mountainman

Such powerful moderated objectivity.

But to my poor conception of objectivity,
it remains essentially UNANSWERED, the
question:

"Where are the archeological or scientific citations
to support the ** ** I N F E R E N C E ** **
that Pre-Nicaean christianity existed at all?

http://www.iidb.org/vbb/showthread.php?t=168491


And if none are forthcoming, then it remains an objective
possibility that this Constantine kick-started the Roman
religion out of the whole cloth in the fourth century.





Pete Brown
www.mountainman.com.au

judge

Pete, why not provide some evidence for your assertion to which Chris responded in the other thread?

I mean seriously we had a genuine inquiry from a not regular poster AFAIK.

If he did not know the subject he may have taken your assertion at face value, and wasted time or been misled.

mountainman

Would you like to point me at this thread, or Chris' response?
Or failing that summarise the problem.

Yeah, right. The poster had only made 1,000 posts in here.

I happen to value the fact that my opinion is, at the present moment,
not refuted either in whole or in part due to the provision of appropriate
scientific and/or archelogical citations.

It is an inference that the world in general believes without evidence.
There must have been christians in Josephus because Eusebius said so.
There must have been christians pre-Nicaea because Eusebius said so.

Am I being misled, or is the world being misled?

Elsewhere you wrote ..


You will find that the dating "early 4th century" is related
to post-Nicaean activities. What are your more detailed
citations in this particular "parthian christian" claim? And if
this happens to resolve to the Dura-Europa archeological
site, then this has already been discussed.

See here:
http://www.mountainman.com.au/essenes/article_072.htm


Pete Brown

judge

I'm not sure but you seem to believe the following.

Is there any direct evidence for such a belief?

Jayrok

Please forgive my ignorance, but is there no evidence (archaeological or literary or otherwise) for any of the churches mentioned in the NT?

The churches in Asia Minor of Revelation?
Church of Jerusalem... Rome, Antioch, Galatia, etc..?

jakejonesiv

Hi Pete,

We have extant manuscripts of the NT dating back to the early third century CE. Archeologiacally, there are the Roman catacombs that are at least that old. I am pretty sure that several varieties of Christianity existed around by the middle of the second century, or the church fathers did a lot of ranting for nothing.

On the other hand, have you read Antiqua Matter by Edwin Johnson?

Jake Jones IV

steph s.

mountainman, you might find this book interesting.

"Ante Pacem: Archaeological Evidence of Church Life Before Constantine (or via: amazon.co.uk)" by Graydon F. Snyder

http://www.mupress.org/webpages/books/snyder.html

mountainman

You will allow that the churches mentioned in the new and strange
testament tendered by Eusebius are literary mentions, from which
we are urged to make the inference that there were physical churches
called "christian churces" in the preNicaean epoch.

The Basilica of the Holy Sepulchure in Jerusalem
The Basilica of St. Peter, Vatican Valley, Rome
The Basilica of St. Paul Outside the Walls, ROme
The Basilica of St. Lorenzo
The Basilica of St. Sebastano
The Basilica of St. Marcellino
The Basilica of St. John, Laterano (on barracks of Maxentius soldiers)
The Basilica of St. Maxentius
The Basilica of Santa Sophia
The Basilica of the Holy Apostles, Constaninople
The Basilica of St. Constantine, ROme

and hundreds of other "Basilicas of the New Religion"
were constructed throughout the ROman Empire, but
only in the fourth century, under Constantine.

We have no earlier archeological evidence for christianity
outside of the inferential evidence offered by paleography
in the dating of ms and fragments.


Pete Brown

mountainman

Hi Jake,

The dating of these "extant manuscripts" you will find to be
via the process of "paleography" or handwriting analysis, much
of which was performed, on these "extant ms" over 100 years ago.

I prefer carbon dating techniques, and await the 3rd result.
We have :
1) gJudas C14 dated to (from memory) 280 +/- 60 years
2) gThomas (Nag Hammadi) c.360 CE

Assuredly thw Roman catacombs are as old as ROme, but this
does not assure us that anything contained therein is evidence
for pre-Nicaean christianity. The Alexandros Grafitti for example,
I have not seen any scientific argument that these scratches
on the wall, such as the scratches on the James Ossary, could
not have been made during the Middle Ages.


On the other hand, have you read Antiqua Matter by Edwin Johnson? [/QUOTE]


I like the following quotes:

"[the fourth century was] the great age of literary forgery,
the extent of which has yet to be exposed"
...[and]...

"not until the mass of inventions
labelled 'Eusebius' shall be exposed,
can the pretended references to Christians
in Pagan writers of the first three centuries
be recognized for the forgeries they are."

and ....


re: Eusebius .....

"This unknown monk pretends to be a man of research
into very scanty records of the past .... [...] ...

He is not a man of research at all,
except in the sense in which many novelists and romancers
are men of research for the purpose of their construction.
This writer is, in fact, simply a theological romancer,
and only in that sense can he be called an historian at all".


Pete Brown

mountainman

We are testing the hypothesis that Eusebius not only wrote the TF
and interpolated "the existence of pre-Nicaean christianity" into Josephus,
and not only forged the letter exchange between Jesus and Agbar,
but was responsible for the mass of literature which is referenced
in his "Ecclesiastical History", and "In Preparation for the gospels",
including interpolations into Roman correspondence, but into a long
list of existent sages, and scholars of the Judaic OT (eg: Origen,
Ammonias Saccas, Plotinus, etc) and created other references
out of the whole cloth (eg: Tertullian).

They were all profiles of the literary man Eusebius, who was possibly
an editor of many scribes who were sponsored, I believe, in this vast
project of literature, by the supreme imperial mafia thug Constantine.

The hypothesis that Eusebius wrote a vast fiction implies christianity
is not older than the fourth century. One scientific or archeological
citation showing an earlier existence for anything christian, will of
course refute the hypothesis (and any subsequent theory) either
in full or in part, but so far the list of citations for pre-Nicaean
christianity are as follows:

1) paleographic assessment of papyrus fragments and mss
2) the house-church of Dura-Europa.
3) the Meggido church
4) the Inscription of Abercius
5) the James Ossary
6) something or other "in the Catacombs"

ALl of these do not appear to raise serious and critical hard
and objective evidence that christianity existed in the pre-Nicaean
epoch.

Therefore, until further evidence is brought to light, it appears to
me that it is objectively possible that the hypothesis is correct.

Another thread here recently exhausted a reasonable amount of
discussion on various issues, here:

http://www.iidb.org/vbb/showthread.php?t=168491


Best wishes,


Pete Brown