Vorkosigan

Change your underwear folks, because you all are gonna crap yourselves. I believe I have just slain Hegesippus for good. Look at this! Here's the one on Antinous, the gay lover of Hadrian whom he deified.

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Hegesippus:
In their honour they erected cenotaphs and temples, as they still do. One of these was Antinous, a slave of Hadrian Caesar's, in memory of whom the Antinoian Games are held. He was my own contemporary. Hadrian even built a city called after him, and appointed prophets.
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This is lifted from Pausanius:

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Pausanius (115-180)
"Antinous too was deified by them; his temple is the newest in Mantineia. He was a great favorite of the Emperor Hadrian. I never saw him in the flesh, but I have seen images and pictures of him. He has honors in other places also, and on the Nile is an Egyptian city named after Antinous. He has won worship in Mantineia for the following reason. Antinous was by birth from Bithynium beyond the river Sangarius, and the Bithynians are by descent Arcadians of Mantineia. For this reason the Emperor established his worship in Mantineia also; mystic rites are celebrated in his honor each year, and games every four years. There is a building in the gymnasium of Mantineia containing statues of Antinous, and remarkable for the stones with which it is adorned, and especially so for its pictures. Most of them are portraits of Antinous, who is made to look like Dionysus" VIII, 9, 7-8
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Look at the first sentence(!); in H the mysterious reference to "they" who dedicate temples and cenotaphs makes no sense, but in Paus it connects to the previous paragraph. The sentence in H appears to be a reworking of the one in Paus. One paragraph was composed on the other; each contains the same info -- the city in Egypt, the appointment of prophets/mystic rites, games/games. H only adds that Antinous was a slave of Hadrian. Look what happens when you eliminate the stuff about Mantineia.

Antinous too was deified by them; his temple is the newest [ ]. He was a great favorite of the Emperor Hadrian. I never saw him in the flesh, but I have seen images and pictures of him. He has honors in other places also, and on the Nile is an Egyptian city named after Antinous. [ ].. mystic rites are celebrated in his honor each year, and games every four years. [ ]

One need only replace the comment about "not meeting him in the flesh" with "he was my own contemporary" and bingo! We have Hegesippus.

We don't even need to see the rest of his stuff -- he's obviously a creation. Although I have tracked down some stuff I will have up on website, probaby tomorrow.

Purely for FYI, I found it on this site that seriously advocates for a new gay worship of Antinous:

http://www.antinopolis.org/catechism.html

The reason for the mention of Antinous is some kind of in-comment. Antinous is lambasted by Athenagoras, Clement of A, Justin Martyr, Jerome, H, Tertullian, Origen, Athanasius, and Eusebius. It looks like a passing comment, but its not, for the Carpocrations taught at the City of Antinous in Egypt, according to that site. I don't know quite how it fits yet....
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Another FYI, Jay, on the Clement/H interrelationship -- Clement of A also has a passage on Antinous:

Clement of Alexandria Exhortation to the Greeks

"Another new deity was added to the number with great religious pomp in Egypt, and was near being so in Greece by the king of the Romans, who deified Antinous, whom he loved as Zeus loved Ganymede [a reference to homosexuality - V], and whose beauty was of a very rare order: for lust is not easily restrained, destitute as it is of fear; and men now observe the sacred nights of Antinous, the shameful character of which the lover who spent them with him knew well. Why reckon him among the gods, who is honoured on account of uncleanness? And why do you command him to be lamented as a son? And why should you enlarge on his beauty? Beauty blighted by vice is loathsome. Do not play the tyrant, O man, over beauty, nor offer foul insult to youth in its bloom. Keep beauty pure, that it may be truly fair. Be king over beauty, not its tyrant. Remain free, and then I shall acknowledge thy beauty, because thou hast kept its image pure: then will I worship that true beauty which is the archetype of all who are beautiful. Now the grave of the debauched boy is the temple and town of Antinous. For just as temples are held in reverence, so also are sepulchres, and pyramids, and mausoleums, and labyrinths, which are temples of the dead, as the others are sepulchres of the gods."

Vorkosigan

Vorkosigan

This perhaps implicates E in this forgery. Because the lead-in by E connects the first sentence of H to the presumed text in H preceding it. But there is no such text, apparently! So what is E referring to? It looks more and more to me that all of H's comments are expansions of second-century writings. Thus, we must choose between:

1) Eusebius forged H
2) H is a forgery in five volumes based on extant writings and expanded
3) H is real history with some forgery in it, and E by unlucky chance has picked only passages that were forged.

(1) looks like the most parsimonious at the moment.

Perhaps some resolute defender of E might step in with a defence.

Vorkosigan

PhilosopherJay

Hi Vorkosigan,

By George, He's got it.

Good work.

My epiphany came about two months ago with the temple line. The fingerprints were enough to convince me, your DNA evidence hopefully will convince the more skeptical.

Note the line "In their honour they erected cenotaphs and temples, as they still do." The "as they still do" phrase is quite similar in concept to the "and his monument still remains by the temple" phrase, which is similar to the Testimonium phrase, "continues down to the present day."

It seems that Eusebius has this tic or habit of making some reference to the present day (they still do, still remains, continues to the present day) when he is forging text supposedly from an old author. This may be helpful in detecting more of his little inventions.

Speaking of the Testimonium, I'm not sure if anyone has mentioned it, but I am certain Eusebius first invented it for the "Demonstratio Evangelica," and not for the "Church History."

Most of the time in arguing that the Testimonium is false, critics point out that it does not fit in with Josephus' argument that Pilate was cruel to the Jews. This is perfectly true, but it does fit perfectly into an argument by Eusebius.

If one goes to Eusebius' Demonstratio Evangelica, Book 3,chapter 5, now online at http://www.tertullian.org/fathers/eu...5_book3.htm#78, one sees immediately where the Testimonium does fit.

Eusebius has been arguing two main points before this, 1) The Hebrew prophets foretold everything about Jesus accurately, and 2)that the works of the disciples can be trusted because after betraying Christ at the crucifixion, it was the miracle of his resurrection that brought the Disciples back together and they stuck together unto their deaths for him.

He turns to Josephus and finds amazingly that Josephus has stated exactly these two principle points in his short Testimonium.

We can be quite certain that Eusebius created the Testimonium while writing this document on the spur of the moment. It is his arguments that the Testimonium are meant to bolster, not any arguments by Josephus. His use of the passage in his History of Church Martyrs was later and secondary.

The appearance of the invented text inside our manuscripts of Josephus would tend to indicate that he not only invents passages for his own works, but also rewrites the text of the original work to add the invented text.

I assume if Hegesippus had existed, Eusebius would have rewritten him too and we would certainly have Eusebius' edited version. I am certain he never existed. Eusebius is just reaching deeper into his bag of tricks. He truthfully deserves the title of "Father of Christian History."

Warmly,

Jay Raskin

Ted Hoffman

Very interesting. I am still trying to absorb all this.

Notsri

Hey, Vorkosigan. Very interesting stuff. Just a couple comments:


"Makes no sense" - assuming there was no preceding text in Hegesippus to make the necessary connection. It appears you're sort of begging the question here.


Maybe. But it doesn't necessarily follow that Hegesippus isn't the one that did the reworking, as both apparently flourished in the same century.


Let's add 4) (or maybe revise #3?): H wrote Memoirs, and may have plagiarized a bit from other authors; E preserved at least one such possible instance in H.E.

regards,
Notsri

Ted Hoffman

Suspect number one is Eusebius because in early Christian history (besides Papias), no one is as suspect as him - he is the first to quote the TF - the TF turns out to be an interpolation. He is the first to mention and use Hegessipus - we find no copies of Hegessipus elsewhere. He uses Clement ambiguously and makes incredulous miraculous claims for a man of his stature and things that contradict his claims - like Josephus' lost reference that was cited by Origen - which made James the Just a 'powerhouse' on his own - have gone missing.
Plus his usages of "they still do", "still remains" and "continues to the present day".

Vorkosigan

Actually, believe it or not, as soon as I saw the opening line of the Pausanius quote, I knew this was the one. I didn't even finish reading the quote before I started writing this thread. Wham! Epiphany. I discuss your objection further down.

It wouldn't, ordinarily. If this were the only quote that wasn't a reworking or expansion of other texts, then you'd have a solid objection. Unfortunately for that argument I can show that all of the H cites are reworkings of extant material, except for the Symeon cites and family of Jesus stuff (three workings of the same material, but I can't find the original). I'm still working on those.

The fact is that at least several of the cites in H are reworking of other material. What links E is that devastating first line. Since the text is a reworking of extant material, there is no other text with it. The whole thing is self-contained. But E has a lead-in to that first line. How can that be if there is no material other than what we see in front of us? The answer is simple: E has constructed that, and altered the text to make sure that the first and second line of the H quote connect.

You see, if the quote is authentic to some other text, why the information in the last line?

H: In their honour they erected cenotaphs and temples, as they still do. One of these was Antinous, a slave of Hadrian Caesar's, in memory of whom the Antinoian Games are held. He was my own contemporary. Hadrian even built a city called after him, and appointed prophets.

If he was citing a text that was sitting in front of him, why add the last line? The natural place to end the quote is after the word "contemporary." The last line is extraneous to E's purpose, which is to place H's flourit, not to describe Antinous. But the reason the passage describes Antinous is that's what it did originally. So E, with his usual tongue-sticking-out-of-his-mouth concentration, slavishly followed the original text. If you like, take out H's reference to his own flourit:

H: In their honour they erected cenotaphs and temples, as they still do. One of these was Antinous, a slave of Hadrian Caesar's, in memory of whom the Antinoian Games are held. Hadrian even built a city called after him, and appointed prophets.

What we have is a completely self-contained passage about Antinous, in the stream-of-thought-style of Pausanius. (see the entire passage above)

Further, it is easy to see why E picked Antinous. Worship of Antinous was very widespread in the ancient world, and the Christians from Athenogoras to Jerome bitched about him. It must have come to him very naturally, sparked by the passage in Justin Martyr, which he lists next. Further, just previously he had been discussing Carpocrates. Right after mentioning Carpocrates, who he links with unnatural practices, he then segues to H, who "did battle" for the Church, and then to describing the "five short books, in the simplest style" and then directly to H's flourit, which mentions Antinous, who was famous, of course, for unnatural love (which puts us in mind of the Secret Gospel of Mark and its intimations of homosexual intimacy).

We've ruled that out by identifying other instances.

I'm still working all this out. Thanks for being a foil for my ideas.

Vorkosigan

PhilosopherJay

Hi All,

I noted in my previous post the "tropism" or "tell" in Eusebius that he adds a phrase like "till the present day" when writing fictitious passages. I found another one.

Note the passage at Church History 4:1.

1.Note that Quadratus also ends his discussion of miraculous happenings with the observation that the miracles are continuing "even to our day."

We may alternatively suggest that Eusebius just happens to be drawn towards passages in Josephus, Hegesippus and Quadratus which contain the concept of miraculous things happening down to the present day. We must then consider him quite lucky that this concept seems to appear at the end of passages, in diverse authors, that just happen to be proving arguments he is trying to make.

We may also note that Quadratus, like Hegesippus just happens to give away the age in which he lived in the appropriate passage.

In this case, Eusebius need not have been so sharp eyed in discovering the age in which Quadratus lived from a passage about Jesus' miracles still being present. He could have discovered the age in which Quadratus lived by simply looking at the first line of his "Apology to Trajan," as it must certainly have contained Trajan's name.

As with Hegesippus, Quadratus' work, although "still in the hands of a great many of the brethren, as also in our own," seems to have disappeared as soon as Eusebius quoted it. We may put him on our list of fabulous inventions of Eusebius.

Warmly,

Jay Raskin

Bede

Guys,

I don't want to rain on anyone's parade but I'm not sure we've got much here.

First, Photius refers to book three of H's memoirs so they certainly existed. Second, Vork, you will have to check the Greek before you draw any conclusions. In English we like to say "they said/did so and so" but Greek prefers impersonal verbs "it was said/done". You might well find you've got no grammatical link through the third person plural in your passages. And if you don't have that you don't have anything at all as the sentence you point to in H isn't even about Antonius, he just pops up as an example in the next sentence. Third, you'll need more than one very dodgy example to show that H was forged in the whole cloth. Fourth, you are all starting from the conjecture, unproven, that E was a forger. Thus you build conclusion on conjecture and pile a suggestion on top of that for good measure. But the whole lot is resting on nothing at all other than your initial assertions. Raskin linking his unproven assertions about E and Josephus to his equally unproven assertions about H and the new guy is a case in point. The only pattern Raskin has identified in his latest post is "and it is still there today", a trope still so common in gizzilions of stories that finding it a few times in E tells us nothing except E was using typical sources with typical tropes.

So, we can hang onto our pants and see if anyone can produce something where the evidence is a bit more than just a personal epiphany.

Yours

Bede

Bede's Library - faith and the reason

Notsri

I thought I would share this, as it'll no doubt be of some interest. It's a part of passage from Lawlor & Oulton's translation of Church History, vol. 2, pp. 90-91. There are actually two parts to what follows; I've only included one here. If I get some time, I'll post the rest.
Incidentally, Lawlor & Oulton think Irenaeus & Epiphanius relied directly on Memoirs as well.