DCHindley

Whoeee, does that bring back memories!

Back in junior high school I was into flying saucer stories, and used to eat this kind of thing up. I didn't believe any of it, but it was good for scaring one another on camp-outs in our backyards.

I remember reading (or was it reading about?) _The Hollow Earth_. It seemed it would be rather easy to detect the earth's doughnut shape if it really so existed, even in the 1960's.

DCH

mountainman

What can be simpler than the theory that Constantine invented a top-down emperor cult in the fourth century as a political initiative? And while it may be viewed as hyper-radical, as you have duly observed, it is both falsifiable and it does present a certain amount of evidence in it support. My position here is that it should be taken seriously, and investigated for its utility in explicating what we know of the first four centuries of the common era.


All positions rise and fall on the basis of the archaeological evidence.

I think that the non canonical evidence is sitting in the too hard basket of all the parties involved, and especially the mainstream, and inclusive of the radicals. Everyone has been wearing the "Canon Blinkers" since that is the area to which the scholarship, tenure, and big bucks have traditionally been applied. The non canonical christian literature is like a poor and distant relative, waiting in the wings for a small and brief mention in the grand scheme of the illumination of Constantine's Canon.

FOR THE POLITICAL MINDED THINK SEDITION

My explanation of the non canonical is again very simple.

The Egypto-Hellenic priesthoods of the Eastern Empire objected to the new god of the Pontifex Maximus: Arius of Alexander was the focal point of the resistance. He wrote bitter and stinging polemic against Constantine's initiatives.

When we read the christian ecclesiastical histories written by the christian regime victors, the pagans are presented as "christian heretics". The pagans need to be understood as Gnostic seditionists. These guys were invariably ascetic priests, in the same sense as the Indian ascetic adepts and masters. Their "Gnosis" was the ascetic gnosis -- based on the notion of the embodied soul and independent of any worldly religion or creed.

The non canonical christian literature is a minefield waiting to explode in the field of ancient history. The single and prime cause of all our problems is the chronology. We have been led astray (since 325 CE) by a Eusebian pseudo-history. When it finally occurs to textual critics of the non canonical literature (and especially the Apocryphal Acts) they they are looking at a seditious polemic against Constantine's Canon, they will begin to understand the "big picture" and the political nature of the new testament literature.

Best wishes,



Pete Brown

mountainman

Hello Jeffrey,

Where did I get out my big true blue stamp marked THIS IS TRUE and give these words a hefty stamp as being the one and holy flaming truth? This act is reserved for apologists, not ancient historians.

A similar (not an exact) claim is found in
A REBIRTH FOR CHRISTIANITY
by
ALVIN BOYD KUHN, Ph.D.

The relationship between the name Paul and the name Apollos is mitigated by the relationship between the historicity (or otherwise) of these two people. We know that Paul, whoever he may have been, whether real or fictitious, is now attributed as the author of a large number of fictive letters.

My further comments stand:

Best wishes,


Pete Brown

mountainman

Hey Doug,

In which century do you think the NT was written? Some say century one, others say century two. All I am doing is pointing out noone knows the answer to this question for sure yet. The question is not answered!

Best wishes,


Pete Brown

Jeffrey Gibson

Pete,

Do you accept this linguistic claim as true?

Jeffrey

mountainman

Didn't I just finish saying I accept nothing as true?
Ancient history is about relative historicity IMO.

Having said this (again) my acceptance of the merit
of this linguistic claim involves this assessment:

1) the written form: accessible to perhaps 5% of the populace.
2) the spoken form: accessible to perhaps 99% of the populace.

The written form "Paul" and "Apollonius" are divergent in the Greek
The spoken form "Paul" and "Apollonius" are not divergent.

Do you accept this analysis?
Best wishes,


Pete Brown

Jeffrey Gibson

Why should I, especially as you have proven time and again that you are Greekless, and have no idea of how Paulos and Apollonius were pronounced in the ancient world, and since the claim at issue -- and upon which you build your case -- is that the written form of Paul's and Apollonius's names have a common written element and that there is evidence that POL was a recognized abbreviation for Apollonius?

Jeffrey

mountainman

The claim at issue is the common characteristics of the historical lives of Paul and Apollonius, of which the claims (made by others) concerning the
similarity of the names themselves is but one small and comparitively insignificant aspect.

My respect for your contributions to comparitively insignificant aspects continues to grow, as does its compliment continue to decline. You show the typical knowledge of the historical citations for Apollonius of Tyana of a mainstream educated "Biblical Historian" who has studied his Greek and his Eusebius with all due diligence. We all know what Eusebius has to say about Apollonius. Of course, there was no politics involved. It was simply for the benefit of Greek academic textual criticism.


Best wishes,


Pete Brown

phthenry

The article quoted from Wiki is dealing with literary texts, not historical ones. My background is in literature, and the article is talking about authorial fallacy, a valid category in my opinion. Authorial fallacy states that one cannot know what the author intended, including the author himself, so it is meaningless to try to interpret a work from this intention. For example, we may argue that Milton tried to create an unsympathetic Satan in Paradise Lost, but in fact he seemed to have created a sympathetic one. Do we try to guess Milton's intentions, or do we simply look at the words of the poem?

We can not know an author's intention because authors often lie, they make contradictory statements, we don't know much about their lives (as in the case of Shakespeare), and because a biography of an author may be wrong, may in fact be corrected years later by another biography--as well as for other reasons.

But no literary critic would argue against putting a work of fiction in context. Knowing about Milton's Puritanical England will help us understand his works. At any rate, the article deals with fiction, not history.

Jeffrey Gibson

One other -- and a certified (and Greekess) crank, at that.

So you now say.

Was POL a recognized abbreviation for Apollonius or not?

Jeffrey