Sheshbazzar

'Christianity' does not belong...belong...belong...belong...belong...belong.....'

People tend to forget, that according to their Bibles there were thousands of Messianic believers for years before anyone was ever called a 'Christian'.
Many of these early believers went to their graves without ever even so much as hearing of that foreign name.
It was ONE Faith up until men began preaching strange ideas and creating their divisions under this foreign other name.

'Christianity' is the false religion and deception that has displaced 'The Faith which was once deliverd unto the Saints''

Chili

I will happily agree with that, but might add that there were too many saints for their own good, and so if the elders were Saints there may have been too many Chiefs and not enough Indians and that is what created various kinds of problems for them. This is just a guess on my part, that according to John 6 was true.

arnoldo

I've considered how a heretical branch know to it's opponents as a Nazarene Sect were able to overcome opposition from the official faction. Alan Segal, in his book entitled, Two Powers in Heaven: Early Rabbinic Reports About Christianity and Gnosticism (or via: amazon.co.uk) explores this issue in depth.

mountainman

Yes of course. There were supposed to be bishops in the Persian capital as well, but as the historian Robert Grant points out:



There were pagan temples and churches in Alexandria.

The lineage of the 3rd century Platonist theologians came from Alexandria.

Were the only Christians in Alexandria agents of Constantine?

Where did the pagans in Alexandria disappear to?

Why did Pachomius (editor of the Coptic Nage Hammadi codices???) flee Alexandria c.324 CE?

Duvduv

Mountainman, doesn't the same question get asked about pagans everywhere else as well? Where did they ALL go?

mountainman

The pagans (some prefer the term "gentiles" or "greeks") are the elephant in the room of christian origins. They appear to have been retrospectively converted to "Christian heretics" by the later 4th and 5th century heresiological sources. Epiphanius's list of 80 heretical sects provides the intellectual division and conquering of the pagan heretics:


The pagans were divided and conquered as "Christian heretics".

They all disappeared at Nicaea in a puff of later 4th and 5th century ink.

Except for the head of the pagan academy of Plato, Sopater, who was executed by Bullneck c.336 CE.

The Christian academy quickly assumed the prestige of the Platonic academy, by using its theological trinity. (See Porphyry and Plotinus)

Duvduv

Are you suggesting that descriptions of persecution of Christian heretics was actually a coverup for persecution of pagans?

mountainman

Yes. The massive demographic dominance of pagans vanished as soon as they were classified by the imperial heresiologists as Christian heretics. I have already commented (somewhere above?) that Ammianus describes the torture of the upper classes.


In the same manner I also have the (admittedly novel) idea that the greatest Christian heretic, Arius of Alexandria, was not a heretical christian presbyter but a (heretical) Platonic theologian - a pagan. I have written an essay on this idea here.

Duvduv

But why would this be covered up with stories of persecution of heretics when they could actually simply talk about both categories explicitly? On the other hand, what is the conventional explanation for the disappearance of the pagans?

Huon

In Gaul, the old pagan country people died, and their children converted slowly to either arianism, or catholicism, according to the "color" of the local nobility.

The role of some bishops was very important, and they were canonised, Gregory of Tours, and Remigius of Rheims, for instance. The noble families had a more complicated history. The older gaulish noble families had been Roman catholics since 250-300. The Wisigoths were arians. The Franks, who were pagans around 450, hesitated between the support of Theodoric the Great, arian king of the Ostrogoths, and regent of Italy, and the support of the old catholic aristocracy of central Gaul.

The kingdom of Burgundy had been split between four brothers in 473. Chilperic II, one of the brothers had been killed by his brother Gundobad in 493. Clotilde, the daughter of Chilperic II, was catholic. She married Clovis I, king of the Franks. Clovis converted to catholicism and conquered a fraction of the kingdom of Burgundy with the approval of the catholic hierarchy. In 507, Clovis attacked Alaric II, who was the arian king of the Wisigoths, and master of the regions south of the Loire and West of the Rhone. Alaric II had been a supporter of Gundobad in 493. Alaric II was killed at the battle of Vouillé (507). The Wisigoths could preserve the region south of Toulouse and their lands in Spain.

The french schoolboys are told that "Clovis embraced the cult of Clotilde", and transform this sentence, saying "Clovis embraced the cul of Clotilde". (le cul = the ass). Not very religious, eh ?