Toto

This is a favorite topic here, so this essay may be of interest.

Church History and Forgery by Antonio Lombatti

The author writes mostly in Italian at www.antoniolombatti.it

avi

Thank you Toto, this is of course music to my ears. But the problem is this: how do we know, other than by logic and intuition, that Mr. Lombatti is correct? Maybe, on the contrary, ALL of the forgery was committed NOT in the middle ages, but in the first few centuries, say from CE 135 onwards, i.e. the beginning of the myth, from my point of view.

By the time of Constantine, almost two hundred years later, perhaps there existed so much confusion, that the emperor declared how the truth would be elaborated from that point on, and ever since, the monks have been faithfully copying texts WITHOUT forging them, contrary to Mr. Lombatti's assertion.

Let us consider, for example, the paradox of P45, supposedly created in the third century CE, according to many authorities, including our own Greek experts on this forum. P45 is supposedly the oldest extant copy of Mark.

The text is very different from the "accepted" standard, Codices Sinaiticus and Vaticanus--i.e. Hort&Westcott, and very similar to the versions of the 9th-11th centuries, the time frame of Mr. Lombatti's argument.

Look at Mark 7: 31, and the long arguments we had on this forum, last winter, regarding the proper interpretation of "dia".

P45 doesn't even have the word in Mark 7:31.

So, then, what? Are we supposed to believe that the forgery had been committed BEFORE P45, or after it? Somebody forged something, because the extant oldest manuscripts are very different from one another. But, do we know who? When? Why? or Where? The only thing we are relatively confident about, is that these differences in text preceded the middle ages by nearly a thousand years.

I don't have the slightest idea when the ideologically most significant forgery occurred. I also doubt that Mr. Lombatti knows either, whether he writes in Italian, or Latin, or any other language.

avi

mountainman

Were the "Historia Augusta", the "Historia Ecclesiastica" and the BIBLE produced
in the one and the same 4th century Imperial Constantinian Scriptoria ?

The "Historia Augusta" is a known forgery of the 4th century which on all counts is most likely to have been produced in a "collegiate" manner in an imperial scriptorium. It has been described as "something like an ancient mockumentary" in which a key "aspect of the game is the fake date".

The "Historia Ecclesiastica" was produced by Eusebius who is generally admited also to have been the first editor-in-chief of the "Constantine Bible" and it is thus reasonable to conjecture that these two works may have been produced in the same scriptorium - the one which Eusebius presided over.

The question which begs to be asked and answered is whether this same "Eusebian controlled Scriptoria" was also the one which was responsible for the production of the "Historia Augusta". If this is the case, it is reasonable to be suspicious that both the "Historia Ecclesiastica" and the "Constantine Bible" are also forgeries.

And remember, where you have a concentration of power in a few hands,
all too frequently men with the mentality of gangsters get control.
History has proven that. Power corrupts,
and absolute power corrupts absolutely.

--- Acton

Assessing Constantine as a "barbarian" gangster is not difficult at all. As "The Boss" he could afford to send "The Boss's Mother" on very successful (although totally unbelievable) archaeological search and retrieve missions to "The Holy Land" for the holy relics of Jesus. The Holy Relics of Jesus only begin to start turning up with "The Boss's Mother".

The 1st two "Christian Pilgrims" were related to "The Boss"

How quaint is that?

But were the "Historia Augusta", the "Historia Ecclesiastica" and the BIBLE
produced in the one and the same 4th century Imperial Constantinian Scriptoria?
Will time tell?

Roger Pearse

I don't know who Lombatti is, but he appears to know very little about his chosen subject; too little, indeed, to appreciate the difference between literary and epigraphical material, and the very different ways in which these come to be forged.

judge

Holy Jebus! The most prolific forgers of all time!
Um...just what did they forge. It must have been a lot of stuff if they were the most prolific forgers of all time.

Roger Pearse

It can help us understand these sorts of argument if we see the atheism that is responsible as a version of protestantism; the negative protestantism that consisted mainly of hostility to papists. Here I think we are seeing just this; material from anti-papist polemic of the 16-19th centuries, and hostility to the "monkish religion" as part of it.

The allegations fall into a number of not strongly related groups:

1. When Henry VIII seized the monasteries (by Mugabe-style methods) he justified it by producing "weeping statues" and the like which were fake. The allegation is that the monks produced these "miraculous" items, which drew pilgrims and therefore revenue for the monastery. The production of fake relics for this purpose, allegedly by monks, is a staple allegation of this period. (I have never researched any of this, so am not taking a position here on the truth or otherwise of the claims; particularly given that it was used as a pretext to seize their property).

2. During the middle ages there was great reliance on charters for property. If you had a robber baron trying to seize the abbey lands, a royal or papal charter might be your only weapon. A consequence was that it was profitable to forge these. But another consideration is that, during the Dark Ages, not every grant of land by an illiterate monarch was done in writing. As writing became important during the middle ages, some of these grants were recorded at that time. These then looked "forged" to later generations. Likewise there were "forged decretals" which stated that abbeys were immune to local baronial interference, in favour of a (very remote) papal authority.

3. In the 17-18th century arguments about whether protestantism or catholicism was legitimate involved arguments over patristic texts. It was a common argument by the former that the latter interpolated inconvenient testimonies in the texts (usually wrongly, in later opinion).

And so on. (Have to run now)

Roger Pearse

Dutch_labrat

All original texts are suspect to a degree. Too powerful people and organisations had too much interest. Almost anything we have now exist because those in power allowed it to remain.

Solo

Do I understand you correctly in that you believe these allegations of pious forgery were possibly false, i.e. that these relics might have been producing real miracles and that the property seizures for fraud were likely motivated by the king's greed ?

Jiri

Minimalist

Why is that? Because he disagrees with you?

squiz

I saw your comments on the bibleinterp page. I'm surprised you haven't heard of him Roger. Personally I would refrain from wildly accusing people of being amateurs, just because you disagree with them.