mountainman

"Gnostic texts use parody and satire quite frequently ... making fun of traditional biblical beliefs"

[April Deconick]

I see the stuff I quoted as making fun of events and people appearing in the new testament canon. The Gnostic material was presented in books bearing the names of apostles of gospels and acts, interspersed with letters and prayers, which made fun of the traditional authority of the books of the NT canon. They became very popular in the empire among the Greek speaking and reading citizens who may have questioned the divine grace of the corresponding canonical set of books. Sort of "light relief" to the events unfolding during the rule of Constantine.

There is reason to think that Eusebius had the Gnostic gospels and acts in mind when he wrote:

“… the sacred matters of inspired teaching were exposed to the most shameful ridicule in the very theaters of the unbelievers.”


[Eusebius, “Life of Constantine”, Ch. LXI,
How Controversies originated at Alexandria through Matters relating to Arius.]

I think that it is also within reason to think that Constantine had these "Gnostic Gospels and Acts" in mind when he wrote the following about Arius of Alexandria in a letter c.333 CE:

(1) Arius - the Author of Books - in terms of the Christian Church and Jesus

He brought state orthodoxy into the light;
He hurled his wretched self into darkness.
He ended his labors with this

He wrote that he did not wish God to appear to be the subject of suffering of outrage
He wrote that (on the above account) he suggested and fabricated wondrous things indeed in respect to faith.
He wrote books that collected and gathered terrible and lawless impieties
He wrote books that agitated tongues [Editor: Very popular books]
He wrote books which deceived and destroyed

He introduced a belief of unbelief.
He introduced a belief of unbelief that is completely new.


He accepted Jesus as a figment
He called Jesus foreign
He did not adapt, he did not adapt (it was said twice) to God [Editor: the "new" orthodox God]
He was twice wretched

He reproached the church
He grieved the church
He wounded he church
He pained the church
He demoted Jesus
He dared to circumscribe Jesus
He undermined the (orthodox) truth
He undermined the (othodox) truth by various discourses
He detracted from Jesus who is indetractable
He questioned the presence of Jesus
He questioned the activity of Jesus
He questioned the all-pervading law of Jesus
He thought that there was a place outside of Jesus
He thought that there something else outside of Jesus
He denied the infiniteness of Jesus
He did not conclude that God is present in Christ
He had no faith in Christ
He did not follow the law that God's law is Christ
He had little piety toward Christ
He detracted from the uncorrupted intelligence of Jesus
He detracted from the belief in immortality of Jesus
He detracted from the uncorrupted intelligence of the Church
He was barred publicly from God’s church


(3) Arius and his Modus Operandi of Authorship

He wrote with a pen distilling poison
He went further and opened the whole treasury of madness

He added things further to orthodox doctrines
He added certain things somehow swaggeringly
He added certain things quite accurately elaborated

He constructed a disease of savage thought
He constructed a discord against the church
He joined things to an impous separation of orthodox doctrines
He substituted a foreign hypostasis
He paved the way for the marks of addition
He sang evil songs of unbelief
He was not ashamed to disparage (state orthodox) doctrine
He refuted (state orthodox) doctrine
He admonished (state orthodox) doctrine
He was the author of rotten words and meters
He performed investigations that were called abominable

He wrote sophisms that were clear
He wrote sophisms that were known to all persons, at all events for the future.

He struggled to accomplish something.
He was an artificer.

Who was Leucius Charinus?
Who was Lithargoel?

stephan huller

I think it would be more useful for the discussion if you made your points one by one especially with regards to what you claim is 'satire' hopefully providing what contemporary events are being satirized and by whom and with what purpose. It is also annoying the way you recycle these lists which have already been demonstrated to be useless. You make it impossible to consider your original points when you introduce so much garbage on top of it.

Let's deal with each 'element of satire' as you see it - one by one - and let us determine whether it really is satire or just a series of stupid, unbelievable stories.

arnoldo

Still, if one shifts the focus of the Eusebian Fiction postulate from Constantine to Diocletian some interesting patterns emerge. The Emperor Diocletian shaped his empire in the form of a tetrarchy and in like matter the four canonical gospels soon emerged.



Not surprisingly, even within the gospel accounts, the form of government the Romans implemented in Israel was a tetrarchy. Note Luke 3:1
A closer examination of Diocletian's government reveals that he divided his empire into 12 subdivisions (dioceses) just as Jesus had entrusted his kingdom to the 12 disciples as per the gospel narratives. Upon, further examination, the importance of Diocletian re the development of Christianity is preserved by the Coptic Calender, which begins in the year 284, marking the year Diocletian became emperor and creator of this new faith.

mountainman

Political Satire

Monty Python's Life of Brian

Religious satire

Humor about Catholicism


Demonstrated to be useless? Nobody has critically questioned these lists. The lists are composed by statements made about Arius by Constantine in an extant letter. Noone has checked that my lists have been correctly garnished from this letter, so how can anyone have demonstrated them to be useless? I think that they are better termed "unexamined claims". The lists above are derived from an analysis of the translation of an extant letter written by Constantine c.333 CE to Arius of Alexandria.

Type: Early Arian Document (Urkunde) 34 (=AW III2 no. 27; CPG 2042)
Date: 333 CE
Source: Athanasius, Defense of the Nicene Definition 40 (TLG)
Also found in Socrates, Church History 1.9.30
and Gelasius, Church History 3.19.1
Trans: Coleman-Norton, P.R.,
Roman State and Christian Church, London:
Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge
(SPCK) 1966, #67.




I introduce source material in the form of the above letter that most academics conjecture to be a genuine letter from Constantine making complaints to Arius about Arius's failure to adapt to Constantine's state religion, and calling him a "Gallow's Rogue". This source material is not impossible to consider, since many other academics have also commented on this letter.



In that case start with Monty Python's "Life of Brian".
We might almost change its title to "The Gospel of Brian".


My claims are that the "Gospel of Nicodemus" and the "Acts of Pilate" contained therein, and all the "Gnostic Acts" ever attributed to the pseudonymous author Leucius Charinus, were authored in the epoch following Constantine's publication of the NT "canon", as seditious and satirical Greek language parodies aimed at diminishing the authority of the canonical "stories".


The General Weapon of Humor (against an oppressor)

These are not necessarily examples of satire, but of humor directed against religion and/or the church.
In the context of the years commencing 324/325 CE Constantine is portrayed as an oppressor with respect
to the pre-existent temple based pagan religions and cultures of the Roman Empire.

Woody Allen

To you I'm an atheist; to God, I'm the Loyal Opposition.

And if it turns out that there is a God, I don't believe that he is evil.
The worst that can be said is that he's an underachiever.

If Jesus Christ came back today and saw what was being
done in his name, he'd never stop throwing up.


Lenny Bruce

If something about the human body disgusts you complain to the manufacturer.


Every day people are straying away from the church and going back to God.


If Jesus had been killed twenty years ago, Catholic school children would be
wearing little electric chairs around their necks instead of crosses


Mel Brooks

I've been accused of vulgarity. I say that's bullshit.

Tragedy is when I cut my finger. Comedy is
when you fall into an open sewer and die.


Humor is just another defense against the universe.


Rhetoric does not get you anywhere, because
Hitler and Mussolini [ed. and Constantine] are just as good at rhetoric.
But if you can bring these people down with comedy,
they stand no chance.

This last one is important to remember.

IMO this is why there is such "comedy" in the "Gnostic Acts and Gospels".


Why does Peter fit a camel through the eye of a needle (twice)?

Both apologetic christians and even mainstream scholars seeking tenure in modern church funded institutes find it difficult to apperceive jokes against the subjects of the christian religious ideology - against Jesus and/or the Apostles. By some, the "Gnostic Acts and Gospels" have been termed a "textual critic's nightmare". IMO scholars have not yet identified the depth and consistency of the signature of the anti-christian parody and satire and comedy that characterise the entire body of the "Gnostic Acts and Gospels, etc". The failure to identify this has been because everyone has been induced to "believe in" an early chronology for the "Gnostic NT Books". The supermassive political and religious context of Nicaea is not being regarded because of an error in chronology, fabricated by the continuators of the orthodoc Nicaean state imperial church.

The Gnostic authors as Post-Nicaean non Christian Alexandrian Greek academics

IMO these authors were academic Alexandrian Greeks, and first hand witnesses to the fascist implementation in the Eastern empire of a "new and strange religion" of c.324/325 CE. They saw the fall of Alexandria to the "Christian army" of Constantine, and they were oppressed by the prohibition of their temple culture and traditional religious expression. An entire class of people had been made redundant - the pagan priesthood and its academies. And they reacted to the books of Constantine's new testament "quasi-canon" by authoring competing stories about the new god Jesus and his intrepid band of apostles.


The Gnostic Books

How did these Gnostic authors conduct their business?
What was their modus operandi of construction of their stories?
See Constantine's letter above, and compare this to the summary
of academics at post # #156

The gnostic authors are mimicking the stories found in the NT canon. They are cutting and pasting bits from here and there, recombining various combinations and permutations, [artificers, writing with pens distilling poison [satire and parody], adding things further to orthodox doctrines, accurately elaborated, substituting a foreign hypostasis and paving the way for the marks of addition, ....... evil songs of unbelief] in the divine authority of the books of the NT canon.

mountainman

Thanks arnoldo,

It is usual for a rising political figure to slander and/or calumnify the memory of the old regime and its leaders. Constantine's first action as Emperor of Rome was to search for Maxentius's head in the Tiber River and affix it to pike to be carried around te streets of Rome and thence to Africa "as a sterm warning that a new Pontifex Maximus had set up business.

Diocletian's political and religious persecutions of the Manichaeans was also a political memory that was very fresh in the minds of the citizens of the Roman Empire. Diocletian was a great sponsor of the Graeco-Roman healing god Asclepius, whom Eusebius calumifies along with Apollonius of Tyana. Constantine targets the temples of the "Snake" for destruction c.324/325 CE prior to the religious harmony of Nicaea.

Here is what Gibbon writes about Diocletian's palace:


Inflation and the Fall of the Roman Empire - Mises Daily: Monday, September 07, 2009 by Joseph R. Peden ---- This is an extremely interesting analysis covering Diocletian and Constantine and the emperor's constant need for gold to pay the army between the 1st and the 4th centuries.


It suggests that Constantine inherited "Domesday books" prepared in the rule of Diocletian for the purposes of assessing taxation liabilities.

But all of this just sets the political context of Nicaea.

The OP here is about the noncanonical gospels.

In the "Acts of Pilate" the author has Pilate tell the Jews that Jesus heals by the power of Asclepius. The author in the context of Nicaea, is spreading seditious rumors about Jesus.

Toto

I have critically questioned your interpretation of these lists.


Even if they are satiritical, you have not demonstrated that they satirizied the canon from a pagan point of view, as opposed to a gnostic Christian point of view. You have not demonstrated that they cannot be pre-nicean satires of pre-Constantine orthodox Christianity by dissenting Christians.

avi

Thank you for this comment, Toto. Made me think. I realize, I simply don't know the distinction between the two.
Isn't a "pagan", or "heathen", anyone who is not in accord with the interpretation of the canon, administered by some religious authority, pope or head of the Mormon church, or Reverend Moon, or whoever. Isn't this notion derived from Judaism?
My idea of gnosticism (probably wrong) is that it represents a new millennium, Greek method of skeptical thinking, based upon rational, empiricist investigation.
It seems completely heretical, to my childish notion of Christianity, for someone to be both Gnostic, and Christian. So, I would benefit from a link, if you have one, to explain what a "gnostic christian" may be? How would such a person NOT be ridiculed and condemned by "Irenaeus" and Eusebius?

I thought that gnosticism preceded Constantine? I thought that there was no such thing as "orthodoxy" in Christianity until AFTER Constantine came to power, (but even then, his son, upon attaining the throne, through military conquest of his rivals (including his own brother, if I am not incorrect), overturned the whole of Nicea, by proclaiming the validity of Arius' belief that JC was NOT equal to God, but rather a creation of God--> so much for orthodoxy....)

With regard to your main point, whether or not the texts under discussion could have been written before Constantine, how would one resolve such a question? It seems to me, that we have no evidence for or against such a proposition.

avi

Toto

Far from it. Pagans do not pretend to be Christians, or to worship Jesus Christ. In the context of this discussion, pagans are those who held to the old religions that worshipped the Greek / Roman / local gods.

The big arguments of this period are not between pagans and Christians, but among those who consider themselves Christians.

Gnosis technically means "knowledge," so you might assume that, but you would be wrong. There was a tradition of Greek skeptical inquiry, but it was part of the pagan tradition.

The current trend in scholarship is to see the term "Gnostic" as not very useful. But those who use the term intend it to refer to a search for inner knowledge, based on one's own authority.

Peter Kirby has a page on Gnosticism.

Or read Freke and Gandy's Jesus Mysteries (or via: amazon.co.uk) (available on scribd). Skip over the parts about Horus or pagan parallels.

Most people think Gnosticism preceded Constantine. The pre-Constantinian orthodox church did not have the power to enforce its beliefs, and is sometimes called proto-orthoox.

Orthodox just means "right thinking" or "correct dogma."

There is internal literary evidence or rferences in other documents,

show_no_mercy

But Justin Martyr refers to the "Acts of Pilate". Was "Justin Martyr" a pseudonym for Eusebius?

avi

This would be text written, originally, about 150 years apart.

Cicero versus Suetonius;
Grimmelshausen versus Goethe;
Pascal versus Voltaire;
Marlowe versus Swift;

150 years can be a fairly long interval, in terms of literary output. Can one not distinguish, in Greek texts, like those of Eusebius and Justin Martyr, a difference in writing style, (or, alternatively, a similarity in style!) of magnitude sufficient to warrant a conclusion one way or the other?

avi