Gamera

The difference between you and spin is, you properly admit that you are not familiar with this body of work on textuality and historiography, rather than dismiss it (and who among us is so well read as to be aware of everything that is going on in semiology and philosphy of historiography?).

So no one can doubt your good faith.

In contrast, knownothingism (which is spin's speciality) is never a virtue.

Hindley's links below do a good job adumbrating the issues.

Gamera

Nobody is suggesting that the historian intentionally ignore it. What is required, however, is that the historian have clarity about the basis on which such knowledge is relevant to understanding a text.

Generally (and regrettably) knowledge of an author usually reduces to psychological tidbits, which are then imported into the text. The idea is that psychology is paramount and determines meaning. That may be valid (though I doubt it), but if it is any historian following that assumption should at least be aware of it and at least give it some thought.

Closely related to this is biographical facts (which are often the basis for a psychological conclusion). The problem of privileging biography is of course that any biography is just another text subject to the same slippage of meaning and political/institutional pressures as the text that the subject of the biography is. So all this process does is substitute on text for another, and claim priority.

In contrast, knowledge about the biography of an author may be very relevant to the cultural and political context of a work (but then that's true about a lot of historical facts). I would certainly want to use information about an author to understand the context in which a particular text arose. But that doesn't mean we valorize this knowledge over against other knowledge we know about the context.

By the way, the same is true today. As most critics will tell you, what a living author says about his work is ofter quite useless, if not absolutely dead wrong. Norman Jewison insisted that Rollerball was about violence in sports. Nobody who's seen and thought about the film believes that for a second.

In short, political and institutional context is much more telling about a work than anything we could possibly know about an author.

Gamera

Barthes and Foucault might answer that the POV of the author is better grasped not by author biographies (i.e., other texts about the author of the text) or psychological speculation (which is usually the point of author biographies), but the political/instutional context in which the writer wrote.

That context produces a certain kind of author, which we can reconstruct (if we are so inclined), to understand the distance between the experience of history in antiquity and ourselves.

mountainman

There are two postulates of ancient history in the balance.

(1) The Eusebian history (including the NT) is authentic
(2) The Eusebian history (and NT) is fraudulent misprepresentation.

The implication of the first, which I understood was understood by all,
is that we are necessarily dealing with either an HJ, an MJ or a TJ
and associated literature arising in the first or second centuries
(the mainstream options), or an FJ (the Flavian Jesus of Joe Atwill) etc.

The implications of the second is that christians did not exist
on the planet until Eusebius wrote them into his literature.

The evidence that is available to us, for the period of the prenicene
epoch, is extremely sparse and is not unambiguous, and it is insufficient
in its own right to lend support to the mainstream option. If there did
exist archaeological evidence for "earlier christianity" the evidence
itself would mitigate towards the mainstream postulate (1), and against
the second postulate.

So we find that the two postulates cannot be decided on the basis of
extra-Eusebian evidence for the period in question. One of these
postulates is surely a red herring, but is it the mainstream one?
And how do we decide and/or evaluate the issue?



Mainstream approach the texts based on the Postulate (1) - Eusebian authenticity,
being assumed. Is this a prior commitment to the mainstream theory? Yes. It is.

You dont seem to understand that I am formally questioning the postulate
of Eusebian authenticity by instead considering an alternate postulate to
explain the events and evidence of ancient history: namely the postulate
that Eusebius delivered fiction at Nicaea.

The relative political power held by George Bush in the 21st century
and Constantine in the fourth century is in the order of this ant up the nose.
Bush is the ant.

Two postulates in the balance of historicity:

(1) The Eusebian history (including the NT) is authentic
(2) The Eusebian history (and NT) is fraudulent misprepresentation.



Two postulates in the balance of historicity:

(1) The Eusebian history (including the NT) is authentic

Here there is no "alternate history" (Postulate 2 is not considered)
Eusebian history is true, and Heggesipius is perhaps someone's ancestor.
No conjoin is required. Everything is hunky-dory. Truth was inserted
into the field of ancient history by Eusebius. Mainstream dribbles on.


(2) The Eusebian history (and NT) is fraudulent misprepresentation.

Implications are:

Before Eusebius took up his pen everyone was "pagan".
No sober academic of the Egypto-Graeco-Roman antiquity
had ever heard of "the nation of christians or Jesus the Galilaean".
People have trouble suspending emotional baggage with this thought.
You have to be able to be objective, and treat the exercise as
a necessary extention of the work of Arthur Drews, concerning the
witnesses for the historicity of Jesus. This second postulate
asks whether it was possible that the historicity of Jesus was
first published by Constantine, and before that time He was not.

The second postulate requires a physical insertion of fraudulent
history into the actual ancient history -- as an implication,
since the planet now promulgates its ancient history as if the
history of Eusebius were true.



Two postulates in the balance of historicity:

(1) The Eusebian history (including the NT) is authentic

Eusebius published the truth of matters 312-324 CE (including NT).

(2) The Eusebian history (and NT) is fraudulent misprepresentation.

Athanasius Kircher and the AbbÈ Hardouin argued that the whole
corpus of ancient literature, including the Fathers, up to about 900 A.D.
is a forgery. These theorists (without the technology of C14 citations)
argued that the fiction was inserted elsewhere in history.

I am arguing this insertion happened at the beginning - at Nicaea.



Isn't that the ant's pants question though Ted?

Noone before has asked the question other than by simultaneously
holding on to Postulate (1) as being true. I am trying to balance
the merit of Postulate (2).

My claim is that the Arian controvery is about history, and that
the words of Arius (after which the controversy was named) are to
be examined in the light of political history. Think of Arius as
a seditionist: "There was a time when this fiction was unpublished".


Of course the scale of the controversy would have been huge.
But see the comments about COnstantine's measure of (absolute) power.






I have here and elsewhere explicated these things:

1) the Arian controversy as being historical reaction to fiction.
2) the Julian's invectives controversy related to fiction.
3) the Nestorian controversy related to "fiction".
4) the tension between the CANON and the NON CANON as pagan polemic.

5) I am currently working on an index of 4th century "anathemas"
6) I am currently working on the Origenist controversies.



Think of Tibet around 1950.

Perhaps other places 2008.



Two postulates in the balance of historicity:

(1) The Eusebian history (including the NT) is authentic
(2) The Eusebian history (and NT) is fraudulent misprepresentation.


Constantine, Pontifex Maximus, Warlord, Commander of the Armies of the West,
and the Armies of the North, and the Armies of the South, and
finally Commander of the East. Supreme imperial mafia thug.

Do I need "to illustrate that "a great degree of power would be needed
to be brought to bear" or that "a great degree of power existed in one man?"





When politics is involved discussion appears to scatter.
I have attempted to engage in discussion over the letter
Constantine sent to Arius c.333 CE: (See here)

"Dear Arius Where Are you?" Letter:

A political analysis of a letter composed about 333 CE by Constantine, addressed to Arius and the Arians. Constantine would very much like to publically execute Arius, but he does not know exactly where Arius is - perhaps Syria. Arius is revealed as someone who had previously been conspicuous by his silence and unobtrusive character. He is described in the manner of an ascetic priest. Constantine is stung by the anti-christian polemic in the writings of Arius; Arius is the focus of belief in unbelief of Constantine's new political and religious initiatives. Constantine reveals that Arius "reproaches, grieves, wounds and pains the Church". A very nasty letter by a very nasty despot. Eventually Constantine manages to poison Arius, but before that time when Arius was no longer, he had composed a number of texts against the Pontifex Maximus' preferred and sponsored cult. These heretical writings were sought out by the authodox.

Again, I have posted this sort of stuff.
Other than the Bazaar of (Nestorius), for example,

351 CE: A Register of Popular Public Opinion about Jesus Christ
extracted from Hilary of Poitiers' De Synodis.

Promoted to Bishop in 350 CE, Hilary of Poitiers preserves a list of twenty-seven anathemas agreed upon by the Council of Sirmium c.351 CE. This list of twenty seven issues represented the troublesome public opinion faced by the authority of the authodoxy in the Eastern empire, and as such, highlights the public opinion at this time in the fourth century. Conspicuous by its presence at the primary position in the list, are the words of Arius, present in the first two opinions:

01: The Son is sprung from things non-existent,
or from another substance and not from God,
and that there was a time or age when He was not.

02: The Father and the Son are two Gods.

To an independent political observer, public opinion about Jesus is not at all positive and authodox, and reflects a position that he certainly is not to be regarded as coming from God, but rather has sprung from nothing existing. A new God has been invented. The literature of the new God (of Constantine) is fiction.

There are two postulates in the balance of historicity:

(1) The Eusebian history (including the NT) is authentic
(2) The Eusebian history (and NT) is fraudulent misprepresentation.


I would like to discuss framing both better.



I am comfortable with that. What I am trying to achieve
is an objective and balanced discussion of the theoretical
implications of both these postulates being true.

Obviously we all understand they are rather mutually exclusive
however this should not detract from the theoreticl analyses.
Both hypotheses have implications.

Nobody before AFAIK has serious considered the latter hypothesis
as a formal exercise. My attempts may in fact be poorly framed
and ill conceived but I am only human.




I have outlined above what we would actually find if the Eusebian fiction postulate were false. We would be looking for an HJ or an MJ or a TJ or indeed another FJ inside the first three centuries, since if Eusebius is true, the nation of christians then flourished somewhat.


These are first steps. It is new ground.

Sedition would be expected against COnstasntine's initiatives.
One of the major breakthroughs that I have identified in my
quest to ask that we consider both the pagan and the christian
view of history of the epoch of Constantine, is the recognition
that perhaps the entire genre (and at least all the ACTS) of
the non canonical christian NT literature can be explicated by
the hypothesis (2) - The Eusebian history (and NT) is fraudulent
misprepresentation - as anti-Constantinian sedition. The polemical
tractates of the ascetic pagan priesthood which Constantine
effectively dismantled 324 CE in his prohibition of pagan sacrifice
and thus the cessation of temple service .

I have posted numerously on the archaeological and literature
citations surrounding the "Healer god Asclepius/Imhotep". The
Boss obliterated ancient temples at the drop of a hat, etc.

The greatest evidence IMO for Eusebian fiction is the pagan
fiction represented in the apocrypha, if it can be recognised
that the chronology of the two sets are related by the event
of Constantine's (Pontifex Maximus') publication of Canon.

The writings of the new God were now subject to polemic.
It was sedition! The majesty of the emperor was furious.
Arius! Dear Arius! Where are you Arius? Why do you write
such bitter twisted weird fucking bullshit about my man Jesus?
Arius! Please come to The City of Constantine so that we
can talk. You wasted ascetic you.


Best wishes,



Pete Brown





PS: In summary ....

If they were regarding historical issues, list these historical issues people were fighting over. Please be clear. List them.
Controversial arguments like Pol/Paul/Apollos/Apollonius are tangential. Let us see historical issues and historical arguments because yours is a historical argument.


Over the course of the last two years I have incrementally
expanded the website articles associated with my thesis.
You will find all these articles related to historical sources.

www.mountainman.com.au/essenes

mountainman

Dear Jeffrey,

It is serious problems we all have to face because of the current devaluation of the notion of evidence and of the corresponding overappreciation of rhetoric and idealogy as instruments for the analysis of the literary sources


Best wishes



Pete Brown

Jeffrey Gibson

In other words, you have no idea.

Jeffrey

mountainman

Some theorists even considered the tenth!

I agree with you here, since I am attempting to address the relative historicity of things in some form of balance. The mechanism of the balance that you have above articulated is cool, and sound, and respresentative of
your contributions. But are they sufficient?

I am trying to up the scale, and use Momigliano. I think he says what you say in the following words (I have bolded in context):


How do you relate to this "creed" or restatement? How do you see it differing from what you say above (if at all). And finally, do you see this as a two-edged sword? (involving thus a balance of things).



The question like the mind is either open or closed. I like to keep an open mind about things, and am ready to argue that the case for the HJ is "Not Proven!"


Best wishes,



Pete Brown

mountainman

I bear the shame of not attending theology college every day of my short mortal life. But do theology colleges not bear the shame of ignoring the exercise in consideration of the analyses of Arthur Drews (1912 work) "The Witnesses to the Historicity of Jesus" for the last century of their nominal trading hours?

Best wishes,



Pete Brown

Jeffrey Gibson

How do you know they don't, especially if, as is often the case, Schweitzer's The Quest for the Historical Jesus is part of their course of reading?

Jeffrey

mountainman

Dear Jeffrey,


I have no idea which Jeffrey I am communicating with. At least you appear not to have this problem with me.

Best wishes,


Pete Brown