mountainman

I was adjusting my comments to your comment ....

I have no control over this evidence presented in "Ante pacem". According to Graydon Snyder the bulk of it was "discovered" and then catalogued by the 19th century papal sponsored "archaeologist" de Rossi. There are archaeological relics here and every single one of them is being IMO erroneously exhibited and interpretted as "early christian".

mountainman

The caption says it is a ketos or some type of sea monster.

The caption says its a boat.

Yours is about the 4th opinion to say this, but the image has been taken directly out of a modern book entitled " Ante pacem: archaeological evidence of church life before Constantine., and the author basically says that this picture is

"Likely the oldest example of Early Christian plastic art",

The problem does not stop there however, because every single citation page after page has the same difficulty. Evidence is being presented and being claimed to be christian. Its a bit like finding a new continent of archaeological relics and sticking a flag into it and claiming it in the name of christianity. The history of this business goes back to the 19th century Papal archaeologist de Rossi.


I have some further info here

Here is a high res pic of the "ketus":



Here is the full [picture again ...




The caption reads ....

Plate 13: "The sarcophagus located in Sta. Maria Antiqua, Rome.
"Likely the oldest example of Early Christian plastic art"

Description:

"The Teaching of the Law stands in the center, with a Good Shepherd immediately
to the right and an Orante immediately to the left. Continuing left is a Jonah
cycle, first Jonah resting, then Jonah cast out of the ketos, and finally Jonah
in the boat. To the extreme left side stands a river god. To the right of the
Good Shepherd there is a baptism of Jesus with a dove descending. Jesus is young,
nude, and quite small next to the older, bearded John the Baptist. A pastoral
scene concludes the right end"

The evidence presented in "Ante pacem" -- that is "Before the Peace [of Constantine] - is clearly
being presented with an extraordinary degree of hegemonic poetic/artistic licence. At the end of
the day people may ask you what evidence do you believe in for "christian church life" before the appearance
of Constantine, and you will be able to cite "THE Baptism of Jesus" and Graydon Snyder.

Good luck!

Do the SBL publish archaeological "evidence" such as this?
Have any contributors to the SBL challenged Snyder's "evidence"?

People tell me all the time there is plenty of "evidence" before Constantine.

mountainman

I can see the contempt but not the logic.
What is the logic of your contempt Doug?
Is it expressible?

OLDMAN

But it is certain a large christian population existed in Rome at the time of Constantine.
Most of them were commoners and slaves and not the citizens of Rome. But Constantine need the backing of the people because he did not have backing in the senate. His move to christianity gave him the support (at least in numbers) to return to Rome as ruler.
We would have to think that the upper class (who owned slaves) and interacted with the working class, would have had a pretty good handle on what the religion was all about. Constantines move was well calculated and gave him the appearance of a new christian ruler. Which by most standards would have been forgiving of his enemies.
As for art? Probably not much works were done till after the ruling class came on board.

mountainman

This traditional certainty has little if any evidence to substantiate itself. If one methodically and skeptically examines all the citations presented in this standard text "Church Life before Constantine" one is capable of readily perceiving that the "evidence on display" is to say the least extremely tenditous. The "Church History" which was lavishly published along with the "Church Canon" and "Preparation Manuals" and "Geopgraphical Almanacs" and "History of the Martyrs" (and possibly even the "Historia Augusta") voluminously asserts that the "Nation of Christians is not extinct until this day". We have little if any evidence to corroborate this assertion. What would you personally tender as evidence in support?

That is precisely what the evidence suggests -- an explosion of Emperor-centric jesus figures in the 4th century. But what as for inscriptions? Some highly tenditious inscriptions cataloged by the Papal sponsorship of the Papal archaeologist de Rossi mid 19th century are being presented in "Church Life before Constantine".

We have no christian churches or christian church-houses identified by the archaeologists before Constantine despite the assertions of their existence by Eusebius. We have a third rate monumental church structure, namely the christian "house-church", spotlighted for royal treatment in "Church Life before Constantine". This is of course the Dura-Europos "house church" which has been suspected to be a christian exemplar on the basis of the artworks and murals which purportedly adorned its walls. It was shipped back to Yale Divinity College in the late 1920's for "restoration works".

As for other evidence? The coinage of the Roman Emperors sponsors the Graeco-Roman (or "pagan" if you dont mind the anachronism) gods and their families. The papyri fragments themselves do not certainly wave dates before Constantine. None of the "Early Christian papyri" are dated with any certainty, and none have been C14 dated. Their "early dating" is a direct result of a signed attestation by a duly qualified paleographer - there is nothing "certain" in this process.

The population of christians in the Roman empire has been conjecturally estimated by a great range of people. Every single one of these estimates has been derived from one of two AUTHORITATIVE sources: 1) The new testament canon, and 2) the literary output of "Eusebius".

I can understand if you are willing to place your trust in these authorities. Likewise I hope you can understand that I refuse to accept this authority and therefore I am simply questioning these traditional authorities by searching for any non-tenditious corroborating evidence from the field of ancient history. Do you have any such evidence to bring to this discussion?

Toto

3rd century inscriptions a ring inscribed to Jesus Christ (no nomina sacra)

3rd -4th century symbols has a charm with XREISTOU

PhilosopherJay

Hi Toto,

This is excellent and interesting. I am wondering about this association with fish and shepherds. It does not appear obvious why these things are associated with Jesus.

Consider the fish, Jesus and some of his apostles are fishermen and Jesus does say to Peter, "I will make you fisher of men." But shouldn't this mean that Jesus and his followers should be connected with fishermen and not fish? It might imply that I am a fish that Jesus has caught, but that is a strangely derogatory representation. Who wants to be compared to a fish?

There is the good shepherd parable in the gospel of John only. That hardly seems to fit with Jesus very well:

Portraying people as sheep is again quite derogatory. I guess the message is that we people are like his sheep and he died for his sheep like a good shepherd. Would not the reaction of any Roman citizen be, "He died for his sheep. Isn't that stupid? A man dying for his sheep is an utter fool, but a god dying for his sheep is just utter foolishness."

Can we be sure that these symbols of Fish and Shepherds really have anything to do with the Christianity that we know?

As far as the inscription, I think that is interesting that as read the words would form a rhyme




I believe the words would be pronounced Yessou Chrestou. This is very much like "hocus pocus" or "abra cadabra" We know that these words were used in exorcisms. It might have been that the charms with these words on them were sold just as exotic magic charms, with people producing and buying them having no relationship to any Christian Church at all.

Analogously, Picasso had an interest in African Masks and some of his paintings include African Masks. However it would be a mistake to assume that these paintings came from Africa or were bought by Africans.



I wonder if there is any literature that really ties these symbols to the early Christian Church?

Warmly,

Philosopher Jay

Toto

The fish symbol: The fish symbol was probably a pagan symbol taken over by Christians (it also seems to have been popular with Hellenistic Jews) so I don't think the symbol itself can be used to prove anything. But there is a long tradition connecting the fish symbol with Christians, attested to by Clement and Tertullian, who was happy to compare himself to a fish.

I doubt if early Christians saw the symbolic fish and sheep as derogatory. Both could be connected to astrological symbols, which have a long history.

I'm not claiming that we really know much about these Christians. But I think they are the forerunners of Christians we do know about, and evidence that Eusebius did not invent Christianity out of thin air.

Now I think you are grasping. The only reason the words rhyme is that they are in the same case. And why would a non-Christian use the words Jesus Christ in an incantation?

You might have heard that Hocus Pocus might be a corruption of the Latin Eucharist phrase "Hic est corpus meum."

See above.

And I don't think anyone would confuse Picasso's African-inspired masks with the real thing.

Doug Shaver

I have expressed the logic many times. If you have failed to see it, I'm not the least bit surprised.

avi

Thank you for the links, Toto, much obliged.

I am uncertain about the dates of those rings portrayed in your links, purportedly 2nd-third centuries, not fourth.

Here is a little different view of the significance of chi-rho as it first appeared on the helmet in 315CE.
How do we know the age of those rings, supposedly a century, or even two centuries earlier????

avi