Toto

I have reopened this after removing a few posts.

This will be the last thread on this topic in this forum.

Please keep the discussion to issues and not personalities or posting style.

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spin

OK, then, can someone explain to me what the substantive evidence for the whole Constantine thing, given that it apparently has already been falsified? (And learn to use this English word, avi.)


spin

avi

I believe, and correct me if I err, that spin wishes to suggest, that the evidence he has illustrated in this and other threads, in recent months, repudiates, refutes, and disproves (according to spin) the hypothesis of mountainman, a thesis which attributes to Lord Constantine, the whole apparatus of the "Christian" tradition.

In contrast, the word falsified, implies, to anyone who is a native speaker of English, at least those who are familiar with the FIRST meaning of the word, that there has been an element of fraud associated with this process (of assessing the earliest historical evidence for a Christian church), and of course, here, we are on sticky ground, for it is precisely this point, forgery and fraud, which leads some of us to imagine that the heavy hand of Constantine and his Tonto, Eusebius, is responsible for much of what we identify as text authored by "patristic" authors.

I know how to use and interpret "falsify", cher spin, but I also know, and understand, that foreigners do not enjoy the luxury of comprehending what it is that spin wishes to express, based solely upon his written expression.

In particular, it is counterintuitive, when dealing with a body of evidence fraught with fraud, to employ a word, suggesting fraud, and then assume that the reader is sufficiently well versed in the various subtle meanings of our language, that the non-native speaker can correctly recognize spin's attempt to communicate the concept of "refutation", rather than the process of "discrediting due to fraud", upon encountering "falsify" in one of spin's analyses.

Personally, I understand what spin means, at least when he writes in English, (but not one of his many other languages). However, I do regard his conduct as impolite with regard to those less talented than he is, especially those encumbered with the task of mastering a language as obtuse as English.

To my way of thinking, in answer to spin's question, the "substantive evidence" of a special role played by Constantine/Eusebius in the process of engendering the history of christianity, is the destruction of the writing, the movement, and the person, of Arius of Alexandria.

avi

stephan huller

No avi, he is asking what is the substance of the argument - not a debate about whether or not it "makes sense" in your gut? The posts here typically degenerate into vagaries. What's the most substantive argument? Where's the evidence to.support the contention beyond "Constantine was an evil man"?

mountainman

My argument is simply that the new testament and its history may have been forged. The evidence leans in that direction. By the phrase "leans in that direction" i mean that after sixteen centuries of possible authentic christian relics, here we find ourselves in the 21st century, with not one single clear unambiguous externally corroborating ancient historical relic of any variety. Read Price's description of "pious forgery' above somewhere.

Was the NT canon fabricated? I reserve the right to pursue this hypothesis, which is all I have been doing.




I think that a relational approach to ancient history is healthy.
Certainly the ancient historical facts themselves, at the atomic level,
this that we have as evidence, such as inscriptions, papyri, events, dates,
texts, authors, publishers, dates of authorship, dates of publication,
language, translations, coins, etc, etc, etc ... all these things are
presently actually represented in relational database. Have a look around.

Referential integrity means the degree of inter-corroboration between the
items of evidence available. I am using it here not just to represent
the subset of "Biblical History", but the much wider field of "Ancient History".
Do you have a problem with this or something?



False, since I provide reasons why it is reasonable to consider that
there other explanations for the evidence, other than "its Christian!".
These reasons have been articulated, and in certain instances also
supported by people who do not agree with my overall theory.
This at least establishes that I have some degree of support.

You would like the matter to be black and white. It is not. It is many shades of grey. We need to recognise this natural fact.



That others here have agreed with *some* of my assessments
should indicate that they are within reason.

I am challenging the current theory that there was in fact an "early Christian history"
before "the peace of Constantine", and sketching a revisionist history of the epoch
from 312 CE onwards based on the hypothesis that this current theory is incorrect.

The kernel is that Constantine commissioned the fabrication of the NT canon,
and the history of the Christian Church. Eusebius, possibly a man of Jewish
descent, received these instructions from Constantine and oversighted the
manufacture of these "mockumentaries" in an imperially sponsored scriptorium,
in or near Rome, between the years of 312 and 324 CE.

The complete theory is that the non canonical "Gospels etc" were only then,
after the Nicaean Constantine Bible Release and Publication, authored by
Alexandrian Greeks as "counter codices", which "poked fun at" the
codices of the NT canon. These "Gnostic works" were banned, prohibited
and burnt, but not before massive groups of the populace were implicated
in various heresies - related to the preservation of these "other books".

A few generations after Nicaea, the publication of the "Gnostic books" had
been buried as an ancient heresey, and the One True Canon continued its
prominence in the minds of the christian othodoxy. Only in recent centuries
have the - very close to the original - works of the "Gnostic authors"
commenced turning up in archaeological discoveries.

Arius

If Constantine commissioned the NT Canon, then Christian history commences with Arius of Alexandria and the Arian controversy, and the five sophisms of Arius take on a far greater depth of possible meanings. This is why I have put forward a great deal of material that I have reviewed on the historical figure of Arius, weighed down for centuries and centuries and, as the chief orthodox heresiogists and apologists of the day might have stated it .... "to be damned in the inextricable shackles of anathema forever". Constantine just used his supreme imperial power to subject Arius to "damnatio memoriae".



The propaganda published at the same time as "Constantine's Bible" asserts that
the nation of Christians existed. The forgery perpetrated by 4th century Christian
interpolations into the account of the Jewish historian Josephus, were not just
there to cite "Jesus who was the Christ!", but also cite the "Nation of Christians".




Gibbon, who was not lazy, once wrote about the primary and secondary causes of the rapid growth
of the Christian church. I am not dealing with primary causes, but the
secondary causes.

At the top of the list of secondary causes we have Constantine,
the first person to act as a widespread publisher of the Bible.
The bible did not get published by itself. It was "packaged".


With what other published "stories" was the first "New Testament Bible "packaged"?
Hint: think about the entire output of "Eusebius" and then add the "Historia Augusta".

mountainman

But stephan, this is getting tedious. I have actually read the majority of the Christian related ante-Nicene text available as English translations - and more than I have cared to do. I will however state that I have read all of the new testament apocrypha that I have managed to locate, and definitiely all the "Gnostic Gospels and Acts, etc", Nag Hammadi, etc.

As far as the orthodox christian works of Eusebius such as "HA" etc (or other works cited or preserved), I reject them as a mockumentary that was fashioned alongside the "Historia Augusta". The key figure of Eusebius, possibly a man of Jewish descent, commissioned by Constantine, oversights and edits this massive forgery.


For details see My assessment of Eusebius as an historian.


You can read the "Historia Augusta" a million times and it will still be perceived by the classical ancient historians as a "mockumentary". As far as I am concerned, the "Historia Ecclesiastica" and other works of Eusebius fall into precisely this same category of "mockumentary".

What I have always maintained however stephan, is that there may be something in the billions plus pages of material related to archaeological finds, ancient history, or any other external sources that I haven't actually read (or even made aware of) that might make me change my mind at least theoretically.

Dig it?

mountainman

This is actually quite false.

What has not changed is the hypothesis. The hypothesis is that we are dealing with a 4th century fabrication. I have had to defend this hypothesis against citations of evidence which would otherwise refute the integrity of the hypothesis itself. We have examined a great deal of evidence in this time. Dura Europos represents a stale mate for the moment.

However the revisionist theory (starting in the year 312 CE) which is based on this hypothesis has changed considerably over the course of 5 years as new data has been reviewed, particularly in regard to the New Testament Apocryphal corpus, and many important events and major "controversies" of the 4th and 5th centuries.



Again, this appears confused. I think the reason is that you are not separating out the hypothesis and the theory. The theory attempts to describe what happened during the period of its invention thorugh to its legalisation and publication and canonization. This covers the 4th and 5th centuries, commencing 312 CE.

The hypothesis is simple. The New Testament was fabricated in the 4th century. Evidence that the NT (or Jesus or "The Nation of Chrestians") existed prior to 312 CE will invalidate the hypothesis, and thus refute the theory. We have been stuck on the hypothesis for 5 years. Sending silver bullets into it, and finding them, etc. This is cool. It has to be done. But do not confuse this with the theory.

stephan huller

This doesn't make sense. Arius does not just fall from heaven into Alexandria. Everything about Arius is connected with the past. You just don't know this so you don't know how ridiculous this sounds to someone who does.

Tim Vivian wrote a book called Peter of Alexandria (or via: amazon.co.uk). Why don't you read it? Peter of Alexandria ran away from Alexandria during the persecutions of the Diocletian Era (persecutions which you say of course never happened but are the starting point of the Coptic calendar). When Peter returns to the Martyrium of St. Mark he finds Meletius (http://orthodoxwiki.org/Meletius_of_Lycopolis) on the throne. Arius soon follows then Achillas and then the Constantine control over Alexandria begins.

There really was a Meletius because there were Meletians down through to the seventh century.

Arius is always linked with Origen (who you say again never existed) and the Arians themselves argued with the orthodox over who who faithfully preserved the tradition of Pope Dionysius. Vivian says that all the pre-Constantine Popes were Origenists.

You have considered any of these things because you got off your surf board one day and had an epiphany about Constantine inventing Christianity but your theory doesn't work in Alexandria. You have to throw too much out to rescue an implausible hypothesis.

Toto

You keep repeating this, but you are not working out the problems in the theory. You have failed to explain why Eusebius forged four different gospels that are contradictory and inconsistent. You have failed to explain Paul's letters, or Marcion's version of Paul's letters.

Referential integrity: "A feature provided by relational database management systems (RDBMS's) that prevents users or applications from entering inconsistent data."

My problem is that it sounds like you are just throwing words around. I don't know if you are being deliberately obscure.

I don't recall anyone who supports your interpretations of Dura Europa. I don't know what you mean about shades of gray, or why that supports your theory.

Nope.

Why not just write a novel?

avi

Eusebius falsifies the behaviour and philosophy of Mani (providing spin with both "substantive evidence" and correct usage of falsify):

avi