Clivedurdle

http://ablemedia.com/ctcweb/netshots/tragedy.htm

(link within page above)

http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/cgi-bin...9&query=4%3A12

Would someone kindly explain why xianity is not just a bastardised form of Greek tragedy?

Clivedurdle

http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/...#ref=ref504802

Clivedurdle

Mark 1

1The beginning of the gospel of Jesus Christ, the Son of God

mountainman

Clivedurdle,

An excellent observation!

Written in Greek for a greek audience, a story about the
return of the Rightful King of the Ancient Hebrew Sages
which ends in the Rightful God subject to suffereing and
outrage at the hands of the authorities - on the cross,
about one century before Trajan cricified 1,200 Jews in
the city of Emaus.

Constantine, in his letter to Arius of c.333 CE confirms
this assessment when he provides us with a quote from
the little known figure of Arius of Alexandria.

The quoted words of Arius relate to the reasons which
prompted Arius to write the things that he did against
the doctrine of the christian religion at that time.

Constantine writes (about Arius) ....

Arius of Alexandria IMO also perceived the "Good News" of
the "New and Strange Testament" as a Greek Tragedy,
and Arius did not like the representation. The God of Arius
and the God of the School of Plato were not dissimilar.

Arius was no christian bishop - he was a priest of the old Hellenistic
religions which were swept aside and destroyed by Constantine.
The Arian controversy was not about theology, it was about the
politics of the new imperially sponsored state religion, and its
destruction of the old guardian class, and the temple networks.

With 21st century Christian glasses firmloy affixed to our eyes when
most people look at the ground of the fourth century people are looking
for things "Christian" unaware that the political reality was one in which
the "New and Strange Christian regime" was utterly destroying the most
ancient and highly revered knowledge and civilisation of the Greeks.

Clivedurdle

But why is arianism treated as a heresy and not as paganism?

Interestingly an Orthodox xian told me the Islamic conquests were primarily in Arian areas.

andrewcriddle

Are you sure he didn't mean Monophysite areas ?

Andrew Criddle

Toto

Arianism is heresy and is not crypto-paganism (any more than orthodox Christianity is crypto-paganism.)

Pete is the only person in the world who thinks that Arius was a pagan, and he has not managed to come up with any evidence or even a coherent theory as to why Arius might have been a pagan.

"Arius the pagan" is about to join the list of topics that are not welcome in this forum.

mountainman

Arius appears in history immediately after the Eusebian Ecclesiatical History finishes and the Huge Controversy over the Words of Arius commence. Over a hundred years afterwards, three Christian Ecclesiatical Historians take up their imperially sponsored and tax exempt pens and complete the orthodox picture from the Huge Controversy over the Words of Arius into the 5th century. The coverage of chronologies may be readily perceived in the following diagram (note: the authorship of the canon is at the top for reference purposes).




The Christian Regime's Portrayal of Arius as a Christian

Lets say that Christian's of the 4th century looked like ducks.
Lets say that we could hear the quacking and see the walking.
The Christian Ecclesiatical Historians affirm Arius is a duck.



But boy, could Arius run like a rabbit from the hunter!
(See Constantine's Dear Christian Arius Letter of c.333 CE)


Demographics of 95% pagan populace alone should suggest that Arius has been misrepresented by the histories authored in 4th and 5th century ecclesiastical scriptoria. The converse of such a ONE SIDED HISTORY suggests that the argument that Arius was a pagan is not unfeasible.

Arius denounced Jesus so vehemently that he was shut up.
Arius was no feeble christian clone.
He was an Ares, says Constantine.

Who brought state orthodoxy into the light;
Who hurled his wretched self into darkness.
Who ended his labors with this.


Who wrote that he did not wish God to appear to be the subject of suffering of outrage
Who wrote that (on the above account) he suggested and fabricated wondrous things indeed in respect of the faith.

Who wrote books that collected and gathered terrible and lawless impieties
Who wrote books that agitated tongues [Editor: Very popular books]
Who wrote books which deceived and destroyed

Who introduced a belief of unbelief.
Who introduced a belief of unbelief that is completely new.
Who accepted Jesus as a figment
Who called Jesus foreign
Who did not adapt, he did not adapt (it was said twice) to God [Editor: the "new" orthodox God
Who was twice wretched
Who reproached the church
Who grieved the church
Who wounded he church
Who pained the church
Who demoted Jesus
Who dared to circumscribe Jesus
Who undermined the (orthodox) truth
Who undermined the (othodox) truth by various discourses

Who detracted from Jesus who is indetractable
Who questioned the presence of Jesus
Who questioned the activity of Jesus
Who questioned the all-pervading law of Jesus
Who thought that there was a place outside of Jesus
Who thought that there something else outside of Jesus
Who denied the infiniteness of Jesus
Who did not conclude that God is present in Christ
Who had no faith in Christ
Who did not follow the law that God's law is Christ
Who had little piety toward Christ
Who detracted from the uncorrupted intelligence of Jesus
Who detracted from the belief in immortality of Jesus
Who detracted from the uncorrupted intelligence of the Church
Who was barred publicly from God’s church

Who did these things?
Arius of Alexandria as described by Constantine (Letter of 333 CE)

Does Constantine himself describe a christian Arius?
Could Constantine possibly describe a pagan Arius?
I think it is quite likely.

The world was pagan then.
It had not yet become Christian.
Much to Constantine's fascist displeasure.
Arius and the world refused Christianity
The world had not yet become Arian.
Arius at this time was still alive.
The resistance at that time still lived.

Did Arius possibly author the New Testament Apocrypha?
Who in heaven's name was Leucius Charinus?
What is your coherent theory about the Leucian Acts Toto?

Arius – Heresy & Tradition
By Rowan Williams

INTRODUCTION
Images of a Heresy


“Arianism has often been regarded as the archetypal Christian deviation, something aimed at the very heart of the Christian confession….

Arius himself came more and more to be regarded as a kind of Antichrist among heretics, a man whose superficial austerity and spirituality cloaked a diabolical malice, a desperate enmity to revealed faith. The portrait is already taking place in Epicphanius’ work, well before the end of the fourth century ….


By the early medieval period, we find him represented alongside Judas in ecclesiastical art. (The account of this death in fourth and fifth century writers is already clearly modeled on that of Judas in the Acts of the Apostles.)

No other heretic has been through so thoroughgoing a process of ‘demonization’.

The simple solution to all this, perhaps quite shocking to "christian sensibilities", is that Arius was a Hellenistic academic who told Constantine to "Go away!"

Toto

There is no evidence to support this "suggestion." And it is very wrong. If Arius were a pagan, the Christians would not have accused him of heresy.

Please review this thread on anti-Semitism

To quote Paula FredriksenYou might also note what Fredriksen has to say about why you should not take the overblown rhetoric of early Christianity so seriously.

mountainman

The question of whether the evidence suggests
more or less than a 95% non-christian populace
difficult to answer. What sources do we use?

Anyone who went against the majesty of the emperor
would have been considered stripped of citizenship and
liable for physical torture (or worse). Constantine calls
Arius a "gallows rogue" and far worse.

The followers of the emperor's christian decrees would
accuse Arius of anything they wished. Constantine had
pronounced damnatio memoriae on the name and
the memory and the historical existence of Arius.

You still have not attempted an explanation of why the
christians started talking about the heretic Leucius
Charinus, and the verbal tongue-lashings many of the
Christian emperors of the fifth century were handing
out to this infidel.



Paula Fredriksen obviously does not follow Barnes.

Constantine and the Problem of Anti-Pagan Legislation in the Fourth Century
Scott Bradbury, Classical Philology, Vol. 89, No. 2 (Apr., 1994), pp. 120-139

Constantine's Prohibition of Pagan Sacrifice
T. D. Barnes, The American Journal of Philology, Vol. 105, No. 1 (Spring, 1984), pp. 69-72

I follow Barnes' assessment.
This implies the Christianity came suddenly to the door of the Eastern empire.
And it came with the Bible in one hand and the sword in the other.
And the door to the Eastern empire was kicked in.
The words of Arius were echoed in resistance against Constantinianism.
His written words were perhaps the last of the Greek second sophistic.
He wrote with a pen dripping poison == he was a Greek satirist.
He satired the new testament canon which Constantine promoted as Truth.
I think perhaps that his banned books are being dug up as the NT apocrypha.