PhilosopherJay

Hi Andrew,

Even if Psuedo-Hegessipus was not directly influenced, I think it is a hard case to make that he would not have read or known about Eusebius's Church History.

The following letters from Life of Constantine, I think is evidence of Constantine's willingness to translate Eusebius into Latin and micro-manage propaganda distribution for the Church. Given that the History glorifies Constantine basically as the Savior of the Savior's Church and makes him into a new Christ, it is easy to believe that he had the first work of Christian History by his "beloved brother" translated into Latin.

Quote:

Chapter XXXV. Constantine's Letter to Eusebius, in Praise of His Discourse Concerning Easter. 1 "Victor Constantinus, Maximus Augustus, to Eusebius. 2 "It is indeed an arduous task, and beyond the power of language itself, worthily to treat of the mysteries of Christ, and to explain in a fitting manner the controversy respecting the feast of Easter, its origin as well as its precious and toilsome accomplishment.25 For it is not in the power even of those who are able to apprehend them, adequately to describe the things of God. I am, notwithstanding, filled with admiration of your learning and zeal, and have not only myself read your work with pleasure, but have given directions, according to your own desire, that it be communicated to many sincere followers of our holy religion. Seeing, then, with what pleasure we receive favors of this kind from your Sagacity, be pleased to gladden us more frequently with those compositions, to the practice of which, indeed, you confess yourself to have been trained from an early period, so that I am urging a willing man, as they say, in exhorting you to your customary pursuits. And certainly the high and confident judgment we entertain is a proof that the person who has translated your writings into the Latin tongue is in no respect incompetent to the task, impossible though it be that such version should fully equal the excellence of the works themselves. God preserve you, beloved brother." Such was his letter on this subject: and that which related to the providing of copies of the Scriptures for reading in the churches was to the following purport. Chapter XXXVI. Constantine's Letter to Eusebius on the Preparation of Copies of the Holy Scriptures. 1 "Victor Constantinus, Maximus Augustus, to Eusebius. 2 "It happens, through the favoring providence of God our Saviour, that great numbers have united themselves to the most holy church in the city which is called by my name. It seems, therefore, highly requisite, since that city is rapidly advancing in prosperity in all other respects, that the number of churches should also he increased. Do you, therefore, receive with all readiness my determination on this behalf. I have thought it expedient to instruct your Prudence to order fifty copies of the sacred Scriptures, the provision and use of which you know to be most needful for the instruction of the Church, to be written on prepared parchment in a legible manner, and in a convenient, portable form, by professional transcribers thoroughly practiced in their art.26 The catholicus27 of the diocese has also received instructions by letter from our Clemency to be careful to furnish all things necessary for the preparation of such copies; and it will be for you to take special care that they be completed with as little delay as possible.28 You have authority also, in virtue of this letter, to use two of the public carriages for their conveyance, by which arrangement the copies when fairly written will most easily be forwarded for my personal inspection; and one of the deacons of your church may be intrusted with this service, who, on his arrival here, shall experience my liberality. God preserve you, beloved brother!"

Warmly,

Jay

Bede

It's a lovely 'just so' story Vork but founders on the complete lack of evidence. There is actually no evidence at all for Eusebius forging the TF and plenty of counter evidence - Origen, the Slavonic, the Arabic and now psuedo-H among them. Yes, you can explain these away if you try hard enough but all together they form a pretty compelling case. There does come a time when even the most attractive theories have to be dropped. The evidence for a wholly interpolated TF at an earlier date is also dealt a heavy blow by all this although it remains possible, if only because the Greek manuscript witness is unanimous. Trouble is the TF is in the same place in the whole Greek tradition which is unlikely if it was a later addition (as we know from the woman taken in adultery and other peregrinating pericodes).

Jay is also confusing Constantine (who was a Christian but whose policies were broadly tolerant) with Theodosius (who actively persecuted pagans - although not much as it turns out). What we know about Constantine's motives and policy makes the grand conspiracy idea utterly untenable. We could believe it of Theodosius if only we had the smallest snippet of evidence - which sadly we don't. As for Eusebius, he was a completely typical Roman flunky who exaggerates his own importance and gets thrown the occasional bone by his patron. He is not in a position to rewrite history in the way Jay appears to allege.

Yours

Bede

Bede's Library - faith and reason

Vorkosigan

Whether or not Eusebius actually forged the TF is irrelevant to my point that if he did, he did not need some dastardly master plan for the forged TF to show in all copies of Josephus eventually. Whoever forged it, its interpolation into all copies of Antiquities was a foregone conclusion from that point on.

Vorkosigan

Bede

Only if we make a whole heap of assumptions like all the librarians being Christian (not true until at least 600AD), that they knew what was in all their texts (not true today), that they would accept the TF as genuine, that they could be arsed to make the correction and that they would all mange to put into the same place. As the whole TF is too long to squeeze into the margins it would require substantial recopying to slip it in so it would usually end up at the bottom of a page in a convenient space - hence not always in the same spot. Amending the TF from a Josephan architype is much easier as you need to slip in as few as 5 words. Hence this is much more likely to appear in all manuscripts and traditions with the TF in the same place.

Yours

Bede

Bede's Library - faith and reason

Alf

Indeed, doesn't all the book burnings that occurred during these early ages also play a part here? Generally a version NOT containing TF would probably be considered heretical and burned.

No active destruction by the author is necessary, just let some time play in and then all copyist would copy the ones that contained TF and those without would be considered hereitcal and would not be copied and possibly burned.

There was a lot of book burning going on in those days. The burning of the library of alexandria is perhaps the most well known but there were small fires all over the roman empire. It was typically "pagan" literature that suffered in this and perhaps even more so when they had a "correct" version that contained the TF.

Alf

Bede

Actually, the stuff about book burnings is much exaggerated. What Vork is trying to do is explain how texts become corrupt without invoking huge bonfires of books for which we have little or no evidence. For example, the Great Library of Alexandria is almost pure myth and was not destroyed by Christians (the story was created by Edward Gibbon in the 18th century). There was also no policy to destroy books wholesale. How a copy of Josephus could be considered heretical just because it lacks the TF escapes me and we certainly have no evidence of this.

We have good evidence that texts were amended, corrected and edited (usually quite innocently). On the other hand, evidence for wholesale forgery that was intended to actually deceive is pretty thin on the ground.

You may find this on pagan literature helpful. And this, on the Great Library.

Yours

Bede

Vorkosigan

..where did i say the process wouldn't take a while...

No, only that they knew what was in Josephus.

Evidently they did. They accepted lots of emendations as genuine.

No problem there.

That's the first good argument you've made. A very strong point. But as we know, it actually happened that the interpolated passage made its way into our extant copies...so reality refutes you.

All of the arguments you made above apply to this.

Well, except for the Slavonic Josephus, a half dozen forged letters of Paul, NT epistles forged in the names of others, the entire Gospel of John (produced from several different texts), the pericope of the adulterous women, insertions and redactions in almost all NT and extra NT early Christian documents, forged letters from Jesus to Apgar, Pilate to Claudius, Christianization of Jewish and pre-Christian literature, etc etc etc and onward through Christian history. Christian history is the history of forgery. "Intended actually to deceive" is a strawman. Intent is irrelevant; perhaps the early forgers were pious, perhaps they were peevish. The results are the same. The forged TF is simply one more in a long line.

Vorkosigan

andrewcriddle

Just to clarify. I was primarily making a point about timescale.

What I meant was that although Eusebius (if he forged the TF) could well have expected that the 'corrected' version would eventually become dominant, it is much less likely that it would become dominant or even widespread within the next 100 years.

I was replying to Jay's argument that it would not be surprising if a library copy of 'Antiquities' in Italy in 370-375 had already been modified under the influence of Eusebius.

To recap: My full argument is

a/ that Pseudo-Hegesippus is so early that the only plausible route from Eusebius to Pseudo-Hegesippus is knowledge by Pseudo-Hegesippus of the 'Ecclesiastical History' or other works by Eusebius with the TF. (ie It is unlikely that Pseudo-Hegesippus used a copy of the 'Antiquities' which had already been 'corrected' on the basis of Eusebius)

b/ Such knowledge of Eusebius is sufficiently unlikely in a Latin work written well before the 390's and using mainly Latin sources to supplement Josephus, for the burden of proof to be on those claiming it.

c/ Although there are a very few parallels between Eusebius and Pseudo-Hegesippus, such as I originally listed, they can IMO be plausibly explained without Pseudo-Hegesippus knowing the 'Ecclesiastical History' . Hence we have no reason to reject our initial presumption that Pseudo-Hegesippus did not use Eusebius.

d/ Therefore Pseudo-Hegesippus is unlikely to have been influenced by Eusebius either directly or indirectly. Hence he is probably an independent witness to the TF.

(However I do regard Pseudo-Hegesippus as the ONLY plausible example of a writer who is certainly referring to the TF but is probably independent of Eusebius.)

Andrew Criddle

Bede

The trouble is a whole lot of that is rather controversial. AFAIAC, the Jesus/Agbar letters fall into the 'not intended to be anything other than spirtually uplifting' category, as do the various fictional Acts. Likewise, you are taking a few clear forgeries and using tham as evidence that forgery has occured elsewhere where the prima facie case is much harder to justify. This gets you a lot of alleged forgeries but is the scholary equivalent of rounding up a lot of black people in London to get the crime rate down.

Yours

Bede

Bede's Library - faith and reason

PhilosopherJay

Hi Bede,

Oh Contraire, mon ami,

I'm afraid there is nothing so certain in early Christian History as Eusebius's complete forgery of the Testimonium. It is the deepest stretch of the imagination that Tertullian, Origen, Celsus and Clement of Alexandria could have remained ignorant of such testimony and never mentioned a word about it. The ideology and language matches Eusebius exactly and matches Josephus not at all. Eusebius must have been aware of the silence of his predecessors regarding the T.F., and yet says not a word about it, not even bothering to make an excuse. This would suggest that he knew that his opponents who might question him had already been silenced by Constantine's sword.

I found it amusing while researching Psuedo-Heggesippus [as if there was ever a real Heggesippus beyond the imagination of Eusebius], that I found Jerome suggested in letter LXXXIV that Eusebius may have forged a work by his master Pamphilius. Apparently, his near contemporaries appreciated his modus operandi more than our contemporary theologians.

Warmly,

Jay