sotto voce

As well one might.

But Muhammad's existence is of not the least interest, because Muhammad had no words of his own, only a verbatim account of a supposed angel, and an angel (unless it is assumed that the angelic presence was real) whose existence was derived from the New Testament! Anyone at all, a mere copyist drudge, could have sat in a cave over twenty-five years and taken down a dictation. As it is fully admitted that the dictation was lost, and supposed copies were made, nobody knows that the Qur'an is the work of the copyist Muhammad. So, to the uncommitted observer, the provenance of Islam borders on the farcical; its text is clearly mere plagiarism, with corruption, of the Bible; unless that was a real angel hiding in the cave. Yet we here have that text taken in preference to those very texts on which it was based!

One is surely persuaded that the author is persuaded that Christianity is the true religion. Perhaps that is the idea of his piece.

Even if that is true (and it's very hard to imagine why a people would invent so much self-induced disaster, from beginning, to end), it's a story that has got itself a lot of very detailed expert attention, in the Western world, from people who are not Jews, because of an intellectual sophistication and a structural coherence without parallel in religious writing anywhere. Now it is assumed that the people who today call themselves Jews are actually Jews. But true Judaism may be Christianity. After all, everyone who calls himself Jew must be a Christian, because Jews believe in a Christ. It's just a question of whether the Christ has arrived, or not. So the author here, like so many, particularly on the recent internet, has decided that 'Jews' are right, and 'Christians' are wrong. More persuasion that the author is persuaded that Christianity is the true religion.

Now what would a rational approach be to the issue of which group is correct? Is it reasonable to suppose that Jews are justified in waiting for a Christ or Messiah? Whether they invented them or not, they sure recorded a great deal that assured them of their preferred relationship with their deity. Not just a promised land, but one with designated tribal regions in which inheritance played an essential part in maintaining and identifying those regions. They apparently possessed a crucial priesthood as part of that inheritance, with essential sacrifices to be made for individuals, and the whole people; a sacred textual source written in stone, contained in a gilded chest, that was given the utmost respect. A temple, with ritual, that contained the very presence of their deity, that only their high priest could enter, once a year.

Where is all that now? No promised land, no tribal possession, no priesthood, no sacrifices, no text, no chest, no temple. Not for almost 1900 years has there been a promised land, and Jews are today left to wail at a ruin of a wall in a secular state. So why does any impartial observer even begin to think that Jews are realistic about being chosen people? Unchosen, one might think, and with pity and discomfort.

Christians, otoh, believe that promised land, tribal possession, priesthood, sacrifices, text, chest and temple, that were once theirs, were all made superfluous at the moment that Jesus died. Even if one believes that they were all invented, at least the Christian story is not at odds with the history of the last two millennia.

mountainman

Soter

mountainman

There is a question as to whether the Nag Hammadi Codices have been C14 dated. In articles that I have authored I have stated that the NHC have been C14 dated to 348 CE plus or minus 60 years. This may be an error on my part after a very hasty reading and notes on R Lane Fox's "Pagans and Christians". There is no doubt that the NHC are dated by various OTHER methods, such as analysis of cartonage, to the mid 4th century. So the date stands quite firm. However it is not, as far as I have been able to be determined, representative of C14 testing, which is strange, since C14 dating technology has been around for some time.

Therefore, until further information is forthcoming, there is only one C14 date to be associated with any NT related mss and that is 280 CE plus or minus 60 years. This result however is itself shrouded with problems, and the final paper from the Arizona Uni scientists has not yet been released for publication.

The head scientist, Prf. Jull, made the misleading statement that the dating result precluded the possibility that this ms was manufactured after the all important Council of Nicaea. The glaring error here is that the results of 280 +/- 60 years, equivalent to 220-340 CE, do not preclude a greater than 325 CE date.

Correct. A very slender thread of belief suspends christian origins via handwriting (script) analysis to the pre-Nicaean epoch.

In Eusebius and in palaeography the "Biblical Historians and scholars" place their utmost FAITH.

Those who value the scientific method and the value of evidence over dogma are correct to question whether canonical christianity is any older than the Bullneck Bible of c.325 CE.

It is therefore quite astounding that discussion of the possibility that Christian Origins is a direct result of a "Big Lie" and a massive propaganda creation exercise in the 4th and subsequent centuries, has been relegated and censored to ~ELSEWHERE from this forum.

Mussolini, not Hitler, is to be associated with the political propaganda term the "Big Lie", and the ancient historian Momigliano draws a direct comparison between Mussolini, who became the "Man of providence" OVERNIGHT, and the worship of Roman Emperors as god or gods. The obvious comparison therefore is between Mussolini and Bullneck.

mountainman

The attack is in the evidential facts being presented.
The question to ask is whether they are substantiated.



Were Edward Gibbon or Arnaldo Momigliano too subjective?
I dont think so.

Those who do not "like" these presented evidential facts cannot just waive them away, they must investigate their substantial or insubstantial nature.

I notice the author has gathered academic opinion of the 17th and 18th centuries - contemporaries of Gibbon. Some people may have been quite opposed to the idea of a historical jesus at that time, but could not openly state this opinion for fear of being persecuted (e.g. executed, hanged, etc) by the ecclesiastical authorities of that epoch.

mountainman

As far as I am concerned the author is on the right track.

I have been suggesting this solution for some time here

sotto voce

So Constantine, at great expense and in the face of enormous protest, fabricated a new religion that contradicted his own in every possible way, then set about corrupting it to make it no different from his own. What sort of lunatic does that? Caligula did not get close.

mountainman

Constantine was a germanic barbarian like his father, and like his father surrounded himself with barbarian chieftains instead of any "praetorian guard". The incumbent religion was a Hellenist milieu. [There had been anti-hellenistic revolutions under Ardashir c.222 CE in order to create the centralised Sassanid Persian monotheistic religion.] It was a barbarian backwash of propaganda (perhaps a Christian tidal wave) purposefully directed and marshalled against the Alexandrian Greek hegemon. The propaganda was a "Big Lie". See Mussolini.

The rise of Constantine's fabricated new religion coincides with the suppression of the Greek intellectual tradition (See Freeman's AD 381 for example), the destruction of the Egypto-Graeco-Roman (i.e pagan) temple networks, the execution of pagan priests, the prohibition of pagan temples services, the burning of literature and the deathy penalty for possession of "prohibited books". Moses contradicted Plato, Constantine executes Sopater.

An anti-hellenistic despot with supreme military control, racist who hijacked the LXX and used the Jews as pawns in his anti-Hellenistic revolution, wanting to unify the empire at the expense of the greek intellectual tradition. He succeeded, in the sense that the organisation headed by the "318 Nicaean Fathers" quickly enjoyed, by the end of the 4th century, a viable monopoly on "religious privileges".

sotto voce

Coincides? As Poirot says, there are no coincidences.

If one ignores content of what was believed, one is truly out in the wilderness.

mountainman

The wilderness of heresy? Yes, the Greek intellectual tradition wandered for over a thousand years through the wilderness of christian "heretical" oppression.



In Christ Jesus is a ....
"new creation".

What on earth did Paul and Epiphanius mean by that statement?

The content of what was believed, was a new creation.

sotto voce

Possibly. No, the wilderness of academic, er, periphery.

Now there's a neat contradiction in terms. Christian oppression, eh. It's like talking about the pressure of dreamless sleep.

What Paul meant was that, provided one was justified by faith in the finished work of Christ (not the Constantinian concept of unfinished work), it did not matter whether one was 'barbarian', Greek, Jew, black, white, green, organic or semi-skimmed. But justification before God by faith was of no interest to Constantine. What interested him was justification of millions before him, by the works of obediently observing the rituals of his priestly caste, as Romans had always done, since Romulus. (Indeed, there is parallel of the Milvian Bridge affair with Romulus' defeat of the Caeninenses, the honour going to Jupiter.) Constantine did not fabricate a new religion; he corrupted an old one, that started with Abraham, priestless, justified before God by his own faith.