rcscwc

Quite a lot. Lols, including the tale of Lot, Sodom, Gomarrah.

Yet it is can be done repeatedly.

I can if I wish to do it.


Yes, I read it, I heard it. It is written by all sceince authors, across the globe, by people adhereing to every religion in the world.

I don't scoff at the beliefs. I am OK if someone worships, pink invisible unicorn too. As long as they don't come and try to frighten me into their belief, passing it off as the TRUTH.

Roger Pearse

Where?

This does not seem to justify your allegation. I see that you have copied Richard Carrier's version, where all the elements are run together. I have replaced it with that of Gifford, and placed the chapter heading at the top (which Gifford did not do). The PE book 12 is here.

This portion of the PE consists of verbatim extracts from various pagan sources, in which Eusebius looks for some element that anticipates Christian teaching. In this book most of the quotes are from the Republic and the Laws. At this point quotations about educating the young are being reviewed.

The comments suggesting that telling lies is OK are by Plato, not Eusebius. Curiously I have yet to see anyone condemn Plato for them.

But Eusebius' comment ignores what Plato says, and comments on the words of Clinias. His statement is merely that the bible contains many statements which are not intended literally, for the benefit of those unable to understand a more sophisticated approach. This fits neatly with his activity in the allegorical school of Origen.

Of course if anyone must suppose that Eusebius is calling the bible a fraud, let them! But, you know, if we are to suppose that he really thought such a thing, I think we would need more than one casual phrase in the middle of an immense volume on a different subject.

The manuscripts contain a set of headings indicating content at the front of each book. These may or may not be authorial; the scholarly work to determine this does not seem to have been done. Later copyists have transferred these to the start of the chapters (chapters were probably not present in the original).

But the translation of this given is wrong, as a comparison of the text with the original -- Plato's Laws -- would tell us, and indeed as a comparison with what *Eusebius* says. Rather it should read "That it will be necessary sometimes to use **fiction** as a remedy for the benefit of those who require such a mode of treatment". The reference is to Plato's discussion of the role of Homer and the poets, and fiction in general, in education.

Instead of the strange idea of Eusebius rubbishing the bible, we get a comment which then fits neatly enough, as indicating the bible contains parables for the benefit of the dim-witted.

I have to add that the habit of searching the works of voluminous writers, desperate to find some quotation that may be twisted to "prove" that the author is a self-confessed liar, is a characteristic of hate-speech, not scholarship. We need to be wary of repeating anything that looks like the product of such activity. This particular allegation appears and circulates in this context almost exclusively, as far as I know.

Let us remember that we all owe a vast amount to Eusebius of Caesarea; the invention of verbatim quotation, who established the first universal chronology assigning a numeral to each year, who preserved enormous amounts of lost material. Gibbon, who first sought to undermine him in this sleazy manner, betrayed his real opinion by making Eusebius his main source for everything he wrote in the very chapter in which he found it convenient to abuse him.

All the best,

Roger Pearse

Solo

This kind of argument will not stand. First of all there is the question why Eusebius would appeal to Plato. Second, ignorance is not an argument, even when advancing a fundamentally unsound position as why is everyone picking on Christians.

Let's start with number two. The Platonic view of an ideal polis as one ruled by 'philosopher-kings' has roundly been criticzed by a number of modern thinkers. It is essentially a philosophy of political elitism, which runs counter to an ideal of popular will and democrcay. Perhaps the most articulate critic of political Platonism was Karl Popper. In his seminal work The Open Society and Its Enemies sir Karl drew a direct link between the notion of intellectual aristocracy and its 'duty' to rule and modern forms of authoritarianism and totalitarianism.

Popper was a ruthless critic of Plato's moral eugenics and saw in them a model later to be emulated by the Nazis and communists. He also realized (as per the snippet above) the importance of the end-justifies-the-means precept in the scheme and its relation to deception and propaganda.

The end-justifies-the-means mantra has been very popular and widespread in all places and all times. Mao Tse Tung abhorred Khruschev's outing of Stalin's crimes saying that to make an omellette one has to break some eggs. Voltaire tried to calm nervous Frederick the Great when the latter expressed some doubts about the practicality of abolishing religion by saying that the 'infamy' (Christianity) was good enough for the serfs, what he intended was to extirpate it among the intellectual elite only. And there of course is the most amazing quip by any pontiff of the Catholic Church, past or present: Urban VIII., whose Inquisition threatened to torture Galileo (he received territio verbalis), remarked upon receiving the news of the death of Richelieu: 'If there is a God, the Cardinal will have much to answer to answer for, if not, he has done very well for himself'. One would not immediately guess that, that holy father also conspired with the protestant Gustavus Adophus (and Richelieu) against the Holy Roman Empire while amusing himself in his free time by converting portions of the Bible into hexameters.

....which brings us to number one. Why would Eusebius need to invoke Plato in that particular context ? Richard Carrier said that Eusebius is trying to prove in the document under scrutiny that the Greeks got drew on the Hebrews for their good philosophical ideas, and also that the Bible occasional creepiness is consistent with Plato’s notion of ‘justifiable lie’. So he draws parallel with some biblical narratives where God is assigned some anthropomorphic characteristics, saying that these are necessary lapses of truth in order to make them understandable to the unthinking masses. I suspect the real reason for Eusebius’ appeal to Plato, and the ludicrous notion that Plato was beholden to Moses for his ideas, is the sense of intellectual inferiority that the Christians were made to feel at the hands of the Neoplatonist pagans. Julian the Apostate (writing a few years after Eusebius’ death) savaged the wayward ideas of the church and the Scriptures, memorably in ridiculing Eden’s talking snake. It was in this environment that Eusebius wrote.
Eusebius is not calling the bible a fraud any more than Trotsky called the Bolshevik propaganda a fraud when he wrote his infamous pamphlet titled Their Lies and Ours. It’s the belief that end justifies the means that excuses ignoring ethical standards, even when dealing with the presumed word of God. What such thinking leads to – necessarily – is the either notion that either God was speculating how to spread the word about himself disguised in ‘pseudos’ or that men when they wrote down what God told them about himself did not wrote the whole truth. The discernment that deceiving others necessarily means deceiving oneself, is as absent from Eusebius as from your inept apology for him.

In other words, et tu quoque.

Best,
Jiri

Solo

Hi Andrew,
I think a more germane to the material would be the question whether the church (as the repository of [God's] wisdom and righteousness that the State was for Plato) may deceive believers in the cause of their salvation. I think the Protestant revolution exploded precisely on this point later. Wycliffe, Huss and Luther could not abide the Indulgencies as they were felt to be antithetical to faith itself.

Best,
Jiri

andrewcriddle

Hi Jiri

I'm not sure whether indulgences are a good parallel, the Reformers claimed that the sale of indulgences involved deceiving people for the sake of a quick buck. Even if this was a justified accusation it seems different from the issue of misleading people for their own (supposed) good. Also the main issue between Papists and Reformers was a genuine difference of belief as to whether Papal indulgences really worked. IE although some of the things said by sellers of indulgences were probably deliberate lies for the sake of financial gain, most of the things to which the Reformers objected were teachings that the supporters of indulgences believed but which the Redormers thought were harmful lies.

Andrew Criddle

andrewcriddle

In terms of what Eusebius explicity says this is quite true.
Eusebius' explicit argument is that Plato's advocacy of the noble lie ultimately derives from the Bible's use of metaphor when talking about God.

It is possible that this is all Eusebius really meant, in which case it has little to do with excusing deceit in any normal sense.

However many would feel that Eusebius sees a closer parallel between the Bible and Platonic "economy with the truth" than is made explicit in the passage. If so then IMO the passages from Origen which I quoted in the earlier thread can help us understand what Eusebius is trying to say.

There are what seem to be verbal parallels
Eusebius Now you may find in the Hebrew Scriptures also thousands of such passages concerning God
corresponds to
Origen With such remedies the whole divine Scripture is filled

If Origen's Homilies (which Eusebius had probably carefully studied) help us understand what Eusebius is saying about deceit, then the idea is about God (for our good) supposedly saying things that are in the literal sense misleading.

Andrew Criddle

Toto

Did Origen or Eusebius think that the Scriptures were directly written by God? or by humans doing their best to get the God idea across, even if it involved fables? I would think the latter, with the possible exception of the Decalogue.

Solo

There is an underlying theological argument on indulgencies in all three reformers (actually Huss dutifully copied his from Wycliffe) one which touches on the issue of harm in white lies. It was not the business of the church to sell comfort, but to guard the truth. Wycliffe, Huss and Luther all denied that clergy, the episcopate and the church doctors are the whole church. The indulgencies represented the usurpation of the sacred trust between Christ and his church which included all believers.

The first two theses nailed on the door of the church in Wittenberg, said exactly that:

1. Our Lord and Master Jesus Christ, when He said Poenitentiam agite, willed that the whole life of believers should be repentance.

2. This word cannot be understood to mean sacramental penance, i.e., confession and satisfaction, which is administered by the priests.

Best,
Jiri

arnoldo

I dunno, the following source says that Eusebius is not exceptionally trustworthy. . .

Toto

Hi arnoldo - you don't seem to be following this discussion. The quote you gave is from Richard Carrier, and Roger Pearse has stated his disagreement with it.