mountainman

Thanks for the candid comments Doug, but would you be agreeable
in outlining which are the more appropriate citations of this objective
scientific evidence, to which you obviously subscribe, and to which
I obviously have some reservations?

Thanks.



Pete

mountainman

Thanks for this reference.
The stuff online has zero citations.

Has anyone read this book, or familiar with the citations
which are presumeably listed therein?



Pete Brown
http://www.mountainman.com.au/essenes/article_070.htm

aa5874

Mountainman, isn't it as early as the 2nd century, that Marcion and the Marcionites was established as a Christian religion? It appears to me that before the council of Nicea, there must have been some form of Christianity with diverse doctrines and scattered throughout the region.

mountainman

We are led to believe that Marcion and Marcionites existed through
the presentation of material gathered together in the fourth century
under Constantine by Eusebius in which, E claims, to have the writings
of Marcion and others before him, as he writes.

He claims to have the writings of Jesus of Nazareth before him when
writing upon this same history, and the writings of Josephus, first
published c.98 CE, without the TF (IMO).

That there must have been a tribe of christians in the pre-Nicaean
Epoch is the inference that Constantine and Eusebius would want us to
make, and I intend to test this inference, because it is not impossible
that all references to this "tribe of christians" were generated out of
the whole cloth in the fourth century.

There is a mass of literature, a finite amount, from the pre-Nicaean
epoch that is generally regarded as literature generated by christian
authors, or by other authors independently referencing christianity
or christians. It is not impossible that this was all generated under
the sponsorship and design of Constantine, like an army of profiles
in usenet, all babbling about things christian, in antiquity.

I want to rule out this possibility, for my own peace of mind.

Objectively, I would expect either is, or there will be some scientific
and/or archeological citation by which we may independently assess
the inference that "the tribe of christians" existed before Constantine.

DOes this explain my position?
Best wishes,


Pete Brown

aa5874

Mountainman, just a side issue, was being a scribe or a copyist a highly lucrative profession? Due to high amount of forgeries and interpolations, were people being paid well for documents that were thought to be authentic?

knotted paragon

hey Pete,

Have you already considered the several potential P fragments?

P52, P90 and possibly P98 ~ second century
P32, P46, P66, P64 ~ third century Or does this mean you've already discounted them?

...brian...

Doug Shaver

Evidence for what? The evidence on which I base my opinion that you should be ignored?

Clivedurdle

http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/0...lance&n=266239

And seriously, I cannot see how Constantine and Eusebius can have a monopoly when there is a very powerful Persian Empire for this superstitio to flourish in and there is freedom of trade to China by sea and via the silk road.

Barbarians references Bishops in the persian empire in the 200's. Google the names I posted above.

rlogan

Here is the decisive matter - what "Christian" things can be irrefutably established as independent of Eusebius' hand.

I am just junior varsity around here, and so I don't know off-hand if Irenaeus "Against Heresies" or Justin Martyr works for example can be established as such.

Now, it seems to me that another matter is the rather extensive set of works which were suppressed and discovered in recent history in Nag Hammadi.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nag_Hammadi_library

If we wish to establish a phony pre-history repleat with competing doctrines, then it does not make sense to me that works were suppressed.

We could, for example, pretend their existence and speak out against them as if they existed. But they do exist, whether fabricated or not.

So we have the proposition that they were completely forged for the purposes of fake evidence that there was a controversy, but the documents themselves were then never actually offered as proof - but banished, burned and elsewise suppressed instead.

I realize the finds are all dated too late to submit as archaeological evidence as you have requested. This is argumentative.

mountainman

There is a precedent in history commencing during the first century BCE
(and possibly earlier) for purported writings attributable to Pythagoras.
As a result, there was a market for pseudo-Pythagorean writings. The
king of Libia (Lidia) JUBA II was an avid collector, and had the cash.


However, in regard to Constantine, I believe he simply cornered the
market on the new technology of manuscript preparation and generation.
I believe he took an active part in the whole perversion, and saw it as
an intellectual game by which he obtained many more strings of power
throughout his empire.

I believe that during this mass of writings which were all understaken
in the fourth century (all the NT writings and the pre-Nicaean profiles,
squabbling like flocks of sea-gulls over one callumny after another),
scribes were sought in Greek, Latin, Hebrew, Coptic and Syriac.

I believe that some may have been paid well, but some would have
been paid with death. I believe that Constantine is best described
as a supreme imperial mafia thug, who personally appointed all his
bishops, and who considered himself to be the "bishop of bishops".

FOr example, I ask myself how does Pamphilus fit in to this hypothesis,
on the border of the Nicaean epoch. We are told he was "martyryed",
which means he was perhaps killed for his principles, but I doubt that
these principles were in any way related to Constantine's fiction of
christianity, although they may have been in opposition to it.

Best wishes,


Pete