulate attempts to answer.


Is there evidence for this some pre-existing Jesus cult in the ancient record? The NT literature is normally associated with the existence of this cult. We are talking about the chronology of the NT literature. Is it older than the 4th century? A specific and interesting exercise (hopefully to be examined soon) is the analysis of this Origenist controversies of the fourth and fifth centuries. Origen wrote before Nicaea, but my position is that he wrote only on the Hebrew bible, and that Eusebius added all the extras re the new testament by forging additional writings in the name of Origen. This forgery IMO will be found at the basis of what was later to be called the Origenist Controversy, involving the desert ascetics, and a host of characters, including "The Tall Brothers".


Best wishes,



Pete Brown

patcleaver

I have no idea what your talking about. What do you mean by "real reason"? I don't have any hidden agenda. You seem paranoid, but maybe you just misunderstand.

You assert that my negative claim is bogus and unsubstantiated. Since my position is negative, you really should be the one to substantiate your positive position that everybody except "a very small minority of idiots" understand the translation process.

I still think that the majority of people do not understand the language translation process. I thought it was obvious when only 17% even speak a second language. Only a minority of people in the US have even taken a foreign language, and most of those have only a first year course that uses ALM or CLT, and almost nothing on translation problems. The textbooks I used for first year college Spanish emphasize language acquisition and the chapters that we covered didn't even discuss the translation process.

I would also like to find some substantiation for my negative position, just out of curiosity. I tried to for about 20 minutes, and did not find anything right away. You're the only person who seems interested in this, so I wasn't going to pursue it. I wish I had time to work on it now, but I don't - maybe this weekend. :wave: