mountainman

Rat Cunning

I think you are expecting to find intelligent logic at work in the most holy and highly revered books of the canonical new testament. But I think these books were fabricated and assembled with a rat-cunning logic. The contradictions were purposefully deployed to engender questions, which would be answered by the authority of the bishops.

A tabulation of the contradictions in the gospels was purposefully published with each bible, in the form of the Ammonian Canon Tables (sometimes refered to as the Eusebian Canon Tables). The name of the father of Neoplatonism, Ammonius, was associated with the formulation of these LOGICALLY exhaustively definitive lists of contradictions. Examine these canon tables, present with each Bible codex. These tables existed from the beginning because of the contradictions. They were built.

The expectation that a centralised power would formulate a clear, intelligent and consistent non-contradictory citation base for its figurehead assumes the organisation values intelligence over rat cunning fabrication. A monstrous tale can be fabricated by rat cunning. The academic assumption that the fabrication used academic intelligence may not be appropriate. We must deal with the evidence and the times themselves. The times were depraved and barbaric. Those (warlords) who survived and were successful often lied and cheated their way to the top, had massive spy networks, and employed rat-cunning initiatives. Lest we forget.

Duvduv

If one can picture what it was like for a Christian sect that possesed only the original GMark as a text BEFORE any text became holy writ and Scripture, I can imagine a person asking about these gentiles and their Christ religion as to why the GMark was all they had on their messiah.
What kind of religion would only have one little book of a story of their messiah without any additional manuals, histories, teachings, etc.
Where was this ostensible group and who were they under such circumstances if such group actually existed, armed with only a single gospel that was not even considered a divine scripture yet, and for which there is no evidence such a group ever existed??

Huon

Not only these dispersed small groups had a holy book, still not trademarked, but they could speak to their neigbours. A group of 100 persons living in a big town like Alexandria, Antioch, or Rome, can live unremarked for a while. This happened in the first half of the second century.

mountainman

In an underground back-office near Rome.

Eusebius provided the manuals, maps, histories, ready-reckoners, etc.



A bunch of "Early Christians" got lucky and sold the Roman Emperor on the idea of extended publishing rights.

He was so impressed he bought the company. It happens all the time.

Duvduv

This doesn't really address my question. What kind of group is known to have existed where which adhered to one little book called GMark (or the Sayings of Chairman Jesus) as a self-identified sect? There is no evidence that such existed.

Duvduv

Were these "early Christians" competing sects with competing story books about the history of a holy man/messiah named Jesus? And of what use is a single little book for a relatively tiny group to focus on? What practical significance would such a book have in the lives of the believers if they identified themselves as a separate group or groups?

I know that Lin Biao created the Little Red Book of the Sayings of Chairman Mao, and Qadaffi had his Green Book, and the North Koreans had a book of the teachings of Kim Il Sung, but I don't quite see that this case at hand is the same.

mountainman

According to Eusebius, an unknown orthodox canon-following Serapion reports that he walked into a Gnostic library and “borrowed” a copy of the heretical non canonical gnostic text of the Gospel of Peter, read it and then condemned it.

Therefore on the surface, if we are to believe the history of the competing early sects (i.e. there were two major groups - the orthodox canonical book followers and the heretical non canonical book followers) both were diametrically opposed underground groups which preserved a different set of competing story books about the character called "Jesus"





The canon-followers appear to have a desire for conformity, standardization, and control of the Jesus message, and at the same time, consistently express open intolerance for the non canonical books, which were supposed to have been authored by vile heretics who would later be referred to as "the son(s) of the Devil".

Eusebius wants us to know that there was a great battle being fought by the faithful and the unfaithful over which set of books one was to follow. This conflict appears to have really exploded at Nicaea. Ultimately we need to question the scale of the conflict - before and after the Nicaean publication of the canonical books by Constantine.

As students of history we should expect the conflict after Nicaea to be raised out of the obscure squabbling of two competing book-following sects, to the open political environment of the entire Roman Empire, because the canonical books were selected and then widely published by the Roman Emperor as the "Holy Writ" of his centralised monothetheistic state religion.

The profane history and politics of the epoch between Nicaea 325 CE and the end of the 4th century have yet to be reconstructed from the pseudo-historical "ecclesiastical histories" of the 5th century heresiological victors.


To this end, the book by Charles Freeman: The Closing Of The Western Mind - The Rise of Faith and the Fall of Reason (or via: amazon.co.uk) and the more recent, shorter book, AD 381: Heretics, Pagans and the Christian State (or via: amazon.co.uk) do an admirable job of the reconstruction of the history of the later 4th century.

"We must not see the fact of usurpation;
law was once introduced without reason, and has become reasonable.
We must make it regarded as authoritative, eternal, and conceal its origin,
if we do not wish that it should soon come to an end."

~ Blaise Pascal, "Pensees"

One Codex to rule them all, One Codex to find them,
One Codex to bring them all and in the darkness bind them

Centralised heresiological propaganda for a centralised heresiological monotheistic state.

Duvduv

If the New Testament developed from the first or second centuries when Christianity was just emerging, then it remains a mystery how some individuals such as Irenaeus or Origen could pronounce the existence of a CANON of NT scriptures. There was no Vatican, there was no official body pronouncing the canon, no central authority.

And for that matter, even individuals such as Athanasius or Eusebius could not pronounce the official status of a canon unless some CENTRAL AUTHORITY established it for all of "Christendom," including some of the so-called heretical sects who accepted the same texts.

The ONLY body that could have made a canon official for the entire religion would be a body or council sponsored officially by THE EMPEROR and his central regime, i.e. the Byzantine regime of the 4th and 5th centuries. What other body could pronounce an official canon for all "Christians" at any time earlier than the 4th or 5th century?!

mountainman

A fictitious and pseudo-historical organisation that was fabricated by those
who sought the establishment of a centralised monotheistic state cult.



See Ingsoc:

Further see the minutes to the "Council of Antioch" c.324/325 CE.

"Socrates critical questioning is a menace to the [centralised monotheistic] state "

aa5874

So, it is a very SIMPLE exercise to IDENTIFY the sources of antiquity that may have been written or manipulated in the 4th century or later.

All sources of antiquity that claimed that there was a Canon with Four Gospels, Acts of the Apostles and Pauline writings Before the Fall of the Temple c 70 CE are either invented or manipulated.

This is a partial list of authors whose writings were either fabricated or manipulated AFTER the NT Canon was established.

Ignatius, Clement of Rome, Clement of Alexandria, Irenaeus, Polycarp, Tertullian, and Origen.