post tenebras lux

Regarding your linky Chris (and your further linky from neonostalgia to christiancourier): do you really find that credible? :huh:

The writers think that the gap between 1945 (when the ossuaries with charcoal crosses were found) and 2002 (when the James, son of Joseph, brother of Jesus ossuary was found) was 'two decades'. Which makes me wonder how much thought they were putting into what they wrote.

Additionally, a few photos of the ossuaries would have been nice as well, or didn't The Archaeological Institute of America have any photos in its full report? :huh:
Carving letters into stone or scribbling with charcoal - very different methods: why would they be used together? Hello Sukenik! Earth calling Sukenik! That's called a flight of fancy and causes me to start wondering if he and the Hebrew University might have had a motive to find early christian stuff in Jerusalem in 1945 ....
I'm no expert, which is why I get confused when I'm told here that early (greek-writing) christians wrote Iesous when Toto (in this post) links to an article on the church at Megiddo which claims that the early (greek-writing) christians used the nomina sacra of Ι[ΗΣΟ]Υ.

Why would there be two different spellings of Jesus floating around? Especially if they were using his name on ossuaries in 42AD!

Ruhan

This thread has gone off the topic to a degree. This is not about Eusebius' role in the formation of Christian theology as such.

Roger Pearse is 100% correct in stating that it was a myth that the Biblical canon was decided upon at Nicea. This did not happen and we see no canons produced by anyone for at least 2 years after the event.

It was in 327 CE that Eusebius lists his canon which both excluded and included the book of Revelation (go figure). He also excluded James, 2 John and 2 Peter from his canon.

So Roger Pearse's statement stands. Tying the canonization of the Bible to council of Nicea is a myth. Even at the Synod of Laodicea in 363 CE they still had not decided on the version of the canon which we have today as they excluded the book of Revelation.

mountainman

Roger Pearse stated "The Christian bible certainly was not composed
at Nicaea, despite a myth to this effect that goes around". There was
no mention of the word "canon". What was said is incorrect.

It was at Nicaea that the new and the old testaments were
first bound together into the one volume aka "the bible". What
was bound at Nicaea was not substantially altered by later
councils.



Pete Brown

Ruhan

Pete,

I would be interested to see what evidence you have for this? I am not aware of any Bible being bound at the council of Nicea. It's even disputed if the topic of the Bible came up at all. The bible was not composed or canonised at Nicea.

You really need to seperate Eusebius' actions from Nicea as he might have been responsible for interpolations of the text, but this did not occur at Nicea.

Regards,

Ruhan

darstec

I don't know how many councils you have sat on, but I can tell you from personal experience that two years is considerable quick for anything to have happened by commitee. And I live in a society when communication happens instantaneously.

Your agrument fails.

Ruhan

Prove it.

We have no records of the canon being decided upon or the actual books being "composed" at the council which lasted a very short period of time and it was essentially held to discuss Jesus' divinity, not the Bible.

Roger Pearse's point (I believe) was just there is no evidence for the idea that the Bible was either composed or canonised at Nicea. I.e. It's an internet myth.

gstafleu

First, that hypothesis should be testable by doing text analyses using word frequencies and so on. That is a pretty standard tool to determine authorship. If your hypothesis holds all texts should fit the profile of a single author. Does anyone know if such tests have already be done?

Second, your hypothesis seems to run into the same problems as the people who want to have the earth created some 6000 years ago run into: fossils. The 6K crowd "solves" that by having the fossils created with the rest. How do you solve your fossils?

Here are some examples of fossils. The philosophy that can be extracted from the NT follows in a pretty straightforward way from then current thought, both Jewish and Hellenistic. Robert Price shows this in great detail in "Deconstructing Jesus" and "The Incredible Shrinking Son of Man." An example is "love your enemies" that in another thread someone presented as sui generis to Jesus. It isn't, Seneca and Epictetus said similar things.

Now it of course could be that Euseby, a few hundred years later, knew all this and managed to make a document that neatly fit into the time frame... But how likely is that?

Another fossil is the struggle between Jewish and Gentile thought. Paul being towards the Gentile side, the epistles of James and Peter being more towards the Jewish side. We see the same in the Gospels, where sometimes we find that not an iota of the (Mosaic) law will be abolished, and sometimes we find that Jesus sets it aside.

Then we have the traces of the Qumran group we can find, see the work of Eisenman. Good old Euseby managed to write all this into his fiction?

Talking about fossils, how about the Nag Hammadi library? Sure, they are dated 350-400 or so, fits your time frame. So Euseby somehow created these documents (not these physical copies necessarily, of course) and somehow caused them to be widely seen as heretical and buried by the Nag Hammadi monks?

Awaiting the results of the word frequency tests, all this could indeed have happened. But it puts a much to large burden of creative and organizational genius on the shoulder of one man, Euseby. Possible of course, but without some solid evidence that it indeed happened not a very likely hypothesis.

darstec

At what council was the canon determined? Is that substantiated by any minutes of the meeting?

Ruhan

At the The Synod of Laodicea in 363 CE they did have an official announcement in regards to the canon, however it was slightly different from our canon in that they excluded Revelation, which the early church deemed to be heretical.

It was not until 1546 CE at the Council of Trent when the canon we have today (including Revelation) was officially recognized as an article of faith.

Regards,

Ruhan

mountainman

Firstly, Roger Pearse provided the reference for Constantine ordering
the additional 50 copies of "this bible" earlier. It was from "The Life
of the Blessed Emperor" by Eusebius. This probably happened after
the council, at which there would have been at least one original
copy, I think we can reasonably assume.

Secondly, for the moment I have forgotten the reference, but I
think it is again Eusebius writing about his Canon Tables, which
provides further information about this original bible, and how in
fact the new and the old texts were first bound together.

From this blueprint future generations took their source.


The hypothesis is that the new testament was fabricated out of the
whole cloth under imperial sponsorship during the years 312-324 CE.
Eusebius during this time also perverted much patristic literature,
and generated much fiction, in relation to the history of the new
and strange religion. This is a mass of literature, but Constantine
had the resources and the inclination.

As soon as Constantine became supreme, he called Nicaea.
At Nicaea, standing at arms length from his fabrication of the
Galialaeans, he promoted the new god and scriptural texts.
He ran the show at Nicaea, unequivocably. He brought the
representative attendees of the empire, whom he had earlier
personally summoned to Nicaea, to harmony and concord,
the angels sang, there were miracles at the Council, and he
got their signatures in black and white, against the big
disclaimer clause of the Nicaean Creed:

"There was a time when He was not"
"He was made out of nothing existing"

We consider these words not about theology, but history.
We use these words to support consideration of a fiction.


Pete Brown
http://www.mountainman.com.au/essenes/index.htm