yalla

http://www.iidb.org/vbb/showthread.p...us#post1839820

This is a link to the post referred to above.
It muddies the water a little with respect to the alleged date of Ignatius.
cheers
yalla

Didymus

All the patristic writers were fictitious? Is Andy Kaufman your source for this?

Didymus

mountainman

It is an hypothesis which may be tested, in regard to the patristic
writers into whom Eusebius interpolated references to this "tribe
of christians" in the pre-Nicaean epoch, starting with Josephus
and ending --- after a couple of hundred years, and perhaps a
hundred detailed fictions --- with Origen, Porphyry and Pamphilus.

All this was because Constantine wanted a ROman church, and
wanted the lands, treasures, gold and kudos of the ancient and
traditional Greek (Hellenic) religions.


Pete Brown

Clivedurdle

Did he? His capital was Constantinople - not Rome! He was the Emperor - he had all the treasure etc!

And you are forgetting the continual thorn in the flesh of all Romans, the Persians.

(Off topic, but I really cannot see how Islam took off in a world of very powerful Byzantine and Persian Empires. The empires were very used to the hordes from outside - the Great Wall of China was built because of this issue, the Persians and Romans had coped with this for millenia - the Persians were using horse riding and bow technology techniques originally from the mongols! http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Carrhae)

mountainman

Much of the traditional treasures and temples of the Hellenic religion
were not accessible to Constantine. They had not been directly
accessible to any of the preceeding emperors, because they were
managed (so to speak) by the (Hellenic) pagan "priests".

Constantine created a new and strange ROMAN religion, and
thus was in a position to deprive the ancient traditions of their
treasures and temples and lands, almost overnight, and did so,
during his reign. The gold was used to melt into gold coins, and
much of it paid for the construction of christian basilicas, and for
the construction of Constantinople.

Other gold was handed over to "the barbarians" as pacts of peace,
on the borders of the ROman empire, along with automatic admission
to christianity. He literally paid his (some of his external) enemies to
become christians, with no strings attached.


How am I forgetting the Persians, and Shapur?



Pete Brown