mountainman

In 2006 the National Geographic published the Coptic documents from the heavily persecuted non canonical book preserving Gnostic "religion", and had samples sent to a radiocarbon dating physics laboratory, with the results published as between 220 and 340 CE. Who can ever know what evidence will or will not appear?


Thanks for the concession expression. The modern ancient historian who has stood on the shoulders of that giant skeptic Gibbon is Jewish, and his suspicions are also delivered in his works with much irony.


Yet this is the reality at the moment. We may make inferences about what this evidence may disclose, but we cannot claim these inferences as facts.


Can you provide a reference? I have read Gardiner and summaries of his work and recall the dates are largely from the late 4th century. Which manuscripts are dated to the "early 4th century" and what do those manuscripts contain?


I share that amazement.

But it is not over the absence of early evidence that I am "suspicious", as explained above. What I am suspicious over is evidence of the purposeful fabrication of pseudo-historical narratives. The 4th century christian heresiologists have for the last 1686 years been held by the concensus of academic scholarship to be the historical authorities about Mani and the Manichaeans. You should be able to see this as the HEGEMON.

It's where most if not all people are at -- because of our education to the HEGEMON that the fabricated and pseudo-historical narratives of the 4th century Christian heresiologists were the only available authority. Today we know that these bastards lied through their teeth about Mani and the Manichaeans because that was their job - they were after all is said and done better described as heresiologists than "church men".

We are only just crawling out from under a very heavy rock of bullshit.



Why did the 4th century Christian heresiologists fabricate Manichaean historical narratives?

Would anyone care to conjecture why these guys wrote historical fiction about Mani and the Manichaeans? Eusebius seems to just call Mani a vile and filthy heathen barbarian and be done with that. Eusebius of course worked for a Roman Emperor, and the last thing on the agenda would have been to glorify any historical figures in the Persian Empire, since the two empires were at war with each other.


Was Mani Crucified like Jesus?

One key question related to an investigation of these generations of pseudo-historical narrative fabricators is whether or not it is an historical fact that the famous Persian Holy Man and Religious Leader, Mani, was publically CRUCIFIED in the Persian capital city, four decades before Eusebius "Church History" was authored. What does the current scholarship have to say on this question?

Or the seemingly bizarre converse question .... was Jesus crucified like Mani?

And what are the items of evidence used to provide answers to these questions?

mountainman

Constantine was at war with the commander of the eastern Roman Empire and its army, and the opinion that Constantine did not force belief on citizens is subject to debate. Robin Lane-Fox mentions Constantine's rescripts following the "Council of Antioch" in which orders were furnished to torture leading citizens and philosophers if they refused to confess the error of their ways. (This may be derived from VC). Also for example, his prohibition of traditional religious activities was accomplished by force, as was his destruction of certain pagan temples:


All religious cults inside the Roman Empire, and that included the Manichaeans, had to face and conform to the centralized state Montheistic Christian orthodoxy. The history of the conflict between the state orthodox Christian heresiologists and the heretics was written by the state orthodox Christian heresiologists. We now know that these state orthodox Christian heresiologists (such as Ephrem Syria, Hegemonius and Saint Augustine - supposedly an ex-Manichaean) distorted the historical truth with hostile fictional polemic against Mani and the Manichaeans.